Jingde Temple

Jingde Temple

Jingde Temple is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

Jingde Temple is located in Gaodu Village, Gaodu Town, Zezhou County, Jincheng. It faces south and measures 80 meters from north to south and 42.2 meters from east to west, covering an area of 3,376 square meters.

Jingde Temple sits north-facing south in the center of Gaodu Village, measuring 80 meters from north to south and 42.2 meters from east to west, with a total area of 3,376 square meters. The temple has a two-courtyard layout. Along its central axis from south to north are the front hall, middle hall, and main hall, with side rooms on the west side of the axis and corridor rooms on the east. The main hall is flanked by side halls. The main hall, also known as the Dharma Hall or Three Buddha Hall, once enshrined Sakyamuni, the Medicine Buddha, and Amitabha Buddha. The front eaves columns of this hall bear inscriptions from the second year of Yuanyou in the Song Dynasty (1087) and the fifth year of Taihe in the Jin Dynasty (1205), providing direct evidence of the hall’s construction date. South of the main hall, about 20 meters away, is the middle hall, also called the Revolving Buddha Hall or Mahavira Hall, which once housed statues of Sakyamuni, Manjushri Bodhisattva, Samantabhadra Bodhisattva, and Guanyin Bodhisattva. Records indicate that this hall was renovated during the Ming Dynasty. South of the middle hall is the front hall, which once contained the Four Heavenly Kings, Maitreya Buddha, and Skanda Bodhisattva but was damaged during the construction of a grain station. Records show that the front hall was rebuilt during the Yuan Dynasty.

Jingde Temple largely retains the architectural style of the Song and Jin periods. Notably, the rear inner space of the main hall utilizes a large interior beam, with only two golden columns positioned centrally — a typical example of "column-reduction" construction. The interior beams and rear golden columns are made of massive materials, with the wooden rear golden columns being square at the base and featuring a lotus-petal-shaped capital base. This design is extremely rare among surviving contemporary buildings in Jincheng. The current layout remains largely intact, and the rear hall (main hall) largely preserves the architectural style of the Song and Jin periods. Its structural features mainly include three aspects: first, the hall has a five-bay width plan, which is very rare among surviving contemporaneous buildings in Jincheng; second, the interior uses column-reduction construction, with only two golden columns in the central bay, greatly expanding the usable interior space; third, the roof framework combines rough and finished timberwork — above the ceiling (the overhead boarding), the beams are made of roughly hewn timber with almost no processing, while below the ceiling, all visible beams from within the hall are carved into crescent-shaped beams, nearly identical to the construction methods described in the Song Dynasty's Yingzao Fashi (Treatise on Architectural Methods).