Chongqing Temple in the Changzhi Hills

Chongqing Temple sits on the middle slope of Ziyun Mountain, north of Jucun village in Setou town, Changzi county. Hills close it on the north-east, north and west; to the south the ground falls away towards the Taoqing River, a tributary of the Zhuozhang, and the temple faces that opening. The approach is uphill rather than a processional way, and the complex arrives a building at a time. It was founded in 1016, the ninth year of the Dazhong Xiangfu era of the Northern Song, and enlarged in the Ming and the Qing. On 20 November 1996 the State Council published it in the fourth batch of national key cultural relics.

The main hall, the Thousand Buddha Hall, is the Song building, and the figures on its altar are Song originals. The name records what the walls once carried: rows of small Buddhas modelled over the interior, of which two hundred survive on the west wall alone. The west wing, the Hall of the Great Beings, holds a different group. Guanyin, Manjusri and Samantabhadra sit there together, each on its own beast, with an inscription of 1079, the second year of the Yuanfeng era, below the altar. Along that hall stand eighteen arhats, the figures that the sculptor Qian Shaowu called the crown of Song modelling.

The lesser halls date the place. The Tianwang Hall and the Dizang Hall are Ming, the rest Qing, so a walk through the courtyards is a walk through rebuilding rather than through a single moment. The valley explains the quiet: the hills close three sides and the only opening is the one facing the river. That setting has also made the place useful to a modern audience. The scene of the Ten Courts of Hell in the game Black Myth: Wukong was shot at this temple, and the figures have since been looked at by people who came for the game rather than for the Song.