The Hanging Temple of the Mountains Hengshan
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If you like traveling, you will like Shangrilá. A different book from trips, in which the protagonist, the author who offers you this information about Beijing, penetrates in some of the most remote regions of China. In this succession of mountains that spread to the south of Sichuan and the northwest of Yunnan, inhabited by related peoples of some form with the Tibetan culture, as the Yi, the Moso, the Naxi or the Bai. Following the track that the always damned Yi mark, it will finish bottled in the Shangrilá search. |
Little more than 70 kilometers of Datong, in the north spurs of the Mounts Hengshan, there is one of the smallest temples of China, which despite his size manages to attract every year the attention of thousands of visitors. It is the Hanging Temple, and as his name indicates, his biggest peculiarity is to be hung of the rock of the hillside of the mount Cuiping.
The temple not only is supported in constant challenge to the laws of the physics, but ride doing it for more than 1500 years, since it was constructed originally during the dynasty Wei of the North, which they established his capital in the near city of Datong, where from they realized big efforts to promote the Buddhism. His original name "Temple of the Depth and the Emptiness" reflects the history of his construction, since according to the chronicles it stemmed from a monk taoísta pawned in fulfilling the desires of his teacher: "To construct a temple between the sky and the ground to avoid the religious struggles."
During his construction I give him a special care in obtaining a natural protection of the atmospheric elements. The mechanical beginning that support his pavilions anchored in the rock, has allowed him to support earthquakes and thunderstorms.
Considering the special situation of this construction, his pavilions cannot have a big size. Half a dozen of rooms, given to the wall of the rock, with the typical roof of the Chinese religious constructions and the animated interior decoration of the temples Buddhists, will be able to disappoint the most demanding travelers.
In fact, his most ancient sculptures, three big Budas of stone, sculpted in the same epoch that the Yungang caves, they do not admit comparison with these.
The principal attraction is the proper exterior structure of the temple. His situation, in the lateral haircut of the mountain Cuiping that seems cut by a knife, overcomes to the attractions of his rooms and pavilions.
Also, depending on the moment and epoch, it cannot be necessary to buy the entry, enough expensive, to see it from the opposite mountain.
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