Ancient building treasures in Shanxi

Jinci Temple, which is located 25 km southwest of Taiyuan at the foot of Xuanweng Mountain, was built as a memorial to Shuyu, the son of King Wu of the Western Zhou Dynasty. The ancestral hall was later renamed “Jin King Temple”, or "Jinci Temple" for short. Jinci Temple is the earliest surviving royal garden in China, known as the “Little Jiangnan” in Shanxi. There are 98 buildings, 110 statues, 300 steles, and 37 cast artworks in the temple, all of which can date back to over 300 years ago. It is a perfect model of the combination of nature and ancestral halls and sacrificial buildings.

4.Huayan Temple

Huayan Temple, the largest temple in the building complex in the Liao- Jin Dynasty in China, was built based on the classic “Huayan Sutra” of the Huayan Sect, one of the seven major sects of Buddhism. The Mahavira Hall in the upper temple is the largest existing Buddhist hall built in the Liao-Jin Dynasty. In the lower temple, there is a famous smiling Bodhisattva with folded palms, which is praised as “Venus in the East”. Unlike most Buddhist temples lying at a traditional north-south orientation in China, Huayan Temple sits west and faces east, embodying the living customs of the Khitan people in the Liao Dynasty who “favor the east and chase the sun for suitable settlements”.

5.Yongle Palace

Yongle Palace is the largest surviving official-style building complex of the Yuan Dynasty in China. It was built to commemorate Lu Dongbin, one of the Eight Immortals of Taoism. As a treasure of ancient Chinese architecture and painting art, Yongle Palace is known as the “Oriental Art Gallery”. A large number of Yuan Dynasty murals are preserved in the palace, for which the palace is considered one of the largest ancient mural art treasure repositories in the world. The overall relocation of the Yongle Palace and its huge murals, and the relocation of the Egyptian Abu Simbel Temple have been once called the two miracles of artificial relocation in the history of world cultural relics.

6.Hanging Temple