Dr. Mark Nan Tu

I visited the Dajue Temple with my friends during the Spring Festival�s holiday.

Dajue Temple is near by the Summer Palace. It is the nearest temple to the city. There is a path just out side the Summer Palace which leads to the Dajue temple. It is very close to the Jiufeng National Park and the Phoenix hill.

Established in the forth year of Xianyong in Liao Density (1068), Dajue Temple locates at the path of a spring brooking. The temple faces the east which is the Qidan people�s custom of admiring sun-rise. The buildings of the temple are scattered over the hills of the mountain. The temple, from the east to the west, consists of the Hill Gate (the main entrance), the pavilion housing a stone tablet, the Bell Tower, the Sky King Hall, the Grand Hall, the Buddha of Immeasurable Life Hall, the Sharira Tower, the Dorgan King Hall. Most of those buildings were rebuilt in Qing Density.

There were few visitors when I arrived. To my surprise, the ticket was very cheap, only RMB10. I found there was not a single monks in the temple and it was actually managed by Beijing Tour Administration Bureau, same as the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City. The visitors can see the trace of professional management quickly. Comparing with the tickets of Jietai Temple and Tanzhe Temple, which were RMB35 and RMB40, the Dajue temple was a lot cheaper and were more professionally managed . People can easily see the different between the nonprofit business and for profit business.

I was attracted by the exhibition near the entrance. It showed all the land contracts signed through the temple history. There was a time when a lot of land was owned by Dajue Temple. They rented the land to farmers for cropping, like a land lord. The amount of land owned can be viewed as an indicator for the prosperity of the Dajue temple. However, at the late of Qing Density, their land became less. Dajue Temple was deserted after 1949 and many small villages were build on the land of the Dajue temple.

Out of the temple, I hiked the back of the hill. There was a large land for the military installation, Half way was a unique garden. The small trails and the spring water created perfect pictorial scenery.

Returning to the city, my friends and I discussed what the effect would bring to Chinese economy of the privatization of the land in China, and, when the privatization would come.

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The life is like light of the sundown,
Wealth is like the bloom on the tile,
Yanjing Beer in the hand and we shall all drunk tonight,
The sun will always rise out tomorrow.