Photo Gallery

Qixia Temple (built 489 onward, oldest structures 10th c.)

Qixia Temple (Temple where the Dawn Perches) is 22 kilometers northeast of Nanjing. It was founded in 489 during the Six Dynasties era, a period of division prior to the Tang dynasty. At that time, northern China was in the hands of barbarian tribes from the Asian steppes and southern China was under the control of ethnic Chinese based in Nanjing. The present temple was built during the late Qing dynasty, but there are several hundred small niche caves that were carved into the rocks behind the temple beginning shortly after the temple was founded. Most of these were heavily damaged in the late Qing dynasty during the Taiping rebellion and later social unrest. In the first part of the 20th century the images were repaired by the monks with concrete but this is now crumbling away. During the cultural revolution the buildings were used as an army barracks and further damage was done. The temple was reopened in 1979.

The first building a visitor encounters in the two-story bell tower. This building has an image of Guanyin on the first floor and a bell on the second floor. Unlike other temples, there is no matching drum tower. Next, one passes a semicircular pond before coming to a wide courtyard to the south of the temple’s Gate of the Four Deva Kings. The images here are all recent. Inside the gate one enters the main courtyard of the temple which has the Vairocana Hall at the head and which is flanked by a Founder’s Hall to the right and Visitor’s Room to the left. The Vairocana Hall is a huge double-eaved hall with a 30-foot statue of Vairocana Buddha, the cosmic Buddha, with two huge wooden statues of bodhisattvas. One of the guidebooks I read identifies them as Avalokitesvara (Guanyin) and the Bodhisattva of Great Strength (Dashizhi). If this is correct then the seated Buddha is probably Amitabha.

To the rear of the main hall are the living quarters of the monks and a large assembly hall, which are closed to the public. Also to the right of these buildings is an old Southern Tang dynasty pagoda. Records indicate that this pagoda was first built during the Sui dynasty in 601, but the style of the pagoda indicates that the renovations during the Southern Tang in the 10th century were quite substantive and the pagoda is stylistically a Southern Tang structure. The eight images of Buddha’s life are carved in bas-relief on the sides of the octagonal base. Also this area and higher up the slopes of Qixia Hill, are where the Thousand Buddha Caves are found.