Wuliang Temple, Qianshan无量观
- Type
- Temples and Abbeys (Gongguan)
- Location
- China · Liaoning · Anshan · North Gully, Mount Qian, beside Luohan Cave
- Coordinates
- 41.04, 123.12 Map ↗
- School
- Longmen (Dragon Gate) Lineage of Quanzhen
- First built
- Around the sixth year of Kangxi, Qing (1667) · Founded by the Longmen Quanzhen priest Liu Tailin; expanded over successive eras; restored in the 1980s
- Heritage status
- Liaoning Provincial Cultural Heritage Site
Overview
Wuliang Temple is the foremost Daoist temple of Mount Qian. In the early Kangxi reign of the Qing (c. 1667), Liu Tailin, an eighth-generation Longmen Quanzhen priest, came here from Taiqing Palace in Shenyang, first dwelling and cultivating in Luohan Cave before building a temple here; it takes its name from the "Wuliang Patriarch" it enshrines (one tradition holds the name derives from the sense of "boundless longevity," wuliang shou). The temple is divided into upper and lower courts following the mountain's contours, with a mountain gate, Laojun Hall, Sanguan Hall, Yuhuang Pavilion, West Pavilion, Juxian Terrace, Eight Immortals Pagoda, and a forest of patriarch pagodas, among others; most of the halls were rebuilt in the Qing dynasty and Republican era. Around the temple are natural features such as the Rootless Rock, the Pitiable Pine, and Zhenyi Ridge. Wuliang Temple is an important center for the transmission of precepts and the training of priests of the Longmen Quanzhen lineage in the Northeast, ranked together with Taiqing Palace in Shenyang and Yunguang Cave on Tiecha Mountain in Benxi as the Three Great Longmen Centers of Liaodong; it is now administered by the Anshan Municipal Taoist Association.
Highlights
- Laojun Hall
- Yuhuang Pavilion
- Luohan Cave
- Forest of Patriarch Pagodas
- Rootless Rock