LianGuo Temple

　　LianGuo Temple is located in Chenlou Village, 25 li north of the county town. It is the only building in the village that seems to have some ancient charm, and also the largest building in the village. The villagers say that every year on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, grand operas are performed here — both the performers and the audience come from the surrounding 48 villages. And the area of LianGuo Temple happens to be 48 mu — the temple seems to have some special connection with the number 48.

　　Why the number “48” and not some other? That story begins with the pond in front of LianGuo Temple.

　　Legend has it that there used to be a large lake surrounding Chenlou Village, called Feng Lake, formed by the silt deposited when the Yellow River changed its course. In ancient times, the daughter of the Yan Emperor once planted lotus fruits in white clothes in the pool. The following year, the pool was covered with blooming lotuses, fragrant and fruitful, and thus the pool was named “Lotus Fruit Pool.”

　　It wasn’t a mythical god but a real person who linked the number “48” with LianGuo Temple and Lotus Fruit Pool, making the story last through the ages. That person was Chen Yao. His father, Chen Kang, was one of Confucius’s seventy-two disciples. According to the Chenlou Village genealogy, Chen Yao was born in the 32nd year of King Jing of Zhou (488 BC), and in his youth had already “mastered the Six Arts.” After Chen Kang passed away, Chen Yao inherited his father’s work, continuing to teach and preach on the lecture platform. The genealogy refers to Chen Yao as a “learned scholar of the region,” who lived in seclusion and never pursued officialdom. He farmed the land, earned great scholarly fame, and attracted students from all directions who eagerly sought to become his disciples.

　　In 426 BC, there was a famine in the Huaiyang area, and countless people starved to death. On the eighth day of the fourth lunar month that year, Chen Yao personally led the villagers to gather lotus fruits from LianGuo Temple and distributed them to the residents of the surrounding 48 villages to help them through the hard times. Later, to commemorate Chen Yao’s “grace of the lotus fruits,” the villagers spontaneously built a shrine north of the Lotus Fruit Pool, naming it the “LianGuo Shrine.” From then on, every year on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, villagers from the surrounding villages would gather here to hold large-scale worship ceremonies.

　　The transformation of the “LianGuo Shrine” into “LianGuo Temple” happened after the Han Dynasty. Shrines are for ancestral worship, while temples are places for Buddhist activities. No one in the village can say for sure which Han emperor ordered the then-Chen Commandery to change the “LianGuo Shrine” at Fangting into the “LianGuo Temple,” but it’s said that from then on, LianGuo Temple became the largest Buddhist site in the region.

　　The story of the number “48” and LianGuo Temple continued into the Ming Dynasty. It is said that Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty, who was believed to have been blessed by Fuxi, not only extensively renovated the Taihao Mausoleum, but also directly allocated 4,800 guan from the national treasury, requisitioned 48 mu of land, and expanded LianGuo Temple to its current size.

　　Although the Maitreya Buddha and the Mahavira Hall still stand in LianGuo Temple today, the morning bells and evening drums, as well as the monks, are long gone. But every year on the eighth day of the fourth lunar month, villagers from near and far still gather here, singing and dancing, to commemorate their ancestor surnamed Chen who once saved the people here.

　　Source: Huaiyang Government Website