About a week ago，When I was in Kunming, I went to visit Golden Temple with Ruoxing, Ruoxing is from Guangzhou, she came here on business, after finishing her work, she’d like to travel around.
After choosing from some choices， I went to the Golden Temple with her.
It is quite a good day, the sunshine is very warm. We went there by shared bikes. For it’s just about 5 km form our inn。
The entrance to the Temple.
There are many tourists. The Golden temple is built by a famous Qing Dynasty general Wu Sangui. About him there are many stories, with the foundation of Qing Dynasty, with his lover Chen Yuanyuan, with the emperor Kangxi.
The Golden Temple located at the east of Kunming City, there is quite a lot tropical plant here. I like the trees with broad leaves, it makes me fell some fresh and clean.
The temple is first built by a official of Ming Dynasty at 1637, and Wu Sangui rebuilt it at 1670.
At first Wu Sangui was a late-Ming dynasty official who has his own fief and army. And Ming dynasty is defeated by the peasant uprising troops lead by Li Zicheng.
Wu had decided to surrendered to Li. When he leads his troops to the capital to seek an audience with Li, he met a man form the capital, Wu asked the man, “What about my family?”, “Arrested by Li”. And Wu said” That's OK, he will release them when I arrived.” Then Wu asked:”What about my father?”, “Arrested by Li.”, Wu didn’t say anything, he continue to ask: “What about my wife Yuanyuan.” “Taken by Li.” Wu was so angry and he turned back, he surrendered to his old enemy-the troops of Qing and defeat Li.
Wu betrayed his state and his nation just for his lover. in history, the judgement of Wu is quite different, someone think he is a traitor to his country, and someone are moved about his love for Chen Yuanyuan.
There is also a museum there, this is a long-handle broadsword which Wu has used. It is 2 meters long, standing before it, you can feel how brave and skillful Wu was. I can’t imagine what can defend from the broadsword’s attack.
On the other side of the museum there displays a sword, it was a magic weapon of Zhenwu Emperor, who is full of mythological color.
The building here is quite wonderful workmanship excelling nature. From many details we can see it. For example, the structure in the above and below pictures are just some decorate of the stair railing, you can see the delicacy figure engraved on them.
This is a very rare tree named Pyinma， Which could be only planted by honorable official. And the tree is more than 400 years old, we can see the trunk had turned into two pieces with a big hole inside.
The temple is the most important place here. In the temple there dedicated the most important 3 persons of Taosim-a Chinese traditional religion. And we can’t take photos there. The object above is a equipment full of magic, it is use to tell one’s fortune.
And it’s quite delicate in structure. On the head there is a dragon and a phenix on the two sides, and it’s entire shape is a Ruyi(a traditional Chinese implement stand for propitious.)
Here is the statue of Chen Yuanyuan in the middle of pond, so you can only watch her beauty in a distance but not touch her. Really quite beautiful.
There are also some imitations of cultural relic displaying here. The above is a relic shows two leopard fighting with a boar, the real relic is made for more than 1000 years.
Except for the temple, another important building there is the bell Tower. It’s quite a traditional wooden architecture with 3 floors.
From the 3rd floor, you have a good sight of the city.
A huge bell hanged on the third floor, get it this high is quite a difficult job.
There is an interesting issue. You may know we Chinese like use stone lion as decorate at the entrance of some important place. And the normal situation is a male lion and a female one, since we like the balance of everything. But in the temple we can see some entrance placed with two male lions.
How can we tell the difference? Pay attention to the forelegs, The male lion is with a ball（the picture below), and the female is with a small lion(the picture above). So we can easily judge some of the stone lions are not reasonable.
Some specialists guess that Wu is not quite get the people’s support, because he leaded to some war which made the common pepole suffer from injury. So they made the mistake to weaken Wu’s luck which means a lot to our Chinese.
Really interesting, is it? Have a good day and expect for my next trip~