001 Architecture Longxing Temple In the sixth year of the Kaihuang era of the Sui, the regional inspector of Hengzhou, acting on imperial command, exhorted and rewarded ten thousand people of the prefecture to jointly build the Longzang Temple; the 藏 in the temple's name is read “zàng,” referring in Buddhism to the Mahāyāna canon or the scripture-treasury of the dragon palace. The temple plaque was later changed to Longxing Temple (龙兴寺, “Dragon Rising”); in the Ming, Du Mu recognized from a half-buried Sui stele before the hall that the two were originally one temple. In the forty-ninth year of the Kangxi era it was again granted the plaque “Longxing Temple” (隆兴寺, written with different characters). Three closely related names, linked together by a single Sui stele that still stands within the temple. Sui Dynasty Zhengding County, Hebei Province Buddhist Architecture · Pavilion of Great Compassion · Moni Hall →
002 Architecture Yuquan Temple During the Kaihuang era of the Sui, Yang Guang, Prince of Jin, built a monastic center on Mount Yuquan in Dangyang for the Tiantai master Zhiyi. In the sixth year of the Jiayou era of the Northern Song, Hao Yan and his maternal aunt of the Han family donated iron, and craftsmen of the Two Zhe circuits cast it into a thirteen-story pagoda for the Buddha's tooth relic. After the wars at the end of the Song, the temple fell for a time into “daily deepening decay,” and under the Yuan the monk Guangzhu rebuilt its halls and pavilions. In the thirtieth year of the Wanli era, the monk Zhenghui vowed to rebuild the main hall, and the layman Ren Chengzhou joined in aiding the work; the extant main hall still retains a Yuan-dynasty lower sill and Ming-dynasty bracket sets. Sui Dynasty Dangyang, Hubei Province Yuquan Temple · Yuquan Iron Pagoda · Mount Yuquan →
003 Architecture Kaiyuan Temple, Quanzhou Huang Shougong made it a condition that he would give up his estate only when the mulberry trees bore lotus blossoms; days later, white lotuses covered the trees. Two centuries later, the Buddha hall, the sutra library, and the bell tower burned down in a single night. Thereafter Kaiyuan Temple was rebuilt again and again: wooden pagodas gave way to brick, and brick to stone, until a knife-bearing “Monkey Pilgrim” was carved onto the Renshou Pagoda—some three hundred years before the hundred-chapter Journey to the West. Later still, famine crowds filled the long galleries, and Ming-dynasty visitors circled the twin pagodas beneath the moon. Tang dynasty Licheng District, Quanzhou, Fujian Province Kaiyuan Temple, Quanzhou · Lotus Flower Temple · Xingjiao Temple →