Buyi Village Jade Emperor Temple

Buyi Village Jade Emperor Temple

Buyi Village Jade Emperor Temple is a National Key Cultural Relics Protection Unit.

The existing central axis of Buyi Village Jade Emperor Temple still features a dance tower, offering hall, front hall, rear hall, as well as numerous side halls and wing rooms.

No inscriptions or steles with precise dating have been found at Buyi Village Jade Emperor Temple. The construction periods of all structures can only be inferred based on architectural style. Among them, the rear hall dates to the Jin Dynasty, the eastern side hall of the rear hall is a Yuan Dynasty structure, and the offering hall, dance tower, and wing rooms all date to the Qing Dynasty or later. The entire temple’s oldest structure is the front hall. In 2012, “Aita Legend” speculated that the front hall is a Tang Dynasty building, likely constructed in the mid-Tang period or even earlier.

The front hall of Buyi Village Jade Emperor Temple is a single-eave, nine-ridge roof structure with three bays in width and four rafters in depth. The front eaves use four octagonal inner-dressed stone columns with sharply curved column capitals. There is no pu-pai-fang (horizontal beam above the columns), and the lintel has been sawn off in later periods.

In May 2013, Buyi Village Jade Emperor Temple was announced as part of the seventh group of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units.

Further reading:

· Seventh Group of National Key Cultural Relics Protection Units