The Temple of Guan Yu at Jiezhou
The largest Guan Yu temple in China is read through its courts, its named halls and the three places that divide one life between a birthplace and two graves.
Yuncheng.
Yuncheng is the southernmost prefecture-level city of Shanxi, in the south-west of the province, in the basin between the Luliang, Taiyue and Zhongtiao mountains. The Fen River joins the Yellow River in the north of its territory, and the Sushui runs diagonally from north-east to south-west. The city has one district, ten counties and two county-level cities, and its government sits in Yanhu District. It counts 6,205 immovable cultural relics, 102 of them national key cultural relics protection units, and 55 wooden buildings from before the Yuan dynasty. Its name comes from the salt administration: a walled town begun here at the end of the Yuan was renamed Yuncheng, the City of Salt Luck.
Yuncheng
Yongle Palace and the Murals of the Pure Yang Hall
A Yuan Daoist palace built for Lu Dongbin, its four painted halls, and the operation that took the building and its murals apart and put them back on higher ground.
ReadSalt Works on the Yuncheng Salt Lake
The lake that made the region rich, the evaporation that concentrates its brine, and the walled town that the salt administration built at the end of the Yuan.
ReadPujiu Temple and the Story of the West Chamber
A temple near the ruins of Puzhou whose relic pagoda was renamed for a fictional heroine, read alongside the Yuan play that gave it its fame.
ReadThe Stork Tower at Yongji, and the Tower in the Poem
The tower a Tang poem made famous, the concrete tower standing at Yongji now, and what the gap between the two of them does to the view.
ReadFeiyun Tower: A Timber Structure in Wanrong
A tower of 1746 standing just inside a temple gate in Wanrong, read from below through its 345 bracket sets and four columns that run the full height.
ReadDayudu: Lifting the Yellow River onto the Plain
An old ferry crossing in Rucheng, the name of a flood-tamer attached to it, and the slope that makes water from the river something to be raised.
ReadThe Temple of the God of Grain at Jishan
A temple to Houji on the main street of Jishan's county town, read through the three temples that share the name and the farming basin around them.
ReadPlaces
Jiezhou Guandi Temple
The largest Guan Yu temple in China, twenty kilometres from Yuncheng: a walled sequence of courts founded in 589, rebuilt after a fire in 1702, with a Ming screen of four glazed dragons before the gate.
Yongle Palace
A Yuan-dynasty Daoist palace moved whole from the Yellow River bank: four halls, 1,005.68 square metres of wall painting, and the Assembly of the Immortals of 1325.
Yuncheng Salt Lake
Shanxi's largest lake, a sodium sulphate lake at the north foot of the Zhongtiao mountains, worked for salt for more than four thousand years and still a chemical base.
Pujiu Temple
A temple beside the ruins of Puzhou, famous because of a Yuan play: its relic pagoda took the heroine's name, and its present halls were rebuilt after 1986.
Stork Tower
The tower Wang Zhihuan's poem made famous, rebuilt between 1997 and 2002 on the Yellow River bank at Yongji: 73.9 metres of concrete in the shape of a Tang pavilion.
Feiyun Tower
A timber tower of 1746 inside the Eastern Peak Temple at Wanrong: 23.19 metres, three storeys and four eaves, 345 bracket sets, and four columns running the full height.
Dayudu
An old ferry crossing on the Yellow River in Rucheng, at the point where Shanxi's southernmost county comes down to the river below the Zhongtiao mountains.
Jiwang Temple
A temple to Houji, the lord of millet, on West Street inside the county town of Jishan, one of several temples in Shanxi that carry the same dedication.
Photo credits and rights
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Worshippers at the temple gate, showing the place in use.Windmemories / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗
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A hall of the Yongle Palace with its red wall and grey roof.Halazhang / CC BY-SA 4.0 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Photo source ↗ Rights information ↗
