Hanging Temple (Xuankong Temple)
Interesting facts
- The whole complex rests on 27 wooden crossbeams about half a metre thick, soaked in tung oil and wedged into sockets cut into the cliff.
- Only during a major repair in 1978, when several load-bearing beams were replaced, did restorers rediscover the joinery that actually keeps the temple aloft.
- A drainage channel was cut into the rock directly above the temple to divert falling stones away from its roofs.
- Its forty small rooms add up to only about 150 square metres of floor space, linked by walkways barely wide enough for one person.
- The present halls are largely Ming and Qing rebuildings; the temple was restored under the Jin, the Ming and again in the Tongzhi era of the Qing.
- One account says the temple was first called Xuankong Ge, with a different character for xuan, before the near-homophone meaning hanging gave it its present name.
- The largest hall, the Sanguan Hall, honours the Taoist officials of Heaven, Earth and Water with clay statues from the Ming dynasty.
- The two characters said to be in Li Bai's hand were re-carved on the cliff in 1991, copied from a Qing-era rubbing kept in Datong's Huayan Temple.
- The temple has been a nationally protected monument of China since 1982.
Why it is worth it
Halfway up the sheer west wall of the Jinxia Gorge, at the foot of Mount Heng in northern Shanxi, a cluster of wooden halls and galleries clings to the rock about 75 metres above the valley floor. From below, the Xuankong Temple, the Hanging Temple, looks as if it has been glued to the cliff, its roofs and balconies stacked one above another and linked by narrow walkways, with nothing but thin wooden poles apparently holding it up. The illusion is part of its genius: the real load is carried by horizontal timber beams driven deep into sockets cut into the rock, while the slender posts beneath were added later and do far less work than they seem to.
The temple's story begins in 491, under the Northern Wei dynasty, when a monk named Liaoran is credited with founding it; the halls have been repaired many times since, most recently in 2015–2016. The height was not only for effect. The river below was prone to flooding, and the overhang of the mountain above shelters the halls from rain and snow, which helps explain how a timber building has lasted so long on an exposed cliff. Local tradition holds that the Tang poet Li Bai, visiting the gorge, was so struck by the sight that he wrote two characters meaning "magnificent spectacle", which are now carved in large red script on the rock face below the temple.
The Xuankong is unusual not only in its setting but in its faith. Its forty halls and pavilions serve three traditions at once, and in the Hall of the Three Religions the Buddha, Laozi and Confucius sit side by side, an expression of the late-imperial ideal that the three teachings are ultimately one. The rooms are tiny and the figures in them close enough to study in detail. Walking the galleries, with the gorge falling away beneath the railing, is a vertiginous experience; the temple can be admired just as well from the valley floor below.
Getting there
The temple is in Hunyuan County, about 5 km south of the county town and around 65 km from central Datong. Buses from Datong reach Hunyuan bus station in about an hour and a half, and the last four kilometres or so are by local bus; the drive from Datong takes about an hour and a half. Datong Yungang International Airport (DAT) is about 49 km away.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Hanging Temple, also Hengshan Hanging Temple, Hanging Monastery or Xuankong Temple is a temple built into a cliff near Mount Heng in Hunyuan County, Datong City, Shanxi Province, China. The closest city is Datong, 64 kilometres (40 mi) to the northwest. Along with the Yungang Grottoes, the Hanging Temple is one of the main tourist attractions and historical sites in the Datong area. Built more than 1,500 years ago, this temple is notable not only for its location on a sheer precipice but also because as a Buddhist temple it also contains references to the other two of the three Chinese traditional philosophies or religions (三教): Taoism, and Confucianism. The structure is kept in place with oak crossbeams fitted into holes chiseled into the cliffs. The main supportive structure is hidden inside the bedrock. The monastery is located in the small canyon basin, and the body of the building hangs from the middle of the cliff under the prominent summit, protecting the temple from rain erosion and sunlight bake.
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