James Baquet

    jamesbaquet@gmail.com

    AT the end of my two-week trip, I again visited an outlying area of Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei Province. This time I went to Zhengding, where the Shijiazhuang airport is also located.

    I had been in Zhengding once before, a little over a year earlier, to visit the Linji Temple and several other famous pagodas. But I had entirely missed Longxing Temple, one of the most beautiful places I have seen in China.

    The temple was once a private garden, which was converted to use as a temple over 1,400 years ago, during the Sui Dynasty (581-618). It was expanded in the Song (960-1279) in 971, and twice more in the Qing (1644-1911) under the great emperors Kangxi and Qianlong.

    It is no longer actively used for religious purposes. Instead, the temple has become a museum and repository for the remains of other temples in the region. The buildings are huge, stately and in excellent repair. It’s collection of statuary is beyond compare.

    In fact, one statue — a giant bronze statue of the Buddha — has given the temple the nickname, “Temple of the Great Buddha.” Elsewhere is a hall with 12 statues of Vairocana, the “Great Sun Buddha,” in three groups of four. These are supported by another thousand smaller statues. Another hall holds a colossal statue of Guanyin, the Bodhisattva of Compassion. Perhaps the most unusual item here is the rotating sutra repository, a kind of bookshelf that can be turned as a substitute for prayer.

    And so it goes: one magnificent hall after another filled with priceless works of the best in Chinese Buddhist art.