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Taiyuan, Shanxi Province
Taiyuan is the capital of Shanxi Province, and a city rich in political, military, and religious history. Located along the invasion corridors between the nomadic regions to the north and the agricultural heartland around the Yellow River, it was the site of repeated invasion and occupation over the centuries. The central Shanxi region is rich in Buddhist and Taoist sites, including the famous Mt. Wutai and the Taoist Palace of Eternal Joy. Taiyuan is now a major industrial city in northern China, close to major iron and coal reserves.
Settlements in the Taiyuan region date back to Neolithic times. The town, then known as Jinyang, was founded some 2,400 years ago. Its location in a valley near the Fen River put it near the invasion routes from the nomadic regions in the north to the agricultural heartland near the Yellow River. The city suffered from frequent occupation by invaders, including the Xiongnu in Han times and the Toba (Tabgatch) Turkic rulers of the Northern Wei in the 4th-6th centuries. The founder of the Tang dynasty, Li Yuan, used Taiyuan as a base for the peasant uprising that overthrew the Sui regime in the early 7th century. Jinyang was destroyed in 979 by Song dynasty forces, but rebuilt three years later and renamed Songcheng. Starting in 1375 in the early Ming dynasty the town became the seat of government for the Taiyuan region and expanded greatly.
English, French, and Russian communities exploited the region¡¯s mineral resources in the 19th century. Taiyuan was one of the centers of the nationalistic Boxer Rebellion around 1900, when all the foreign missionaries and their families were put to death on the order of the provincial governor. After the end of the Qing imperial system in 1911, Taiyuan was governed by a regional warlord named Yan Xishan between 1912 and 1949. Operating under the Kuomintang but largely an independent ruler, he suppressed opium smoking and foot-binding, among other reforms, but allowed development of coal resources by the Japanese in the early 1940¡¯s. |
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---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MT. WUTAI
Mt. WutaiFive Terrace Mountain) is one of Buddhism¡¯s Four Sacred Mountains, and is dedicated to the Bodhisattva of Wisdom Manjusri (Wen shu). It is located about 200 km (77 miles) north of Taiyuan in mountainous country. The name refers to the flat tops of the five principal peaks. The north peak (Dou Feng) is the highest of the group at 3,058 meters (10,036 ft). The Buddhist associations of the site date back to the Han dynasty when an Indian monk is supposed to have had a vision of Manjusri there. The mountain became an important Buddhist center in the Northern Wei through the Tang dynasties, when more than 200 temples there were dedicated to the study of the Avatamsaka Sutra. After a period of decline, the mountain regained popularity in the Ming and Qing periods, when the emphasis on Tibetan-style Lamaist Buddhism made Mt. Wutai an important pilgrimage site. In the 15th century the founder of the austere Tibetan Yellow Hat Sectcame to Mt. Wutai to preach.
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About forty temples remain in the region, many in the monastic village of Taihuai nestled in the center of the five peaks, and others farther afield in the mountains. The Tayuan Si (Temple of the Pagodas) was built in Tibetan style in the Ming period, with a 50-meter high bulbous, whitewashed dome characteristic of the style. Behind the pagoda is a two story Ming-period library, which contains an older revolving sutra-case, holding rare religious texts. The nearby Xiantong Si (Temple of the Manifestations) is one of the oldest Buddhist monasteries in the world. Its foundation dates back to the early years of Buddhism in China in the 1st century AD, though most of the present complex is Ming or Qing in date.
The only major historical site you can visit is the imperial palace of China's last emperor. It is nothing like the imperial palaces in Beijing or Shenyang. It is comprised mostly of simple houses with crude lay-outs, reflecting the hasty establishment of the Japanese puppet state, headed by Puyi, China's last emperor dethroned in the 1911 Revolution. |
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