Huayan Monastery
The Huayan Monastery complex is located on Daxi Street on the south western side of Datong City, Shanxi Province. Built during the Liao Dynasty (907 - 1125), the Huayan Monastery is the largest and best preserved monastery of the Liao Dynasty in existence in China. Emperors in the Liao Dynasty sincerely believed in Buddhism, so they built many monasteries. The Huayan Monastery was originally the ancestral temple of the imperial family, offering sacrifices for emperors of the Liao Dynasty. This monastery was built according to the Huayan Sutra Sect of the Huayan School and is unique in that it faces east instead of south. There are two separate sections to the monastery, the upper one referred to as the Grand Hall housing five large Ming Dynasty Buddhas, and the lower section referred to as the Sutra Temple containing a library of some 18,000 volumes of Buddhist writings.
The main hall of the upper monastery is the Hall of Sakyamuni. Occupying an area of 1,553 square meters (about 0.4 acres) it is one of the largest Buddha halls of the Liao period still in existence in China. In the middle of the hall, there are five sculptures standing in a row at the bottom of a lotus flower. The Lower Monastery is simple and unsophisticated. Its main hall is the Bhaga Repository Hall in which Buddhist sutra is kept. The wooden library containing the Buddhist scriptures is exquisitely and elaborately designed. There are thirty-one sculptures in the hall among which the Bodhisattva with a pious prayer pose is the most famous; it possesses a lifelike human likeness rather than that of a god. Here's some guide information in your travel: Address: Huayan Monastery, Datong County, Shanxi Province. Contact number: 0086-712-78662401 Admission Fee: CNY10 Opening Hours: 08:30 to 17:00
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