Jingde Temple

　　Jingde Temple is located in Gaodu Village, facing south. It covers an area of 3,376 square meters, with a north-south length of 80 meters and an east-west width of 42.2 meters. The temple features 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 side. On either side of the main hall are wing 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 Song-Yuan era (1087) and the fifth year of Jin Taihe era (1205), providing direct evidence of the construction date of the hall. To the south of the main hall is the middle hall, about 20 meters away. Also called the Rotating Buddha Hall or Mahavira Hall, it once housed statues of Sakyamuni, Manjushri Bodhisattva, Samantabhadra Bodhisattva, and Guanyin Bodhisattva. Records indicate that this hall was renovated during the Ming Dynasty. To the 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 renovated during the Yuan Dynasty.

　　Jingde Temple largely retains the architectural style of the Song and Jin periods. Notably, the inner rear section of the main hall uses large internal beams, with only two golden columns positioned in the center — a typical example of column-reduction architecture. The internal beams and rear golden columns are made of large timber. The rear golden columns are wooden, square at the base, with the column-top stones shaped like upturned bowls. This feature 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 wide floor plan, which is very rare among surviving contemporary buildings in Jincheng; second, the interior employs the column-reduction technique, using only two golden columns in the center, greatly expanding the usable interior space; third, the roof framework combines rough and finished timber. Above the ceiling (the overhead paneling), the beams are made of rough-hewn wood with minimal processing. 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).