Buddhist sanctuary glows again after renovation
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E-mail China Daily, June 14, 2016
A former royal Buddhist sanctuary near Beijing glitters again after a major renovation project.
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The main renovation project on the Temple of Potalaka in Chengde, Hebei province, was completed on Saturday. The mountain resort and its temples form the largest surviving royal garden and temple complex in the world. [Photo by Wang Kaihao/China Daily] |
A ceremony to mark the restoration of the main buildings in the Putuo Zongsheng Temple, commonly known as the Temple of Potalaka, in Chengde, Hebei province, was held on June 11, National Cultural Heritage Day.
The Temple of Potalaka was built in 1771 loosely modeled on the Potala Palace in Lhasa, the capital of the Tibet autonomous region.
It is the biggest among the 12 satellite temples around the Chengde Mountain Resort, which was considered China's "Summer Capital" in the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) as several emperors spent their summers there.
The resort and its temples were included in UNESCO's World Heritage list in 1994, and they form the largest surviving royal garden and temple complex in the world.
The mountain resort alone covers 564 hectares, an area roughly twice the size of the Summer Palace in Beijing.
While the structures were taken care of by the Qing court before the mid-19th century, later they were dependent on lamas. Then, the area was ravaged by warlords and the Japanese invaders.
Systematic renovation of these structures began only in the late 1970s.
According to Zhang Lifang, the director of the Hebei Provincial Administration of Cultural Heritage, major restoration of the mountain resort and the temples began in 2010.
The project, which included 105 small units cost 600 million yuan ($92 million) then.
The latest restoration of the Temple of Potalaka covers 55 structures, which Sun Yingzhuo, an expert from the Hebei Ancient Construction Research Institutions, says is a breakthrough as the previous restorations only focused on the bigger structures in the temple.
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