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You may have heard the saying “For underground cultural relics, go to Shaanxi; for above-ground cultural relics, go to Shanxi”, but do you know why?
Can you imagine that in today's China, you can still see authentic Tang Dynasty architecture, not replicas!
Can you imagine building a 67-meter-high wooden tower without using a single nail and having it stand for a thousand years?
All these "incredible" things are concentrated in an extremely low-key province - Shanxi.
Yes, in addition to "coal bosses" and "old vinegar", Shanxi actually has many treasures. Today I want to use this article to refresh your understanding of it. The content is a bit long, but it is definitely worth reading!!!
Shanxi is located in North China, with mountainous areas accounting for 80% of the province. Here you can admire the majestic Taihang Mountains, the surging Yellow River, and the profound loess plateau...
△The Taihang Mountains and the Yellow River shaped its natural boundaries, while the Fen River and its tributaries carved out a series of plains, forming Shanxi's unique landforms. Designed by @七喜
Shanxicheck the details
[Cultural Tourism Slogan] Ancient Chinese Civilization, Beautiful Scenery of Shanxi. Shanxi, one of the birthplaces of the Chinese nation, lies west of the Taihang Mountains. With a long history and rich culture, it is the cradle of ancient Chinese civilization. Known as the "Cradle of Chinese Civilization" and the "Museum of Ancient Chinese Culture," it is hailed as "the mountain and river within." The complex topography, rivers, and mountains create a natural landscape that has given rise to numerous historical sites and magnificent tourist attractions.
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This land has witnessed countless historical events, from the division of Jin among three families to the Li Yuan uprising, from the Song-Liao War to the warlords' melee in modern times. What is amazing is that over the past thousand years, more than 73% of China's wooden structures before the Yuan Dynasty have been preserved.
So there is a saying: If you want to see underground cultural relics, go to Shaanxi; if you want to see above-ground cultural relics, go to Shanxi.
This prompted Mr. Liang Sicheng to visit Shanxi four times from 1933 to 1937, where he discovered countless cultural relics and treasures.
△ Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin on their trip to Shanxi
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Perhaps you are curious, why Shanxi has preserved so many ancient buildings?
Firstly, there are many ancient buildings from the Tang Dynasty here! The Tang Dynasty was the peak of Chinese architectural development and the heyday of Buddhist architecture. Taiyuan was the birthplace of Emperor Gaozu of Tang, Li Yuan. After ascending the throne, he designated it as the "Northern Capital, Beijing" and built a large number of buildings here.
During the Ming Dynasty, in order to resist the threat of nomadic peoples in the north, Emperor Taizu of the Ming Dynasty sent vassal kings to guard Taiyuan. The city of Taiyuan expanded greatly, and the "Shanxi merchants" were born. The politics was clear, the people were rich, and the country was strong. The ancient buildings were either repaired or protected, and they were able to avoid the storms of history.
In modern times, Yan Xishan stationed troops here, and the political situation was relatively stable. In addition, Shanxi's isolated terrain and numerous mountains prevented the spread of artillery fire to a certain extent. Of course, it is also inseparable from the wisdom of ancient craftsmen! This is how these national treasures were preserved!
Let us follow the footsteps of Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin, set foot on this land of mountains and rivers, encounter the national treasure-level ancient buildings that are "as fluttering as birds and as soaring as phoenixes", and find the magnificent civil engineering works that have been passed down in the land of Shanxi!
Before 1937, Japanese architectural historian Sekino Tadashi asserted:
"There's not a single wooden structure in China or Korea that's 1,000 years old. Yet, Japan has over 30 buildings that are between 1,000 and 1,300 years old."
In 1937, Liang Sicheng accidentally came across a picture album - "Catalogue of Dunhuang Grottoes", and a temple called "Dafoguang Temple" in a full picture of Mount Wutai caught his attention.
In June of the same year, Liang Sicheng and his wife, along with a group of four assistants, went to Shanxi to look for Foguang Temple.
The East Hall, the main hall of Foguang Temple, is a large wooden building from the Tang Dynasty. It may look ordinary, but Liang Sicheng called it "China's No. 1 National Treasure."
Because its discovery breaks the fallacy of Japanese scholars that "no wooden building structures before the Tang Dynasty can be found on Chinese soil", it has important historical significance.
It is an original work from the Tang Dynasty that has not been renovated or rebuilt. It can tell us how people in the Tang Dynasty built houses. In addition, it has colored sculptures, murals and ink marks from the Tang Dynasty, and has high historical value for research.
Compared with the bustling incense temple of Mount Wutai, Foguang Temple is like an old man, standing silently among the mountains, using its strong body to tell the story of the prosperous times in the past.
Nanchan Temple is located in Lijiazhuang, Wutai County, Shanxi Province. It was rebuilt in the third year of Jianzhong during the reign of Emperor Dezong of the Tang Dynasty (782 AD). It is the oldest existing Tang Dynasty wooden structure in my country, 75 years earlier than the East Hall of Foguang Temple. It can be called a national treasure.
Because of its small size and remote location, it has been able to escape the large-scale destruction of Buddhism and wars since the Tang Dynasty and has survived to this day.
The main hall uses a falcon-shaped structure without a single nail. It has survived more than 1,200 years of wind and rain without any damage, which shows the exquisite craftsmanship of that time.
The 17 Tang Dynasty Buddha statues in the hall still retain their original appearance, with natural and vivid postures and lifelike expressions, exactly the same as the Tang Dynasty statues in the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang, giving people a sense of reality and dynamism.
Walking into Nanchan Temple, it feels like going back to the Tang Dynasty and feeling the prosperity and glory of Buddhist art.
