These must-see attractions in Jinan such as the "Four Gate Pagoda" and "Lingyan Temple"! Have you been there?
The Four Gate Pagoda and Lingyan Temple are both heavyweight cultural relics with high value. It takes an hour and a half to get to Simen Pagoda by bus from the city center.
The oldest existing single-story stone pagoda in China
Simen Pagoda: the oldest existing single-story stone pagoda in China. It is named after the semicircular arches on each side. There are stone pillars in the center of the tower, and there is a Buddha statue from the Eastern Wei Dynasty in each of the four directions. The head of one of the Buddha statues was stolen in 1997. It was a cultural relic that had a very bad impact at that time. case. Although the Buddha's head was discovered after changing hands several times in 2002, and was finally returned to its original location, the loss was irreversible.
The Four Gate Pagoda is an auxiliary building of the original Shentong Temple. Shentong Temple had a royal background in the Sui Dynasty and was a large temple during the Sui and Tang Dynasties. Although the main body of the temple has been destroyed, there are still many cultural relics remaining around it. There is a small Song Pagoda a little way up the mountain. Next to the village are rivers and trees. The scenery is beautiful. Across the mountain stream, there is a rather spectacular pagoda forest on the opposite side. Although its scale is much smaller than that of Jinan Lingyan Temple, there is no fence around it, so you can watch the carvings on the stone pagoda up close. The Tang Dynasty sculptures in the main hall are exquisite and still maintain their original appearance. Moreover, the seemingly plain mountain gate behind you is actually the "Loumen", a national treasure-level cultural relic.
The famous Lingyan Temple
The scale of Lingyan Temple is also very large. If the weather is good, you can also climb the mountain (the corner of Mount Tai) to see the Lingyan who listened to the scriptures. . It’s just that there are not many buildings in the temple, and they are not very large. The former glory can only be seen from the ruins of many temple foundations. Li Jifu of the Tang Dynasty named Lingyan Temple, Guoqing Temple in Tiantai, Zhejiang, Qixia Temple in Nanjing, Jiangsu, and Yuquan Temple in Jiangling, Hubei, as the "Four Wonders in the Territory" in "Ten Paths". The temple is located in a valley surrounded by mountains, surrounded by lush forests, which isolates it from the outside world.
The most famous cultural relic in Lingyan Temple is the 40 painted sculptures of Arhats from the Song Dynasty in the Thousand Buddha Hall, which can be called "miraculous". Liang Qichao called them the first famous sculptures in the country. After thousands of years, these vivid clay Bodhisattvas still exude stunning charm.
Some details about his expressive performance: You can see tiny veins on the hands of many Arhats, and because some Arhats are fat and some are thin, the veins on these hands are also prominent and hidden! Another One detail is the painted clothing on the Arhat, which is also as detailed as the stippling of a match head. Judging from these paintings, the monks in the Song Dynasty wore particularly gorgeous and bright clothes.
Unfortunately, because it took so long, more than half of the painting has fallen off. None of the forty Arhats have similar faces, and they are all full of joy, anger, sorrow, and joy. They are all just like living people, which makes people marvel.
In addition to the colorful sculptures of Arhats from the Song Dynasty, another important attraction in Lingyan Temple is the tomb pagoda forest. It is the second largest tomb pagoda forest after Shaolin Temple in Songshan Mountain. But unlike the brick pagoda forest of Shaolin Temple, the tomb pagoda forest of Lingyan Temple is made of stone. When it rains, the bodies of hundreds of tomb pagodas are soaked in black and shiny, which makes the tomb pagodas indescribably gloomy.
Many of the tomb towers are not high, about three or four meters at most, but they are densely packed into a large area, and their shape does not have a unified style. They can be square, round, single-story or several-story. The tour guide said that the size of the pagoda does not depend on the degree of monasticism of the pagoda owner, but on the economic status of the temple at that time.
Tallin is divided into two parts by railings. At the end of the road there are two large square towers, both of which are square single-story pavilion-style stone towers, similar in style to the Four-Gate Tower.
Other attractions in Lingyan Temple
Other attractions in Lingyan Temple include Pizhi Pagoda, Yushu Pavilion, Wuhua Pavilion ruins, etc., among which were built in the Tang Dynasty and Northern Song Dynasty. The rebuilt Pizhi Pagoda is the only ancient pavilion-style pagoda with dense eaves in China. Its shape is peculiar, and the tower body is different from top to bottom. The first to third floors have double eaves, and the fourth to ninth floors have single eaves. As a dense-eaves pavilion-style architectural structure, the Pizhi Pagoda is the only example in China, and may be the first example of a dense-eaves pavilion-style tower.