Meet the pantheon of staffers who administrate the ancient Taoist afterlife's bureaucracy at Dongyue Temple. Erik Nilsson visits the anthropomorphic office workers of the 76 departments and 18 levels of the netherworld's management in the Chinese capital.

You can literally go to holy hell in Beijing - all 76 departments spread among 18 levels. And visitors discover that exploring hell in the Chinese capital can be, well, surprisingly enjoyable.

While many modern people believe bureaucracy is hell, visitors to Beijing's Dongyue Temple see how ancient Taoists believed hell is a bureaucracy.

The compound physically and metaphorically replicates its structure.

Subdivisions are staffed by statues of pig people, lumpy demons bearing sabers and ox-headed ghouls brandishing spiked clubs.

Their colleagues are rabbits in robes, horses with double-pronged spears, prisoners in stocks, adorable tykes and virtually any combination of human-animal-demon you could imagine.

Many Taoists traditionally believed hell is the purview of Dongyue, the god of Taishan Mountain - one of China's "five great peaks" and home to the Taoist underworld - in today's Shandong province.

Shandong and several other places of pilgrimage throughout the country host holy sites devoted to Dongyue and the afterlife's administration.

A bizarre bureaucracy

In Beijing's version, life-size sculptures of eerie divinities "work" in "offices" that flank rooms of the courtyard, to manage this life and the next, with writing brushes and tritons in hand.

They staff such divisions as the Department of Demons and Monsters, the Department of Poisoning, and the Department of Controlling Bullying and Cheating.

On a lighter note, Dongyue's divine officialdom also runs the Department of Happiness, the Department of Loyalty and various bodies that monitor, evaluate and operationalize prosperity, longevity and joy.

The labyrinthine division of labor's high resolution comes into sharper focus upon exploring the complex.

The Department of Homeless Ghosts is separate from the Department of Wandering Ghosts. The Department of Signing Documents is outside the Department of Signed Documents. And the Department of Reclaiming Life is detached from the Department of Reincarnation.

It's structured as a leviathan in which souls could - and, apparently, according to signage, sometimes do - get a bit lost.

But the legal system has an appeals process - actually several layers - in case someone's good-bad-deed ratio is miscalculated.

The signage also seeks to laud the bureaucracy's multifold checks and balances, corrective mechanisms and impartiality that prevent and rectify mistakes.

Law beyond life

As you'd expect from hell, most of the paperwork and procedures administrate what follows morality's inevitable conclusion.

The particularly unfortunate must deal with the Department of Implementing 15 Kinds of Violent Death - which include, but are not limited to, starvation; clubbing; dying in battle; animal attacks, floods; insanity; "falling into an abyss"; "tricks by evil people or ghosts"; disease; and suicide.

Essentially, mortality and its consequences are conceptualized as a series of legalistic formalities.

First, an office determines that the death that has occurred has in fact occurred. Another initially reviews their deeds.

These are evaluated by the Department of Measurements, which standardizes the quantification of good and evil acts, and rewards and punishments. (It also functions to remind living merchants not to rig their measurements to deceive buyers, lest they be subject to the aforementioned criteria after death or by penalty in the mortal realm.)

If the individual lived improperly, an indictment is filed, followed by a warrant, in which case law enforcement detains the soul for court.

Depending on how they're judged, the deceased are then assigned to damnation or reincarnation through the departments of Insect Birth, Water Birth (aquatic animals), Egg Birth (birds and reptiles) or Mammal Birth.

The most virtuous become either human in the next life or - if particularly righteous - officials in, and of, the afterlife.

Whichever way, it's a long and byzantine series of proceedings between dying and whatever follows.

Also, those who are deemed to have perished before their time due to suicide or accidents become poltergeists until processed by the Department of Unjust Death, which transfers them to the Department of Resurrection, which returns their souls to mortal bodies.

And, as if to put an exclamation point on hell's meta-bureaucratic configuration, hell has a Department of Hell inside it.

The mortal realm

That said, many divisions instead deal with affairs of this world.

The Animal Department and the Department of Flying Birds monitor and equalize births and deaths to ensure balance on the planet. There's also a Department of Preserving Wilderness, which is somehow separate from the aforementioned taxonomic metrics of biomass equilibrium.

The Department of Jaundice deals with hepatitis, which was prevalent in unhygienic ancient times. It cures those who refrain from evil, engage in good and abstain from such vices as boozing, smoking and promiscuity.

And there are departments for the gods of Earth, rivers, cities and towns, rain - basically, everything in the corporeal realm.

Aside from the officials' offices, there are affirmations of even more important figures, mortal and immortal.

The temple hosts halls devoted to its founders; to Dongyue's son-in-law, San Mao, who was put in charge of life and death and all supernatural entities; and even to the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy - an acknowledgement of the rival religion's prevalence in past centuries.

Statues of the generals Heng and Ha guard the gate.

Heng carries a long spear and defeats enemies by snorting out two white lights that explode. Ha exhales yellow smoke that terrifies foes out of their wits.

Two locust trees twist skyward near the gate. One is said to be 800 years old and to deliver good luck and longevity. The other was where the god Wenchang legendarily sat to select meritocratic candidates for examinations and careers.

Near the trees stand replicas of the ancient statues of the White Jade Horse and the Bronze Wonder Donkey that Wenchang rode to the sanctuary.

Both are misnomers and talismans.

Touching the horse, which is in truth porcelain but looks like its namesake precious mineral, is believed to bring safety and financial success.

Rubbing the donkey - actually, an equine with a horse's head, donkey's body, mule's tail and bull's hooves - is said to cure illness.

They stand near the Imperial Tablet of Emperor Qianlong, chiseled in 1761.

The calligraphic account engraved in the ethnic Manchu and Han languages chronicles the temple's restoration. So does that of his grandfather, Kangxi, who oversaw repairs after a 1689 fire.

Both are perched inside pagodas, atop the back of the Dragon King's son, Bixi, whose tortoise-like shell allows him to carry heavy burdens.

They stand at the edge of the Stele Forest - a thicket of about 100 stone slabs, most of which commemorate ancient trade bodies' donations to the temple.

It seems even the afterlife's operations require both public and private funding.

Indeed, travelers who explore Dongyue Temple will discover much about ancient Taoism's conceptions of the afterworld and traditional Chinese perceptions of this world.

And they may find that - at least in Beijing - visiting hell can actually be a heck of a good time.