Atlas of China
Tongchuan 铜川Tóngchuān
Thousand-year kiln fires, the King of Medicine's hill and Xuanzang's last home
About Tongchuan
Tongchuan grew up on coal where the Guanzhong plain climbs onto the Loess Plateau, on the road north from Xi'an to northern Shaanxi. Its older craft is pottery: the Yaozhou Kiln Museum at Huangbao shows the carved celadon prized under the Northern Song, and in Chenlu Ancient Town kilns still burn among walls built of old jars. Yaowang Mountain honours the Tang physician Sun Simiao, and at Yuhua Palace the monk Xuanzang spent his last years translating sutras.
Listed sites in Tongchuan
13 sites in Tongchuan are on the official lists. Those with a page of their own link to it; the rest open as cards on the map.
- Chenlu Ancient Town 陈炉古镇 4A scenic area · on the map
A hillside pottery town south-east of central Tongchuan, the one Yaozhou-ware kiln centre that kept making ceramics after the Song and Yuan dynasties, where by local tradition the kiln fires have never gone out. - Huaxi Valley, Yijun 动漫花溪谷 4A scenic area · on the map
A flower-garden park on the edge of Yijun town, planted with herbaceous peonies, a medicinal-herb valley and bamboo, with windmills, a play castle and other attractions for children, a 100 m slide and a toboggan run of about 1 km. - Jinsuoguan Stone Forest 金锁关石林 4A scenic area · on the map
A sandstone landscape in the hills of Jinsuoguan, north of central Tongchuan, where rockfalls and weathering have left a maze of pillars, cliffs and boulders, unusual on the plateau north of the Wei River. - Xishan Shengjing 溪山胜境 4A scenic area · on the map
A wooded valley of red Danxia sandstone cliffs at Zhaojin, said to be the landscape behind Travellers among Mountains and Streams, the famous painting by the Northern Song artist Fan Kuan. - Yaowang Mountain 药王山 4A scenic area · National heritage site · on the map
A temple-covered hill just east of Yaozhou town where the Tang physician Sun Simiao, revered as the 'King of Medicine', is said to have lived in retreat, with Jin- and Yuan-era halls, Yuan murals and a memorial hall on his life and on Chinese medicine. - Yaozhou Kiln Museum 耀州窑博物馆 4A scenic area · National heritage site · on the map
The site museum of the Yaozhou kilns at Huangbao, which from the Tang to the Yuan made what is generally regarded as the finest northern celadon, prized in the Northern Song for its olive-green glaze over carved and later moulded decoration. - Yuhua Palace 玉华宫 4A scenic area · National heritage site · on the map
A forested valley in the north of Tongchuan where Emperor Taizong of Tang completed the Yuhua summer palace in 647; it was turned into a monastery in 651, and the pilgrim-monk Xuanzang spent his last years here translating Buddhist scriptures. - Zhaojin and Xiangshan 照金·香山 4A scenic area · National heritage site · on the map
Zhaojin, in the red Danxia sandstone hills west of Tongchuan, was the centre of the Shaanxi–Gansu Border revolutionary base set up in the early 1930s by Communist leaders including Liu Zhidan and Xie Zichang; its sites include the cliff caves of Xuejiazhai, used as Red Army strongholds, a memorial hall on the base's history first opened in 2004 and rebuilt in 2013, and an immersive light show on the Xuejiazhai battle. - Chongxing Temple Pagoda 重兴寺塔 National heritage site · on the map
A seven-storey hexagonal brick pagoda about 16 m high, built in the Northern Song and the only surviving part of Chongxing Temple, known locally as the Tongchuan Pagoda. - Shende Temple Pagoda 神德寺塔 National heritage site · on the map
A nine-storey octagonal brick pagoda about 35 m tall below the Bushou plateau on the northern edge of Yaozhou town, built in the Song dynasty and repaired under the Ming and Qing. - Yanchang Temple Pagoda 延昌寺塔 National heritage site · on the map
A hexagonal Song-dynasty brick pagoda with close-set eaves, the only building left standing at Yanchang Temple, which by legend was founded by a Northern Wei princess who modelled ten thousand Buddha figures here, hence its other name, Wanfo (Ten Thousand Buddhas) Temple. - Yaozhou Confucian Temple 耀州文庙 National heritage site · on the map
Yaozhou's Confucian temple, founded in the Northern Song and rebuilt and repaired under the Yuan, Ming and Qing, keeps its Lingxing Gate, Ji Gate, side halls and a seven-bay Dacheng Hall whose roof frame preserves Jin and Yuan building features. - Yijun Grottoes 宜君石窟群 National heritage site · on the map
A group of small Buddhist cave temples and cliff carvings from the Northern Dynasties to the Tang scattered across Yijun County, among them Huashiya, whose earliest caves were cut in the early 6th century, and the Fudi Grotto.
On the map
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