Jinxing Temple

Jinxing Temple

Jinxing Temple is situated on Suxian Ridge in Chenzhou City, honored as the "Eighteenth Blessed Land" of Taoism. Prior to its restoration, the temple was a Qing Dynasty building constructed of brick and wood with a flush gable roof, designed in a traditional residential style. It comprised an upper and lower hall, a central courtyard, four subsidiary rooms, and wing rooms encircled by ancient trees. The front gate was inscribed with the bold, regular-script characters “Jinxing Temple,” accompanied by the couplet: “On lofty peaks, mists often linger; amid thick woods, sunlight stays unseen.” Inside the temple stands the *Stele of Han Yu’s Preface to Sending off Taoist Priest Liao*. This stele was installed during the 1984 restoration of Jinxing Temple, with text copied from the original recorded in historical documents. Carved from white marble, it measures 123 cm in height, 57.5 cm in width, and 10 cm in thickness. The inscription consists of 282 regular-script characters in horizontal lines, each character about 2.5 × 3 cm in size.

In the fifteenth year of the Wanli era (1587 AD), the poet Yuan Jingqing studied at Jinxing Temple and composed the *Twelve Scenic Poems of Suxian*, which were inscribed at White Deer Cave—though they no longer exist today. Ruan Yue once wrote a poem titled *Jinxing Temple*: “In this auspicious age, the sacred star appears; I’ve heard of festive clouds and radiant suns. At midnight, immortals ascend to worship the North Star, their glow piercing through the pine tops.”