Discover Datong
Huayan Temple
华严寺
The largest surviving Liao-dynasty temple complex in China, with a vast 11th-century main hall and, in the Bhagavan Sutra Hall, a famous smiling bodhisattva whose statues have stood untouched for 900 years. The best single stop inside Datong's walls.
The story
What makes this place special
Huayan Temple was founded in 1038 under the Liao dynasty, when Datong was the Liao western capital, and it survives as two linked compounds: the Upper Temple, centred on the Mahavira Hall, and the Lower Temple, centred on the Bhagavan Sutra Repository Hall. The Sutra Repository of 1038 is the single most important building, holding 29 Liao polychrome clay figures and a set of miniature timber 'celestial palace' bookcases that are among the oldest surviving models of Chinese timber architecture. It became a nationally protected monument in 1961. Liang Sicheng surveyed it in the 1930s and his drawings are why it is understood at all.
What you’ll discover
Two compounds reached from the same street. In the Lower Temple's Sutra Repository you stand in a dim hall surrounded by the Liao clay figures - the one everyone comes for is the bodhisattva with palms together and teeth showing in a half-smile, an almost unique piece of eleventh-century portraiture - with the carved wooden bookcases running around the walls. The Upper Temple's Mahavira Hall is one of the largest single-eave halls surviving in China, with Ming sculpture and Qing wall paintings inside. A 43-metre modern pagoda in the compound can be climbed for a view over the old city.
A little local insight
Good to know before you go
- Go to the Lower Temple first and specifically into the Bhagavan Sutra Repository. The smiling bodhisattva and the Liao timber bookcases are the reason the temple is famous, and visitors who start at the big Upper Hall often run out of attention before reaching them.
- The interiors are dark and photography is restricted. Stand still and let your eyes adjust for a minute rather than shooting; the modelling in the Liao figures only reads once you have.
- The pagoda is modern, not Liao. Climb it for the rooftop view over the old city, not as a historical building.
- Go here before Yungang, not after. The Liao sculpture makes much more sense once you have seen it alongside the Wei carving, and if you do the grottoes first you will be too tired to look properly.
- Pair with Shanhua Temple and the Nine Dragon Wall - all three are inside the old walls, within 20 minutes' walk, and together make one coherent half day.
- It appeared as a location in the game Black Myth: Wukong, which has pushed up Chinese domestic visitor numbers sharply; go on a weekday morning.
When to come
Morning on a weekday, when the halls are quiet and there is enough daylight coming through the doors to see the sculpture. Spring and autumn; Datong winters are bitter and the halls are unheated.
Getting around
Mixed. The compounds are at ground level and the courtyards are flat paved stone, so a wheelchair can move between buildings. Each hall is entered over a raised stone threshold and up a short flight of steps, typically three to six, with no ramps - help is needed at every hall door. There is a modest rise between the Upper and Lower compounds. The pagoda is stairs only. A bad knee manages the whole visit comfortably apart from the pagoda.
Worth knowing before you go
The halls face east rather than south, a Khitan Liao convention rather than a Han Chinese one - a small detail that tells you the dynasty at a glance. The modern wooden pagoda in the lower temple has a basement of silver-plated relief panels and a rooftop view over the old city.
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