Chinese distinguishes several types of Daoist religious building, and the terms track real differences in institutional character rather than being interchangeable synonyms. A guan generally denotes a larger monastic establishment, historically and today especially associated with the Quanzhen, Complete Perfection, school of monastic Daoism, whose celibate, communally resident clergy follow a structured religious life closer in its institutional shape to Buddhist monasticism than to the married, hereditary priesthood more typical of other Daoist lineages.
The Baiyun Guan, White Cloud Temple, in Beijing stands as the most prominent Quanzhen monastic center, its extensive courtyard complex housing resident monks, teaching halls and an important Daoist canon library. A gong, by contrast, more often denotes a temple serving a local community and its resident deities without necessarily supporting a celibate monastic community in the same way, closer in social function to a parish church than to a monastery, and frequently maintained by married, hereditary priests of the Zhengyi, Orthodox Unity, lineage who live among the lay population they serve rather than in monastic seclusion. Both building types generally follow the same courtyard based layout conventions shared across traditional Chinese religious architecture, with halls arranged along a central axis and dedicated to different tiers of the extensive Daoist pantheon, though a temple's specific pantheon of deities and its particular architectural emphases vary considerably by region and by which Daoist lineage maintains it.