page_title: Thousand Buddha Mountain
section_title: Xingguochan Temple
hierarchical_section_title: Thousand Buddha Mountain / Main Attractions / Xingguochan Temple
caption_attribution_description: Xingguochan Temple on the Thousand Buddha Mountain, Jinan, Shandong Province, China.
context_page_description: The Thousand Buddha Mountain is a hill located about 2.5 kilometers southeast of the city of Jinan, the capital of Shandong Province, China. It covers 1.518 square kilometers and has a peak of 285 meters above sea level. It is renowned for its numerous Buddha images which have been carved out of the hill's rock faces or free-standing structures erect since the times of the Sui Dynasty and its Xingguochan Temple. It is considered as one of the "Three Greatest Attractions in Jinan" together with Baotu Spring and Daming Lake. It is also one of the 4A-rated Tourist attractions in China. Thousand Buddha Mountain is opened up as a public park in 1959, rated as AAAA-rated Tourist Attractions of China in 2005, and rated as National Park of China in March 2017.
context_section_description: Along with the Buddha statues, temples and other buildings were erected on the hill. The most renowned of these structures is the Xingguochan Temple (Chinese: 兴国禅寺; pinyin: Xing Guo Chan Si, literally: "Development of the Country Buddhist Temple") which was originally built during the reign of Emperor Taizhong of Tang as an expansion of the Sui-Dynasty Qianfo Temple. Further enlargements were undertaken during the Song Dynasty, but the temple was destroyed by war afterwards. Rebuilding was undertaken in 1468, during the Ming Dynasty. The Guanying Hall, the Foye Hall, and the Thousand-Hands Buddha statue were added during the Qing Dynasty.
  
  The temple is located about halfway up the hill and can be reached via 300 stone steps. A large inscription (total area about 15 square meters) cut into the cliff face to the southwest of the identifies it as the "Number One Temple" (Di Yi Mi Hua). The temple's courtyards feature several stone tablets bearing inscriptions from renowned calligraphers. In one of the temple's courtyards stands a sculpture of the legendary Emperor Shun, who is—according to the local tradition—credited with first ploughing the soil in Jinan as well as with inventing the writing brush. Because of its mythological association with Emperor Shun, the Thousand Buddha hill is also known as Shungeng Hill. The main structure of the temple are: Grand Prayer Hall, Guanying Hall, Dharma Hall, Maitreya Hall, and the Buddhist Scripture building. Lishanyuan courtyard, to the east of the temple, is surrounded by sites of worship belonging to Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism. The names of these buildings are: the Shun and the Luban Ancestral Temples, the Wenchang ("Develop the Culture") Cabinet, and the Yilan Kiosk. The temple has been the site of two annual temple fairs held on the 3rd day of the third month and 9th day of the 9th month of the Chinese Lunar Calendar since the times of the Yuan Dynasty. It was burned down in wars and rebuild during the Ming Dynasty. Other notable buildings on the hill are: the Pagoda Tree Pavilion (Tang Dynasty), Cloud Passing Zen Temple, and the Tanghuai Kiosk.
  Many of the statues on the Thousand Buddha Mountain were damaged or lost during the Cultural Revolution, but restoration started in 1979 already. Since then, many new statues have been added. The largest new statues are a 20 meter-tall sitting Maitreya Buddha completed in 2000 and lying Buddha with a swastika on his chest. The latter statue was carved out of granite in 1996, has a length of 10 meters and weighs approximately 50 tonnes.
caption: East gate of Xingguochan Temple
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