Xianglu Temple and the County That Holds It

Liulin County lies in western Shanxi, one of the counties of Lüliang, and it reaches the Yellow River on its western side, where the ground runs down from east to west toward the water. The county covers 1,288 square kilometres, and its government sits in Liulin town, from which the county takes its name. Liulin is young by Chinese reckoning: it was established in 1971, assembled from thirteen communes and one town in the west of Lishi County and twelve communes in the north-west of Zhongyang County, with the report going up in July 1971 and the State Council's approval following in October 1973. The river is the county's western edge; the land rises away from it.

The county's economy rests on two things that come out of the ground and one that comes off trees. Liulin sits in the heart of the Hedong coalfield and is one of Shanxi's main coking coal bases, the fuel behind the province's industry. It is also one of the country's five large date-producing counties, and in 1998 the Ministry of Agriculture named Sanjiao town as China's No. 1 Red Date Town. Jujube and coal share the same landscape: the trees hold the slopes above the river, the mines work the seams below. Coal and dates, rather than buildings, are what the county's record is fullest on.

This article is set in the county, not at the shrine. The reference works read for it describe Liulin: its size, its founding, its coal and its dates. They do not describe Xianglu Temple, give its buildings, its dates or its place on the river, or record a heritage listing for it. So the shrine is left undescribed: no building, no date, no position on the water, no standing in any list. What can be said is where the temple's county stands: on the east bank of the Yellow River, in Lüliang, in a landscape of coal seams and date trees.