Zhangshu Yitianmen

Zhangshu Yitianmen

Zhangshu Yitianmen is a cultural heritage site protected at the provincial level in Jiangxi Province.

Yitianmen is a provincial-level cultural heritage site and serves as the gateway to the Gaozao Blessed Land. When Zhu Xi, the Song Dynasty Neo-Confucian scholar, first ascended Gaozao Mountain to give lectures, he stopped here to rest his sedan chair. He was struck by the towering, elegant peaks and the ancient trees that formed a dense canopy on either side — a scene so imposing it seemed that “a single man could hold the pass against ten thousand.” He sighed and said, “This truly is a ‘Heavenly Gate’!” Later, he donated money to build a stone memorial archway here, naming it “Yitianmen.” The current stone archway was reconstructed in the second year of the Guangxu reign during the Qing Dynasty, in 1876. The archway is entirely constructed from mung bean-colored stone and is shaped like a traditional gate, standing 7.17 meters tall and 4.3 meters wide. On the south-facing lintel is inscribed the characters “Yitianmen” (One Heavenly Gate), while the north-facing side, following the imperial title bestowed by Emperor Gaozong of Tang, is engraved with the five characters “Thirty-Three Blessed Lands.” The archway features a couplet on its pillars: the upper line reads “Though long obscured, freshly polished, it restores the grandeur of past glory,” and the lower line reads “Revealed anew, it commands the shadowy valleys and reveals the hidden pass,” signed “Composed by Huang Shiyuan, a local scholar.”

Further Reading:

· First Batch of Jiangxi Provincial Cultural Heritage Sites