Features of Dongyue Temple in Beijing

Beijing Dongyue Temple is the largest Taoist temple in North China. The temple preserves a large number of unique Taoist buildings with rich Taoist cultural connotations. It provides important physical information for the study of the historical origins and development of Taoism and Metaphysics in ancient China, as well as the folk culture of Beijing.

The rise of Dongyue Temple is inseparable from the prosperity of the Zhengyi branch "Xuanjiao" in the Yuan Dynasty. Since Zhang Liusun, the great master of Xuanjiao, and his successor Wu Quanjie were highly respected by Emperor Yuan, the Dongyue Temple built and hosted by them certainly gained royal attention. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, although the status of Dongyue Temple has been reduced, it still has a strong influence on the upper class and among the people because it worships Emperor Qi Rensheng, the god of Mount Tai in Dongyue, who is in charge of all nobility, life and death, and blessings in the world. Although it was destroyed several times in history, it was rebuilt each time with donations from royal members.

There are stone tablets erected in each courtyard of Dongyue Temple, with a maximum of more than 160 stone tablets, ranking the highest in the capital. The more than 100 existing stone steles are all works of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Most of them are inscriptions on the construction of Dongyue Temple and folk charity steles in the past dynasties. They are complete in variety, noble in taste, rich in content, and have high artistic and historical value. The most famous among them is Zhao Mengfu's "Zhang Tianshi Shinto Stele" (commonly known as "Taoist Stele") in running script. It has a simple and powerful style and is a treasure of calligraphy art in the Yuan Dynasty. In addition, Zhao Shiyan's regular script "Zhaode Palace Stele" and Yu Wenjing's official script "Rensheng Palace Stele" are also quite famous. In addition, in front of most halls of Dongyue Temple, there are couplets with black characters on a white background and small seal script, mostly explaining the functions of the gods of each hall. The couplets in front of each hall in the main courtyard have been restored, and the texts were written by well-known contemporary calligraphers.

During the Cultural Revolution, the inscriptions in the temple were severely damaged. Most of them were knocked down and smashed, and the decorations were chiseled away. Some of the inscriptions were scratched with revolutionary slogans in black ink. The toppled monuments were either used as foundations or buried deep underground. When Dongyue Temple was taken over by the Chaoyang District Cultural Relics Bureau at the end of 1995, only 18 intact monuments remained. Later, the stone tablets buried underground were excavated again. The stone stele restoration project started at the end of 1997 and lasted for one year. It was basically restored to its original position. There are 89 stone stele in the east and west stele forest in the main courtyard of the middle road, recreating the characteristic landscape of Dongyue Temple with "many stele".

Because Emperor Dongyue is in charge of the life, death, misfortune and blessings of the world, there are also many people who go to burn incense. It is said that March 28th is the birthday of Emperor Dongyue the Great every year, so from March 15th to 28th, a temple fair will be held in Dongyue Temple. This custom lasted for hundreds of years, but was naturally interrupted after 1949. Since 2002, the temple fair has resumed, but it has been moved to the Spring Festival every year. In addition, there are many folklore anecdotes in Dongyue Temple. For example, the old Beijing jingle "Smart ghost, translucent monument, little golden bean, no loss" refers to four interesting legends in Dongyue Temple.