A thousand-year-old bracket arch museum
"My first feeling is that it's a pity that you're not here to share this wonderful sight with me... I have great admiration for the era in which this tower was built, and for the unknown architects and craftsmen of that era!"
———Liang Sicheng
In the summer of 1933, when Liang Sicheng first saw the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda, he exclaimed, "It's so stunning that I couldn't breathe for a long time."
Through field investigation, Liang Sicheng discovered that the Yingxian Wooden Pagoda was built in the second year of Qingning in the Liao Dynasty (1056 AD) and was expanded in the sixth year of Mingchang in the Jin Dynasty (1195 AD). It is 67.13 meters high and is the oldest and tallest pure wooden structure pavilion-style building in my country.
Thousands of years ago, a group of unknown craftsmen used 100,000 wooden components to build this tower, just like building blocks, relying entirely on their skills and experience.
It was built 118 years earlier than the Leaning Tower of Pisa and 833 years earlier than the Eiffel Tower. The entire tower is connected with mortise and tenon structures without using a single nail. There are 54 types of brackets throughout the tower, which is the most in China.
The combination of mortise and tenon joints, and the balance of rigidity and flexibility, is an exquisite structure that dissipates energy and reduces shock, ensuring that the huge tower stands for thousands of years without collapsing. It has fought a great battle against time time and again amidst lightning, earthquakes, and wars.
In 1934, the Nationalist government carried out a "major maintenance" on the wooden tower, dismantling the mud walls and diagonal braces between each floor and replacing them with the current doors and windows.
It's possible that this maintenance reduced the lateral stiffness and load-bearing capacity of each floor, weakening the structural integrity of each floor. The tower continues to tilt, and, more seriously, due to its complex structure, there's still no definitive repair method.
Since September 2016, the pagoda above the first floor is no longer open to the public, and visitors can only enter the first floor for a visit, so go and embrace history while everything is still there.
The Yungang Grottoes were first built during the reign of Emperor Wencheng of the Northern Wei Dynasty and have a history of more than 1,500 years.
They were carved into the mountain, and there are 254 preserved caves and more than 51,000 statues. The largest ones are as tall as the mountains, while the smallest ones are only a few centimeters. The Buddha statues have different expressions and postures.
Why is it said to be comparable to the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang? Mr. Liang Sicheng said:
"In the Yungang Grottoes, one can clearly see the sudden and powerful infiltration of foreign influences into the inherent blood of Chinese art: their origins can be traced back to ancient Greece, Persia, and India, and through the north and south routes, through the various ethnic groups in the Western Regions and Tibet, reaching the interior of China..."
——Liang Sicheng
This is the beginning of the "Sinicization" of cave art.
Its excavation time can be divided into three periods: early, middle and late. The early period has a thick and simple Western Region sentiment, the middle period is meticulously carved and gorgeously decorated, and although the late period is small in scale, the figures are thin and handsome, which is the origin of the "thin and clear image".
For a long time, people's research on the Yungang Grottoes has focused on its religious significance. In September 1933, Liang Sicheng and others visited Datong and conducted an in-depth study of the Yungang Grottoes from an architectural perspective for the first time.
Huayan Temple is located in the ancient city of Datong. It was built in the seventh year of Chongxi in the Liao Dynasty (1038 AD). It was the ancestral temple of the Liao royal family and had a prominent status.
Its Main Hall is the largest wooden hall among the existing ancient wooden structures, and there are also beautiful Liao Dynasty statues in the hall.
The Lower Huayan Temple is located on the southeast side of the Upper Temple. The Tiangong Pavilion inside is a Buddhist scripture library with the oldest existing bookcase in China, which is also a unique piece in the country.
In September 1933, Liang Sicheng and his party went to Huayan Temple as their first stop in Datong. Through their research, they gradually formed a record of the construction methods of Datong's Liao and Jin ancient buildings, filling the gap in history.
1,500 years ago, China was in the divided Southern and Northern Dynasties period. Taoism was the state religion of the Northern Wei Dynasty, but Buddhism was also flourishing. In order to win the hearts of the emperor and the nobles, the two religions constantly competed with each other in architecture.
The Hanging Temple is the product of "struggle". It is based on wooden pillars and is built on a cliff, which is rare in the world.
When we walked into the temple, we found that the ancient temple, which looked very majestic from a distance, was actually not very large. However, as it rises up the mountain, it still gives us a sense of grandeur within its smallness.
The narrow walkways and low wooden railings really require courage to face danger. When walking through them, I thought it was just a few steep and dangerous steps, but unexpectedly the entrances and exits are hidden in subtle places, either corners or mezzanines, so be careful not to bump your head when going up and down.
The Jin Temple was built to commemorate Tang Shuyu, the founding prince of the Jin State, and his mother, Queen Yi Jiang. It is the earliest existing royal sacrificial garden in China. The Jin Temple is to Shanxi what the Forbidden City is to Beijing.
It is world-famous for its three national treasures: the Holy Mother Hall, the Offering Hall, and the Fish Pond Flying Bridge, but there is more than that. The wooden carvings of coiled dragons, the Golden Man Platform, the Water Mirror Platform, and the trees that are hundreds or thousands of years old are all worth a careful appreciation.
Thanks to the development of the Internet, there are fewer and fewer truly secret places in the world, but these national treasure-level buildings in Shanxi are so low-key and simple...
From ancient human cultural sites and the bronze civilizations of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, to the changing history of northern ethnic minorities and foreign civilizations, to the construction of border fortresses by successive dynasties, and the later Shanxi merchant culture that connected the world and became as wealthy as a nation...
Only a few tourists pass by, and few people realize their value. They stand quietly among the mountains, witnessing the vicissitudes of China's thousands of years of history. They are lonely and vicissitudes, heavy and silent, waiting for people with heart to embrace them.
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