Guangsheng Temple on the Slope of Mount Huoshan
Three building groups on one hillside: the Ming upper temple, the Yuan lower temple above the Huoquan spring, and the water-god hall whose Yuan murals show a troupe performing.
Linfen.
Linfen is a prefecture-level city in the south-west of Shanxi, on the east bank of the Yellow River, and it takes its name from the Fen, which runs north to south through the whole prefecture. In the middle lies a broad river-valley plain with fertile land; the Taiyue and Zhongtiao mountains close the east and the Lüliang the west. The city covers 20,275 square kilometres and had 3,976,481 residents at the 2020 census. Its older names are Pingyang, Jin and Jinzhou, and Chinese archaeologists have argued that the capital of the legendary ruler Yao stood here, which is why the central district is called Yaodu. It governs one district, two county-level cities and fourteen counties.
Linfen
Places
Guangsheng Temple
A Buddhist monastery in three parts on the slopes of Mount Huoshan, seventeen kilometres northeast of Hongtong: a Ming-rebuilt upper temple, a Yuan lower temple facing the Huoquan spring, and a water-god hall of Yuan murals.
Feihong Pagoda
The glazed brick pagoda in the upper court of Guangsheng Temple, raised between 1515 and 1527 and faced on every storey with coloured tile: thirteen octagonal storeys, 47.6 metres high.
Pagoda Tree at Hongtong
A park and shrine two kilometres northwest of the Hongtong county seat, built around the story of a Han-dynasty locust tree where Ming migrants were enrolled, and around the rhyme that remembers it.
Taosi Site
A walled Longshan settlement in Xiangfen County, dug since the 1950s, with a 280-hectare middle-period city, a cemetery of more than 1,500 graves and the oldest known observatory in East Asia.
Temple of Yao
A temple to the legendary ruler Yao in the southern suburbs of Linfen, founded in the Western Jin and moved across the Fen in 658; its main hall was rebuilt after a fire in 1998.
Mausoleum of Yao
One of several places that claim the tomb of the legendary ruler Yao, a national protected site in Yaodu District, Linfen, in the loess country above the Fen valley.
Xiaoxitian
A small late Ming temple on Phoenix Hill west of Xixian, whose Mahavira hall holds more than 1,900 clay figures in suspended relief, made from the Chongzhen to the Shunzhi reign.
Yunqiu Mountain
The mountain country of Xiangning County in south-western Linfen, a loess district at the southern foot of the Lüliang range between the Fen valley and the Yellow River.
Hukou Falls
The fall the Yellow River makes in the Jin-Shaanxi gorge, with the east bank in Ji County, Linfen, and the west bank in Yichuan County, Yan'an, Shaanxi.