Wutai Mountain, a Buddhist holy place, has many temples, most of which are concentrated around Taihuai Town.
In the ravine outside Nantai, there is one of the oldest existing buildings in China-Nanchan Temple Hall.
Nanzenji was discovered by Liang Sicheng and Lin during a large-scale investigation of ancient buildings in China in 1930s. Ancient buildings in China are rarely preserved because they are multi-storey wooden structures.
In the Tang Dynasty, there were only four buildings in China, all in Shanxi.
Nanzenji is located near Li Jiazhuang, Bai Yang Township, 22km southwest of Wutai County, and 7 miles away from Dongye Town.
Step into Li Jiazhuang, climb a dirt cliff along a loess slope road, and you will see nanzenji, right here.
The exact architectural age of nanzenji cannot be verified. During the inspection, Lin saw a line on the girder of nanzenji main hall. A closer look shows that the Hall of the Great Hero was built in the second year of Tang Jianzhong (AD 780), 75 years earlier than the East Hall of the Northern Monk in Wutai Mountain (the first wooden structure discovered by Lin Liang and his wife in Tang Dynasty), with a history of 1200 years.
For a time, the main hall of Nanchan Temple became an orphan of architecture in the Tang Dynasty. Although several buildings in the Tang Dynasty were discovered later, the main hall of Nanchan Temple is still the oldest and occupies an important position in the architectural history of China.
Nanzenji, which faces south, has main buildings such as the mountain gate, the Dragon King Hall, the Bodhisattva Hall and the Giant Buddha Hall, forming a small quadrangle.
Nanzenji Buddha Hall is magnificent, graceful in outline, handsome in shape, simple and elegant.
The temple is three rooms wide and three rooms deep, with a single-eave, mountain-resting roof. The platform in front of the temple is spacious, and there are magnificent arches supporting the eaves on the columns. There are no columns in the hall, and the four rafters reach the front and rear eaves columns. The roof is a flat-topped simple beam structure, which shows that the architectural technology in Tang Dynasty has reached a very high level and has spread to remote mountain villages.