I was really shocked by Datong Huayan Temple (1)

✈️Address: Huayan Temple, Datong, located at No. 459, Xiashipo Street, Pingcheng District, Datong City, Shanxi Province, was built in the eighth year of Liao Qingning (1062). 🌈Attraction features: Datong Huayan Temple is one of the earliest and best-preserved Liao and Jin temple buildings in China, and one of the three existing Liao temples in China. The temple faces west to east, with more than 30 single buildings such as the mountain gate, Puguangming Hall, Mahavira Hall, Bhaga Jiao Zang Hall, and Huayan Pagoda arranged on the north-south axis. The layout is rigorous and the scale is huge, covering an area of 66,000 square meters. It is one of the earliest and best-preserved Liao and Jin temple buildings in China. The temple houses Liao and Jin architecture, small wooden Tiangong pavilions, colored sculptures, murals, and other cultural relics, all of which are among the best of their kind and occupy an important position in the study of Chinese architectural history, religious history, and art history. 🎟️Ticket information: The temple is huge, with many ancient buildings inside. The ticket is CNY 40, which is a great value for the trip. You can book on Trip.com and enter easily. 🕐️Opening hours: 8:30 am–5:00 pm 💗Other tips: Datong has a history of more than 2,300 years. It was once known as the "Famous County of the Two Han Dynasties, the Capital of the Northern Wei Dynasty, the Accompanying Capital of the Liao and Jin Dynasties, and the Important Town of the Ming and Qing Dynasties." It was once prosperous, and Huayan Temple was born as the ancestral temple of the Liao Dynasty. The architecture of Huayan Temple is laid out along the east-west axis, covering a total area of 66,000 square meters, and is divided into two temples, upper and lower. The upper temple is centered on the Mahavira Hall and is divided into two courtyards, while the lower temple is centered on the Bhaga Jiao Zang Hall. Except for the two main halls, which were built during the Liao and Jin Dynasties, the rest were rebuilt during the Qing Dynasty. According to historical records, the Huayan Sect was popular during the Liao Dynasty, and Emperor Daozong personally wrote ten volumes of the "Huayan Sutra Sui Pin Zan" and engraved and printed 579 volumes of the "Khitan Zang" in its entirety, and ordered the construction of the Great Huayan Temple Bhaga Jiao Zang in Xijing, and placed it in the temple, "enshrining stone and bronze statues of emperors," making the Great Huayan Temple the ancestral temple of the imperial family. At the end of the Liao Dynasty, seven or eight out of ten of the temple buildings were destroyed by fire, and the Jin Dynasty rebuilt them on the original site, and by the early Yuan Dynasty, it was still a great temple in Yunzhong. During the Xuande and Jingtai periods of the Ming Dynasty, the temple was extensively repaired and rebuilt, and the Buddha statues were supplemented, and the temple was revived. After the middle of the Ming Dynasty, the temple was divided into two temples, upper and lower, each with its own mountain gate and its own layout, and the upper and lower Huayan Temples were first mentioned. At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, the temple was destroyed again, and it was repaired at the beginning of the Kangxi period, but the glory was difficult to restore. In 2008, the Datong Municipal Party Committee and Municipal Government launched the famous city revival project, and according to the inscription on the "Dajin Guo Xijing Great Huayan Temple Reconstruction Bhaga Jiao Zang Ji" in the temple, the Huayan Temple was extensively repaired, restoring the grand pattern of the Great Huayan Temple during the Liao and Jin Dynasties. This northern Buddhist palace, which flourished in the western capital of the Liao and Jin Dynasties, is a museum of Liao and Jin art, with its buildings, statues, murals, wall collections, murals, flat chess, and caisson ceilings, with its long history, large scale, and superb craftsmanship. The main hall, the Mahavira Hall, was built in the eighth year of Liao Qingning (1062) and rebuilt on the original site in the third year of Jin Tianjuan (1140), with nine rooms in width and five rooms in depth, covering an area of 1,559 square meters, making it the largest Buddhist hall of the Liao and Jin Dynasties in China. The ancient temple of Huayan Temple in Yunzhong is a historical treasure, a cultural relic, and a crystallization of Chinese culture. It is a valuable historical material for us to understand the historical and cultural connotations of multi-ethnic exchanges and integration, and to study ancient Chinese architecture, statues, and Buddhist history, and has important historical, artistic, scientific, cultural, and social value.