How to visit Taoist temples

  Taoist architecture occupies an important position among ancient Chinese buildings and is an essential part of traditional Chinese culture. Although the mountains and rivers remain the same, everyone's feelings when looking at them can be different. Therefore, it is very necessary to understand some knowledge about the construction of Taoist temples, which can also add a lot of interest to our travels.

Taoist palaces and temples are, of course, built according to local conditions. However, after nearly two thousand years of development, the construction of Taoist temples has basically had fixed norms. Generally speaking, there are two forms of the planar combination and layout of Taoist palaces and temples. One is the traditional architectural method layout that progresses forward and backward along the central axis familiar to the Chinese people and expands symmetrically on both sides. This is also a common layout method for ancient buildings. Among this type of buildings, the most famous one is the Forbidden City.

Among Taoism, Shangqing Palace on Mount Longhu, the ancestral court of the Zhengyi School, and Baiyun Temple, the ancestral court of the Quanzhen School, are representatives of layouts that expand along the central axis. In palaces and temples with this layout, there is first a mountain gate, and the main hall is set facing the mountain gate, with the Lingguan Hall and Wenchang Hall on both sides. Along the central axis, there are Sanqing Hall or Jade Emperor Hall of varying sizes. Ancillary buildings such as dining halls and houses are arranged on both sides or at the rear of the axis.

Another layout is much more advanced, that is, determining the positions of the main buildings according to the positions of the Five Elements and the Eight Trigrams, and then expanding radially around the positions of the Eight Trigrams. The Taoist temple buildings on Sanqingshan Mountain in Jiangxi Province are laid out in this way. According to the positions of the congenital Eight Trigrams Qian, Dui, Li, Zhen, Kun, Gen, Kan, and Xun, the eight major buildings of the Taoist buildings on Sanqingshan Mountain, namely, the Yanjiao Hall, the Jiutian Yingyuan Mansion, the Longhu Hall, the Fenglei Pagoda, the Shaohua Gate, the Feixian Terrace, the Hanxing Pool, and the Golden Drum and Stone, all surround the middle Dan well and Dan stove, and are arranged one by one corresponding to the positions of the Eight Trigrams around.

The Eight Trigrams represent different symbols, and the buildings correspond strictly to them. For example, the Fenglei Pagoda is in the Zhen position representing thunder, and the Hanxing Pool is in the Kan position representing water. These buildings fully reflect the Taoist thought of "Man follows the Earth, the Earth follows Heaven, Heaven follows the Tao, and the Tao follows nature", forming a unique style of the natural combination of natural landscapes and buildings.

The devil is in the details. To understand the interest of Taoist buildings, one must also be familiar with the detailed decorations of Taoist buildings. For example, depictions of the sun, moon, stars, clouds, mountains, waters, and rocks on the buildings imply the illumination of light and firmness and eternal life. The Chinese love puns, so Taoist buildings often have images such as fans, fish, narcissus, bats, and deer. Respectively, by puns, they represent the meanings of kindness, abundance, immortality, happiness, and prosperity. There are also some decorative items with symbolic meanings, such as pine and cypress, ganoderma lucidum, turtles, cranes, bamboo, lions, unicorns, dragons and phoenixes, etc. These images symbolize friendship, longevity, gentlemanliness, warding off evil spirits, and auspiciousness, etc.

Of course, some architectural ornaments directly adopt the auspicious characters themselves, but for the sake of beauty, some variations are used. Variants of characters such as "fortune", "prosperity", "longevity", "happiness", "auspiciousness", "heaven", "abundance", and "pleasure" are used on architectural components such as window lattices and door leaves. These practices have also had a significant and far-reaching impact on Chinese folk traditions. There are patterns such as the picture of both fortune and longevity, and the celebration of the birthday of the Eight Immortals in folk culture, all derived from Taoist thoughts and immortal stories. These components all reflect the Taoist thoughts of pursuing good luck, longevity, and immortality.
Taoist architecture is an important part of Taoist culture, and Taoist culture has had a huge impact on Chinese culture. To study the deep structure of traditional Chinese culture, it is impossible not to understand Taoist culture. Taoist architecture is the witness of thousands of years of Taoist culture and has very important cultural, historical, and artistic values.

Read ten thousand books and travel ten thousand miles. When visiting Taoist temples, one can learn about the "Tao" everywhere!