悬空寺 Audio Guide

The Hanging Temple, or Xuankong Si, is built into a cliff face on the west side of Jinxia Gorge. It stands near Mount Heng, in Hunyuan County, Shanxi Province. Its name means The Suspended-in-Air Temple, and from a distance it is easy to see why. The halls stand about seventy-five metres above the ground, fixed to a sheer wall of rock. This tour follows the complex from its southern gate up to the roofs beneath the cliff. It is a Buddhist temple, but its halls also honour Taoism and Confucianism.

Photo: Zhangzhugang · CC BY-SA 3.0

Two large red characters are carved into the cliff below the temple. Together they read zhuangguan, meaning something like magnificent sight. Local tradition credits them to Li Bai, a poet of the Tang dynasty. The characters now on the cliff date from 1991. That year the Mount Heng cultural relics office re-cut them, working from an old rubbing. A rubbing is a sheet of paper pressed onto carved stone and inked, which picks up the shape of the characters. The rubbing they worked from was made in the Qing dynasty, and it is kept at Huayan Temple.

Photo: 林高志 · CC BY-SA 4.0

The temple's southern gate is a small arched doorway set in a grey-painted brick frame. Above it hangs a gold-bordered plaque with the name Xuankong Si. An ornate carved roof edge tops the doorway. From this gate, the complex runs north along the mountain and climbs higher as it goes. It is said to hold forty halls and pavilions. Most of the buildings that stand today were rebuilt during the Ming and Qing dynasties. In 1982 the site was listed as a key national heritage site.

Photo: Dudva · CC0

A red wall with round openings stands beside the southern gate. Above it, timber halls with yellow roofs are stacked on three floors. What this wall was built to do is not clear, but the halls rise directly from it. The southern section mixes faiths too. Chunyang Palace honours Lü Dongbin, one of the Eight Immortals of Taoism. At the very top stands Leiyin Hall, a Buddhist hall for Shakyamuni, also called Thunder Hall.

Photo: Zhangzhugang · CC BY-SA 3.0

The story of the temple starts with Emperor Xiaowen of the Northern Wei, who had seen the grand Buddhist temples at Luoyang. He wanted similar temples in the north, for Buddhism and for Taoism. He is said to have found a Taoist priest and ordered a temple built on a cliff halfway up Mount Heng. It was to be a temple that could reach neither the sky nor the ground. At first it was called Xuankong Pavilion. Later it came to be called Xuankong Si, partly because the word for hanging sounds like the word for mysterious, and partly because it sits halfway up the cliff. A separate legend says a single monk named Liaoran began the work alone in 491.

Photo: Zhangzhugang · CC BY-SA 3.0

Horizontal timbers reach out beneath the wooden walkway, and they are part of what holds the temple to the cliff. The crossbeams are oak, fitted into holes chiselled into the rock. The main support is said to lie inside the bedrock, where it cannot be seen. The temple relies on twenty-seven wooden beams to carry its main halls. Iron chains and beams add more stability. The joints here are mortise and tenon. A mortise is a hole cut into one timber, and a tenon is a peg that fits into it. In 1978, repairers replaced several main load-bearing crossbeams beneath the temple. In doing so they rediscovered the joinery that keeps the temple hanging. In 1990 the national heritage office set aside funds for a large-scale strengthening and repair.

Photo: Zhangzhugang · CC BY-SA 3.0

Narrow walkways run along the cliff, one of wooden planks and one cut into the rock, past windows fitted with lattice panels. Carved brackets sit under the eaves above, and bare rock rises beside the path. In 2001 the Mount Heng management committee issued special rules to protect the temple. Under those rules, no more than eighty visitors may tour the temple at one time.

Photo: Zhangzhugang · CC BY-SA 3.0

Beneath the galleries, many thin upright poles stand, and they look as if they hold everything up. They are not the main load-bearing structure.

Photo: Zhangzhugang · CC BY-SA 3.0

Two clusters of pavilions with yellow-tiled roofs cling to the cliff, one lower and one set higher. A walkway runs between them over the open drop. Visitors stroll the galleries today, small figures against the rock.

noeliashic · CC BY-SA 4.0

The Hall of Three Religions brings figures of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism together. Shakyamuni, the Buddha, is enshrined in the middle. The arrangement reflects a prevailing idea of the Ming and Qing dynasties, that the three teachings can be harmonious as one. Laozi, the Taoist sage, is on the left, and Confucius is on the right.

Photo: Yumeto · CC BY-SA 4.0