Chongyang Palace (Ancestral Temple of Quanzhen)重阳宫（祖庵）
- Type
- Temples and Abbeys (Gongguan)
- Location
- China · Shaanxi · Huyi, Xi'an · Zu'an Township, Huyi District, at the northern foot of the Zhongnan Mountains
- Coordinates
- 34.07, 108.49 Map ↗
- School
- Quanzhen (Complete Perfection) Daoism
- First built
- 7th year of the Dading era, Jin (1167) · After Wang Chongyang's transformation-departure, his disciples built Lingxu Temple and buried him there; Emperor Taizong of the Yuan granted it the name Chongyang Wanshou Palace, making it foremost among the three great ancestral courts of Quanzhen; it declined at the end of the Yuan, and the surviving structures date from Ming and Qing reconstruction
- Heritage status
- Stele Forest at Chongyang Palace (Zu'an) — Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level (2001)
Overview
Chongyang Palace is the burial place of Wang Chongyang, the patriarch of Quanzhen Daoism, and the foremost of the three great ancestral courts of Quanzhen (the other two being the White Cloud Temple in Beijing and Yongle Palace in Shanxi). Wang Chongyang once dug the Tomb of the Living Dead here to cultivate the Dao; after his transformation-departure in Kaifeng in the tenth year of the Dading reign of the Jin (1170), his disciples, including Ma Yu, brought his coffin back here for burial and built Lingxu Temple. Under Emperor Taizong of the Yuan it was granted the name 'Chongyang Wanshou Palace,' and it was expanded during the periods of Yin Zhiping and Li Zhichang; at its height it had over five thousand halls and chambers and nearly ten thousand resident priests, making it the supreme center of Quanzhen Daoism in the Yuan dynasty, whence its name 'Zu'an,' the Ancestral Hermitage. It gradually declined after the end of the Yuan, was repaired repeatedly in the Ming and Qing, and today preserves the Chongyang Hall, the Lingguan Hall, and other structures. The 'Zu'an Stele Forest' within the palace preserves over forty Yuan-dynasty steles, including the Stele of the Imperially Bestowed Robes, in the calligraphy of Zhao Mengfu, and the stele Record of Wang Chongyang's Immortal Traces; among them are numerous imperial edict steles inscribed in both the 'Phags-pa script and Chinese, forming first-hand historical material for the study of Quanzhen Daoism and Mongol Yuan policy.
Highlights
- The Zu'an Stele Forest
- The tomb of Patriarch Wang Chongyang
- The site of the Tomb of the Living Dead
- Yuan-dynasty imperial edict steles