Shanmen, also known as the archway or gateway, is located at the stairway of Guandu Temple on Zhixing Road, with the characters ‘Guandu Temple’ written on it. On the reverse side, the four characters meaning ‘founding of the cult’ indicates the founder’s aims to promote the religion and educate the public 300 years ago. Although Shanmen is constructed from granite, its outer appearance replicates the traditional temple architecture. A que ti, for example, is inserted in the perpendicular intersection of the pillars, which makes use of auspicious motifs, such as the turtle and phoenix. The ridges and walls of Shanmen are decorated with ceramic art, including Gods of Bliss (Fu), Prosperity (Lu) and Longevity (Shou) on the centre ridge, green dragons on both sides, and two elephants on the edges of the swallow-tail ridges.
The inner side of ridges is decorated with art pieces of flowers, birds and goldfish, whereas the edges of the suspended ridges are decorated with peony artworks. The slanted ridges at the front and back as well as left and right sides are embellished with celestial maidens gracefully in flight. The brims of the Shanmen architecture are decorated with ruyi and joined with bracket structures, the suspended tubes are ornamented with lotus-shaped artworks, which demonstrate the exquisite works of the craftsmen in traditional architecture, masonry and chiseled floral art.