Guanyin Hall on the Western Edge of Changzhi

The name of the temple is the name of its main hall, and the hall is a container for figures. More than five hundred Ming clay figures hang on its walls, its roof frame, its doors and its windows, modelled in relief and in the round, then painted and gilded. They are not arranged as a single congregation. The programme runs across three teachings at once, with Shakyamuni in the centre and Laozi and Confucius set to his left and right, so that a Buddhist hall in a Shanxi village also carries the other two traditions of imperial China. The effect is closer to a carved interior than to a room with statues in it.

The building is as deliberate as what it holds. The roof is covered in yellow and green glazed tiles, the two colours set in patterns of coiled dragons and passionflower, and that colour is the first thing visible at the gate. Above the door hangs the plaque with the hall's name, written in 1583, a year after the temple was founded, by Gao Qin, a vice minister of war. The courtyard is entered from the west: the temple faces west rather than south, and its two courts run east behind the gate, with the Tianwang Hall, an offering pavilion and the Guanyin Hall on the axis. The precinct measures 7,400 square metres.

The hall was listed on 25 June 2001 in the fifth batch of national key cultural relics, numbered 5-232 and classed as ancient architecture of the Ming. Listing has not changed the room. The figures run from eye level into the roof frame above, and because they cover the structure as well as the walls, the interior reads as one carved surface rather than as a set of separate objects set out for inspection. Standing still is part of looking at it: the eye needs time to separate the central Buddha from the crowd of smaller figures around him, and more time again to find the figures on the window frames.