The surrounding mountains are dark, but the green pines and bamboos in the temple are lush and incense is sporadic, and there are few pilgrims, and they are still kneeling down and worshiping devoutly.
This is an early winter afternoon in Yantai Zhulin Temple in 2022.
A pilgrim was kneeling down and worshiping
Now Zhulin Temple is very lonely
The eaves are red and blue, the glazed golden green, the carved beams are embedded on the sun slope of Daiwang Mountain. It was rebuilt in Yantai Zhulin Temple in 1996. It is very beautiful when you look at it.
Mountain Gate, Heavenly King Hall, Great Hall, Three Saints Temple, Bell and Drum Tower, from the foot of the mountain, they just sat and lie in the natural "Taishi Chair", which is more magnificent than the old temples recorded in the book.
There is only one elderly pilgrim in the temple. She knelt north and kowtowed three times, and then went east. After getting up, she muttered something in her mouth, with her eyebrows hanging down.
She greeted us only after she finished all the ceremony. "The main hall has been closed since the epidemic. It has been three years since the beginning of the year. In the east wing, the Temple of God of Wealth is temporarily set up. You can go there to worship."
This trip is not for worshiping Buddha.
wandered and drowned in the courtyard, hoping to find the remains of the Zhulin Temple in the past. Unfortunately, the thousand-year-old temple built during the Dading period of the Jin Dynasty was really destroyed.
Don’t smell the morning bell and evening drums, and don’t see the incense lingering, but just stand in the sun of the mountain in such a quiet state. Like a beautiful young monk wearing a brand new monk's robe, half asleep at the foot of the mountain in early winter, lonely and lonely, unable to find the old wooden fish, nor the way to come.
The main hall and the back hall are closed.
The former Buddhist holy land
"Zhulin Temple was built in In 1162 (the second year of Dading in the Jin Dynasty), after the Ming and Qing dynasties, a building temple group consisting of a mountain gate, main hall, rear hall and east side hall was formed.
There is a pair of stone lions in front of the gate, commonly known as "sing stone lions". It makes a bracelet sound when it hits lightly. When the Japanese army invades smoke, they burned the stone lions with fire. There are two sacred halls on the left and right sides of the mountain gate, hum and ha, two generals , with golden toads on their feet, holding mace rods, and red beards and ringing eyes, which are ferocious and terrifying.
3 main halls, 3 back halls, carved beams and painted corridors inside, magnificent, Tathagata Buddha sits upright, Ananda and Gaye two gods live on the left and right. There are two pavilions on the back hall, and the upper floors of the statue of the Buddha Mother, and 18 Arhats in the west wings. The courtyard houses More than 10 stone tablets are inscribed in the history of the construction and repair of the temple. There is a brick pond in the east, which is more than 3 meters high, and it is a place to enter the incense. There is another bell weighing more than 1,000 kilograms of iron casting bell on the left side of the hall. There are couplets embedded in the vermilion altar columns on both sides, which is truly a Buddhist holy place.
The temple has 44 rooms and more than 70 acres of land. ”
The above text comes from the "Old Yantai Film View" written by Mr. Tan Hongxin.
View the location of Zhulin Temple from the mountain
In a book called "Yantai Past - Memories from the Foreign Land", a British man named Jimmy Bruce (a student from Zhifu Middle School) wrote in his memories of Yantai , "Students often go to climb mountains, climb to the top of the rock at the top of the mountain, and often go to the Zhulin Temple at the foot of the mountain." The article is accompanied by a black and white photo of students at Zhifu School visiting Zhulin Temple in the 1930s. At that time, Zhulin Temple was still intact and several pine and cypress stood tall.
In the 1930s, students of Zhifu Middle School visited Zhulin Temple
Zhulin Temple they saw
According to Mr. Tan Hongxin, when he visited Zhulin Temple in 1956, except for the side hall of the east wing, the back hall of the main hall of the mountain gate had collapsed.
There is still an old monk in the temple, who is still talking about the grand event of the past: the Zhulin Temple used to be filled with incense for many years, and Buddhist believers from dozens of miles around often come here to worship Buddha and worship. There is a stone bridge in the east of the mountain gate, called Xianren Bridge. There is only one way to enter the temple. After crossing the bridge, it means entering the Buddha realm.
As for when the Immortal Bridge would not exist, the old monk did not say it, and Mr. Tan did not record it.
In Mr. Tan's eyes, he saw the stone lion at the door that was discolored by fire lying on the ground. It happened to be warm spring. There were two mountain streams in Shun Temple extending south. The stream was in full bloom, "like clouds and snow, like tides and sea." When you walked into the temple, there were a few old pine and cypress trees, a few giant flowers and peonies, and a few broken stone tablets collapsed to the ground.
When he followed the old monk into the backyard, he saw a spring well, and the water was overflowing, and the taste was sweet. The incense iron tripod in the middle of the courtyard and the 18 Arhat statues in the West Chamber Hall still existed. On the hillside behind the temple, there were indeed a few piles of green bamboos dancing in the wind...
probably the destroyed Hum Ha second general
Zhulin Temple later
When Mr. Tan Hongxin went to Zhulin Temple again in the 1980s, it had become a house, and the monks had long disappeared.
In 1996, Zhulin Temple was invested by a merchant to restore and rebuilt on the original site, and its scale was expanded. According to the "special design of ancient emperors' architecture", it emphasizes "extraordinary momentum and luxury". The two handwritings of "Zhulin Temple" and "Mahara Temple" at the mountain gate were written by the calligrapher Zhao Puchu.
New Temple was consecrated in October 1997 and is open to the public as a tourist attraction in Yantai City, with tickets of 15 yuan.
Due to the impact of the epidemic, the main hall and the rear hall are now closed and repairs are underway. The exterior walls of the wing rooms have been painted and the ground is waiting to be repaved. It seems that it is ready to welcome the reopening after the epidemic with a new look.
was about to leave, two diamond figures were found next to a stone tablet on the west side of the courtyard. One raised his arms and stared at him. Although his eyes were damaged, his evil spirits were still alive. The other was cut off and his face was only one ear left, and his arms were broken and his body was tilted. There is no introduction next to it. It is guessed that it should be the two generals of Hum and Ha who held the golden mace back then.
If it is true, then there will be a story.
Can Zhulin Temple be reborn
But some things will definitely not come back.
There are no longer lush bamboo forests behind the temple, there are no more thousand-year-old peonies in the main hall courtyard, there are no longer loud lions in front of the mountain gate, the Immortal Bridge leading to the mountain gate is just a legend, and the prosperity of incense may be just a dream of monks...
The green mountains have never remained the same, and the temple has been prosperous and destroyed several times. Today's Zhulin Temple is also a sight to this day, it is gorgeous and magnificent. Unfortunately, it has never been found -
Mountain Temple is looking for peonies under the moon, waiting for white sails on the top of Daiwang Mountain, lingering cigarettes, and chanting Buddhist sings may all take time to grow with the mountains.
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