Back to Categories

Shanxi

Chinese ancient architecture and grottoes in Shanxi: 8 entries, including Foguang Temple, Guangsheng Temple, Huayan Temple, and more.

001 Architecture Guangsheng Temple Today's Guangsheng Temple is split between the heights and foot of Mount Huo, yet the Tang documents record only one ancient foundation of an Aśoka pagoda. Thereafter buildings arose beside the Huo Spring, a Buddha hall stood at the southern foot of the mountain, and a glazed pagoda was rebuilt on the summit. In the thirteenth year of the Jiajing era, Wang Shilong, leading troops on a relief expedition, took his meal at the foot of the pagoda, and after the revolt was pacified had his poem carved on the pagoda wall; not until the Kangxi era did the names “Upper Temple” and “Lower Temple” appear explicitly in a stele. The extant Feihong Pagoda was built under the monk Dalian between the Zhengde and Jiajing eras. Northern Zhou Dynasty · Shanxi · Hongtong County, Linfen, Shanxi Province

002 Architecture Foguang Temple Foguang Temple lies in Wutai County, Shanxi, and takes its name from an auspicious response of "Buddha's light." In the fifth year of the Dali era of the Tang, the monk Facao saw several beams of white light to the temple's south; during the Yuanhe era there was a memorial reporting that "auspicious clouds appeared beside Foguang Temple." The Dunhuang Record of a Journey to Mount Wutai describes its seven-bay great Buddha hall and its three-story, seven-bay Maitreya pavilion; after the Huichang persecution the monk Yuancheng "sought out Foguang Temple anew" and rebuilt it step by step. The East Hall that survives today is a relic of that reconstruction. Tang Dynasty · Shanxi · Wutai County, Shanxi Province

003 Architecture Jinci Temple The shrine was first raised for Tang Shuyu, and Emperor Taizong of the Tang personally composed and inscribed a stele here; four hundred years later the Northern Song Hall of the Sacred Mother was completed, and the principal deity shifted from Shuyu to the Sacred Mother — a shrine whose own later additions replaced its protagonist. Tang dynasty · Shanxi · Taiyuan, Shanxi

004 Architecture Nanchan Temple The main hall of Nanchan Temple is located in Lijia Village, Wutai County, Shanxi. An ink inscription under the beam reads “restored in the third year of Jianzhong of the Great Tang,” making it one of the earliest surviving Tang-dynasty timber structures with a definite date. Pre-restoration survey photos from 1953 show that the front-eave doors and windows, the eave bracket projections, and structural details still preserve original Tang construction. Tang Dynasty · Shanxi · Wutai County, Shanxi Province

005 Architecture Shanhua Temple After the Song envoy Zhu Bian was detained in the Jin state, he moved into the Da Pu'en Temple and lived for fourteen years amid the rubble left by the fires at the end of the Liao dynasty, witnessing firsthand as the monk Yuanman raised funds to rebuild more than eighty bays. He recorded the experience in a stele inscription, and his own captivity thus became a testimony to the rebirth of this ancient Tang-dynasty temple. Tang Dynasty · Shanxi · Datong, Shanxi Province

006 Architecture Xiantong Monastery Xiantong Monastery is located in Taihuai Town, Wutai County, Xinzhou, Shanxi Province. In the time of Wu Zetian of Tang, Dafu Lingjiu Monastery was renamed Great Huayan Monastery. The Tang Huayan monk Chengguan lectured at the monastery and wrote a new commentary on the Huayan Sutra. The Northern Song court included Huayan Monastery among the ten monasteries of the Five Terraces to be rebuilt; in the Ming Yongle era the Buddhist registry of Mount Wutai was established at the monastery, and the monastery and its Buddha śarīra stupa were rebuilt. In the thirty-third and thirty-fourth years of Wanli (1605–1606), the Ming monk Miaofeng Fudeng installed the copper hall and completed the brick “Seven Sites and Nine Assemblies” hall, leaving the copper hall and the beamless hall as the monastery’s core Ming-dynasty remains. Tang dynasty · Shanxi · Wutai County, Xinzhou, Shanxi Province

007 Architecture Huayan Temple The chronology of Huayan Temple does not begin with a single record: a construction inscription of 1038 survives on a beam of the Hall of the Bhagavat Sutra Repository, while the History of the Liao dates the temple's founding to 1062. Thereafter, wartime fires, the Jin-dynasty rebuilding, the Yuan-dynasty revival, modern photographic surveys, and twenty-first-century expansion each left layers of text and image behind. The temple today thus faces both its old Liao and Jin structures and a newly spread-out courtyard complex, linking nearly a millennium of rise and decline. Liao Dynasty · Shanxi · Datong, Shanxi Province

008 Architecture Yongle Palace Yongle Palace in Ruicheng, Shanxi began as a small shrine to Lü Dongbin in the town of Yongle. After the old shrine burned down, the Mongol court resolved to raise it to the rank of Chunyang Wanshou Palace and bestowed a plaque, and the Quanzhen order put Pan Dechong in charge of the construction. In the late Ming the halls still held murals of three hundred and sixty celestial deities and more than four hundred spirit tablets in ranked rows, and Qing restorations left Qing-style roof frames inside the Yuan-dynasty halls. During the twentieth-century relocation project, the timber structures were dismantled piece by piece and the murals were detached for protection. Yuan dynasty · Shanxi · Ruicheng County, Yuncheng, Shanxi Province

Explore More