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The wonderful Dafuosi temple at ChengdeChengde is a prefecture-level city in Hebei province, situated northeast of Beijing. The city is best known as the site of the Mountain Resort, a vast imperial garden formerly used by the emperors of the Qing Dynasty. Today the city is a popular tourist destination.
The elaborate Mountain Resort features large parks with lakes, pagodas, and palaces ringed by a wall.
Built between 1703 and 1792, the Mountain Resort took 89 years to complete. It covers a total area of 5.6 km², almost half of Chengde’s urban area.
It is a vast complex of palaces and administrative and ceremonial buildings. Temples of various architectural styles and imperial gardens blend harmoniously into a landscape of lakes, pastureland and forests.
In addition to its aesthetic interest, the Mountain Resort is a rare historic vestige of the final development of feudal society in China.
Outside the wall are the Eight Outer Temples, built in varying architectural styles drawn from throughout China.
The best-known of these is the Putuo Zongcheng Temple, built to resemble the Potala Palace in Lhasa, Tibet. The resort and outlying temples were made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994.
The nearby Puning Temple, built in 1755, houses the world’s tallest wooden statue of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara.
Another popular attraction of the Chengde area is Sledgehammer Peak, a large rock formation in the shape of an inverted sledgehammer. A variety of other mountains, valleys, and grasslands are located within the borders of the city.
