Yunnan, China - Xizhou Village - 9 Gods Temple - 5 of 6 - Self Guided Walks and Trails on Waymarking.com

The historical notes in this section were provided to me by the students of Sidwell Friends School who were completing a study abroad semester in Xizhou. Xiandu Si is the temple adjacent to the Main Gate and Jiutan Shen is the 9 Gods Temple.

"The two temples we visited, Jiutan Shen, and Xiandu Si, both have long histories, but the buildings themselves are fairly new, rebuilt within the last few decades. Both were razed to the ground during The Cultural Revolution. Jiutan Shen, as a focal point of the town Xizhou, became a military post, and a popular gathering point for the Red Guard (???). As a result, the temple was utterly destroyed: ripped apart stone by stone, the fengshui trees torn out, and the opera stage, once the region’s most highly ornate and beautiful, destroyed. Worship was forced to stop as even the land, which could be worshiped on without a temple, was being occupied by something wholly unspiritual- the Red Guard; if people attempted to continue their worship, they were chased away and harassed. The temple was destroyed both physically and spiritually. After the destruction by the Red Guard, the land that the temple once stood on was used as a pig slaughter house, further rendering the spiritual space unusable. Eventually, the villagers managed to buy the land back from the butchers after years of fighting, and restore the temple to its current state. Before the destruction of the four olds, the temple was composed of many courtyards, in its new rebuilding within the past ten years, the size has been greatly decreased. No old pictures remain, all burned out of fear of being found with memories of the old, so there is no way to remember the past size or extravagance except through memory, and those are fading.The size and detail of the temple are not the same, and probably never again will be, but now it is once again a place where people can worship and remember their belief and practice."

To learn more about the study abroad program at Sidwell Friends School please follow this link: (visit link)

Student blog posts about this region can be read at: (visit link)

Fee?: 0.00 (listed in local currency) Rate the Walk: Approximate Time to Finish: Not listed Addtional Website URL: Not listed Brochure or Interpretive Signs: Not listed Wherigo Cartridge: Not listed

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