Foguang Temple East Hall

The East Great Hall (Dongda Dian) of Foguang Temple, on Mount Wutai in Shanxi province, China, is one of the oldest surviving timber buildings in China and one of the best-preserved examples of a Tang-dynasty roof. It was completed in 857, after an earlier temple on the site was destroyed during the anti-Buddhist persecution of 845.

The building and its roof

The hall is a single-storey building of seven bays by four, measuring 34 by 17.7 m (110 by 58 ft). It is covered by a hipped roof, sloping on all four sides, a form that signalled the high importance of the building in the Tang period.

The roof rests on large, complex bracket sets (dougong). Each column top carries a bracket set built from seven different types of bracket, and the sets are very tall in relation to the columns. Crescent-shaped crossbeams join the bracket sets into an inner and an outer ring, and a lattice ceiling hides much of the roof framing from below.

Rank

Measured against the Song building manual Yingzao Fashi (1103), with its eight-rank system of timber sizes, the hall corresponds closely to a seventh-rank building. No other surviving building of the period is known to be of such high rank, which makes it a key reference for how large Tang halls and their roofs were built.

Rediscovery

In late June 1937 a survey team led by the architectural historians Liang Sicheng and Lin Huiyin reached the hall while searching for Tang buildings. The ridge purlin carried no construction date, but on 5 July 1937 the team found ink writing on the underside of a large beam naming the donor, Ning Gongyu. Lin Huiyin then found the same name and the date 857 on a stone dharani pillar in the courtyard, confirming the hall's age.

Heritage status

Foguang Temple was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List on 26 June 2009 as part of the Mount Wutai site. The only older dated timber hall in China is the smaller Great Buddha Hall of nearby Nanchan Temple (782), which has a hip-and-gable roof.