The Dabei Hall of Chongshan Temple is a national key cultural relic protection unit.
Dabei Hall of Chongshan Temple
Era: Ming to Qing Dynasty
Address: Yingze District, Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province
Chongshan Temple Dabei Temple is located at No. 9 Chongshan Temple Street, Yingze District, Taiyuan City. It was originally the palace of Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty. It was called Baima Temple in the early Tang Dynasty. Later it was renamed Yanshou Temple, Zongshan Temple, and later Xinsi. In the Ming Dynasty, it was renamed Chongshan Temple. . In the 14th year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty (1381), Zhu Yuanzhang, the third son of Zhu Yuanzhang, expanded the temple on the basis of the original temple in memory of his mother. In the third year of Tongzhi in the Qing Dynasty (1864), Chongshan Temple was burned down by fire, and only the main building, Dabei Hall, remained. The Dabei Hall is the relatively complete early Ming Dynasty official-style wooden building that still exists in China.
The Dabei Hall is seven rooms wide and four rooms deep. It has double eaves on the top of the mountain, yellow and green glazed tiles on the edges, and is nearly 20 meters high. There are four square partition doors in the upper and lower rooms of the front eaves, and partition windows in the upper and lower rooms. There is a panel door in the open space on the back eaves, allowing front and rear access. The side legs of the eaves column are obvious. The layout of the Dou is sparse and bright, the Dou on the upper eaves has seven steps and is single and heavy, and the Dou on the lower eaves has five steps and is heavy. Except for the lower eaves, which have no flat sections, the others are stacked in two rooms. The column network in the hall is arranged in a regular manner and still follows the old system. There is a wellhead ceiling in the hall, which is decorated with pastel paintings, and the upper beams are all made of grass. The existing main structure of the main hall, partitions, panel doors, etc. are all original from the early Ming Dynasty. There are three great statues enshrined in the Great Compassion Hall. In the middle is Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva with Thousand Arms and Thousand Eyes, and on the left and right are Manjushri and Samantabhadra Bodhisattva. The three statues are 8.5 meters high, with gorgeous colors and dignified shapes. They are also relics from the Hongwu period of the Ming Dynasty and have high artistic value. The temple contains more than 30,000 volumes of Buddhist scriptures from the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties, most of which are rare woodcut calligraphy books.
The Dabei Hall and temple architecture of Chongshan Temple are a microcosm of the royal temples of the Ming Dynasty. The Dabei Hall reflects the structural characteristics of wooden architecture in the early Ming Dynasty and has important historical value.
In May 2013, the Dabei Hall of Chongshan Temple was announced as the seventh batch of national key cultural relics protection units.