Yuhuang Temple, Fucheng, Jincheng晋城玉皇庙（府城玉皇庙）

Type

Temples and Abbeys (Gongguan)

Location

China · Shanxi · Jincheng · North of Fucheng village, Jincun township, Zezhou district.

Coordinates

35.5, 112.88 Map ↗

First built

Northern Song, ninth year of Xining (1076) · Rebuilt in the seventh year of the Taihe era of the Jin (1207), expanded during the Zhiyuan era of the Yuan, with the Twenty-eight Lunar Mansions sculptures made in the Yuan.

Heritage status

Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level (1988)

Overview

Yuhuang Temple at Fucheng is a Daoist temple dedicated to the Jade Emperor, founded in the ninth year of the Xining era of the Northern Song (1076), rebuilt in the seventh year of the Taihe era of the Jin (1207), and expanded into a three-courtyard complex in the Yuan. Surviving structures include the Yuhuang Hall, the Chengtang Hall, the Hall of the Twenty-eight Lunar Mansions, and the Hall of the Twelve Yuanchen (Year-Star Deities), spanning the Song, Jin, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, together with over three hundred painted clay sculptures. The Yuan-dynasty painted sculptures of the twenty-eight lunar-mansion star spirits in the Hall of the Twenty-eight Lunar Mansions — with their lively human and animal forms — constitute the only complete surviving set of Yuan-dynasty twenty-eight-lunar-mansion sculptures in China, hailed as a masterpiece of Yuan sculpture on the level of an 'Oriental Venus,' traditionally attributed (by one account) to the Yuan sculptor Liu Luan. Stele inscriptions in the temple record the successive renovations across the dynasties, making it an important physical source for studying the Song–Yuan Daoist pantheon and sculptural art.

Highlights

• Yuan-dynasty painted sculptures of the Twenty-eight Lunar Mansions
• The Yuhuang Hall
• The images of the Twelve Yuanchen
• A sequence of Song, Jin and Yuan architecture