Atlas of China
Guoqing Temple 国清寺Guóqīng Sì
National heritage site · Taizhou, Zhejiang
- Time needed
- 2–3 hours
- Days to budget
- Half a day
- City
- Taizhou
- Region
- Zhejiang
- Type
- Culture
- Listed as
- National heritage site
About Guoqing Temple
The temple at the southern foot of Tiantai Mountain where the Tiantai school of Buddhism began, founded in 598 under the Sui dynasty in fulfilment of the last wish of the school's founder Zhiyi and rebuilt under the Yongzheng Emperor in the 1730s. The Japanese monk Saichō studied here in 804–805 before founding the Tendai school, and the temple is still honoured as an ancestral seat of Tendai, with memorial steles set up by Japanese Buddhists. Its halls hold a 13-tonne Ming bronze Shakyamuni and Yuan-dynasty nanmu figures of the eighteen arhats, and outside the gate stands the hollow, roofless Sui Pagoda, one of the oldest brick pagodas in China.
How to get to Guoqing Temple
On the north-east edge of Tiantai town, about 10 km by road from Tiantaishan station on the Hangzhou–Taizhou high-speed railway.
Nearby
Also within 20 km: Tiantai Mountain Great Waterfall and Qiongtai Valley 天台山大瀑布（琼台仙谷） (under 10 km), Tiantai Mountain 天台山 (10 km).
On the map
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