Wudang · Yunnan · New Hampshire
Gallery
A slow walk through photographs from the two sites, one at a time. Rights and photographer credits are being confirmed.
A path lined with old trees, the light low and soft on the gravel, and one figure settled into a deep lunge, his arm reaching out as slowly as breath. Nothing here is in a hurry. The place is not named on his site, so we leave it unnamed too, and let the path be any path that leads inward.
Source: daoistgate.com · rights pending
Autumn leaves hold the light, and an indigo robe moves among the pale trunks, one hand lifted like a leaf not yet fallen. Each autumn the center gathers its students for teacher training; this is only the quiet around it, a figure, a tree, a season turning. The photograph asks nothing more: to stand, to breathe, to let the year settle.
Source: daoistgatecenter.org · rights pending
One leg lifted, balanced on a rock at the water’s edge, the lake still behind him. His sites teach Tai Chi in forms of 13, 28 and 108 postures; this is none of them in particular, only the pause in which weight settles, the breath sinks, and the water holds its surface.
Source: daoistgate.com · rights pending
A white sleeve lifts like mist from the stream below, the rocks dark and wet around him. The Qigong his sites describe — Four-Season Qigong, Five Animal Play — is slow work with breath and body, moving the way water moves: around what is hard, toward what is low.
Source: daoistgate.com · rights pending
Dusk on a lake, a fist drawn back, the surface unbroken. Xingyi, as his schools teach it, is built on the Five Elements and the Twelve Animals. In this photograph all of that is held in reserve, and the evening stays quiet around it.
Source: daoistgate.com · rights pending
Tea poured on a granite outcrop among spruce, steam rising into cool air. Asked about his favorite part of Daoism, he answered that he has no single favorite: what he likes most is how learning about one part deepens his understanding of all the others. A cup of tea, held quietly, is one part of that whole.
Source: daoistgatecenter.org · rights pending
Master Xuan Yun Zhou praying for world peace during the center’s Lunar New Year activities.
Source: daoistgatecenter.org · rights pending
Against black, an indigo robe sweeps low and the floor becomes the only horizon. Bagua, as he teaches it, is a study of eight palm changes: one walks the circle and the palm turns. Nothing else is in the frame, which is perhaps the point.
Source: daoistgatecenter.org · rights pending
A sword held out, and behind it mountains dissolving into mist. The image is small and may be composed, so we use it gently. Wudang is where, as his site says, he grew up, learned martial arts and became a Daoist priest: a mountain of mist, stone steps and old temples.
Source: daoistgate.com · rights pending
Jagged peaks, low cloud and fading light, with a small figure in a dark coat at the edge of the frame. This comes from a set of pictures his site uploaded in March 2025, the month of the journey to Yunnan and Wudang; the picture does not say who is shown. Afterward he wrote that cameras capture images, but cannot hold emotions.
Source: daoistgate.com · rights pending
A small pagoda, a seated statue, and red lanterns at its feet; no one in the frame. The 2025 journey passed through temples, among them Pantuoshi in Fengqing County and Purple Cloud Temple on Wudang. This picture is not labelled with its place, so we do not give it one.
Source: daoistgate.com · rights pending
Gilded figures in the dimness of a shrine hall, the wood darkened by incense and years. His site files this picture with those of Wudang, where the 2025 journey ended with four days at Purple Cloud Temple, Golden Summit and Nanyang Palace. Light enters slowly, as it does in such rooms.
Source: daoistgate.com · rights pending
Evening on a lakeshore lawn, small figures practising in the last light while a dog wanders near. This image is filed under Yunnan on the center’s site. In his own words Yunnan is where he has lived the longest, six transformative years, and where he has thought of making a place of rest.
Source: daoistgatecenter.org · rights pending
Grey clapboard buildings and a barn on a green hill, a great tree, an overcast sky. This is the Daoist Gate Center, Xuan Ju, in Francestown, New Hampshire, at the foot of Crotched Mountain — founded in 2018 under his guidance, with room for twelve to stay and a hall for twenty to train. Humble, and made for quiet work.
Source: daoistgatecenter.org · rights pending
A quiet room: wood floor, window light, no one in it. The center says its school is open to all, whatever their age, background, ethnicity or belief. Stillness asks for very little — a floor, a window, and time.
Source: daoistgatecenter.org · rights pending
A training hall with a wooden ceiling and a bare black floor, waiting. The center’s hall holds twenty practitioners at a time, and each spring and autumn it fills with the slow footwork of teacher training. Today it is only space, and the sound of nothing.
Source: daoistgatecenter.org · rights pending
Photos from daoistgate.com and daoistgatecenter.org, rights pending.