The four seasons are plain, shallow and shallow, and unconsciously, the years are far away. The leaves are falling, the cold wind is severe, and the late autumn of this year is fast and unexpected. Like a trip to Fahai Temple to see the murals, the planned date was not booked.
Perhaps it was because the obsession with going to Fahai Temple for a long time was too deep, and after several twists and turns, I finally brushed the weekend reservation ticket in the second week. Therefore, I couldn't wait to run to the Fahai Temple at the southern foot of Cuiwei Mountain at the mouth of the Shijingshan District.
According to the mountain layers, sitting north and south facing the Fahai Temple, was built in the fourth year of the Ming Dynasty in 1439 (1440), it used carpenters, stonemasons, bricklayers, lacquermakers, painters and other temple buildings, mural paintings a total of 169 people, took 4 years and 8 months, until the orthodox eight years to complete the completion.
Fahai Temple was initiated and funded by Li Tong, a royal eunuch who served the emperors of the Five Dynasties, and jointly assisted by the cabinet ministers of the imperial court, the official eunuch group, and the upper echelons of Lamaism. Emperor Ming Yingzong gave the title of "Dharma Sea Zen Temple", which means "the Dharma is boundless and vast as the sea".
What attracted us to Fahai Temple was the mural in the Temple's Daxiong Treasure Hall, which is famous for its exemplary works of Ming Dynasty courtyard paintings. It is said that these murals are the oldest and most complete surviving in Beijing, filling the gap in the Dunhuang Caves without Ming Dynasty murals, and occupying an important position in the existing mural art in China.
Ming Dynasty mural with "naked eye 3D" effect
The autumn sun shone brightly, silently shining on the window ledge of the Great Treasure Hall of the Hexagonal Diamond Flower. As requested, we made an appointment five minutes in advance, changed into special shoe covers and stood in line in front of the temple.
Before checking the ticket, the staff informed everyone that in order to protect the cultural relics, photography and video could not be taken during the visit, and the partners provided a special cold light flashlight to watch the murals together. After the group of eighteen people entered the dark hall with the windows closed, the door of the temple was quietly closed...
In the shadows, he saw the statue of the Third Buddha of Mercy in the middle of the main hall, and the full-time commentator called everyone to start the tour from the middle of the main hall.
Following the guidance of the tour guide, looking up, there are three Ming Dynasty algae wells at the top of the Daxiong Treasure Hall, the inside of the algae well is round, the middle is octagonal, and the outside is square. The space from the bottom of the algae well to the top of the space one meter deep is painted with "mandalas" and more than 200 bodhi statues, which are still exquisite after more than 500 years of tempering.
Behind the three Buddhas, there is a magnificent "Auspicious Cloud Map". Colorful clouds are like rolls, covering the entire wall. Look closely at each cloud with cloud eyes, and they are either like cute smiling children or like playful wide-eyed beasts.
The east and west walls of the main hall are two "Buddhas Attending the Meeting" drawn according to the symmetrical painting method. I saw four bodhisattvas, five Buddhas, six Guanyin or Dharma holders, or handprints, sitting elegantly on the auspicious clouds in the shape of a dragon.
The "Buddha's Attendance" is bounded by auspicious clouds, and the composition of the entire mural is magnificent and magnificent. The bodhisattvas above the auspicious clouds seem to be floating in the celestial realm, preaching the scriptures and going to the meeting to participate in meditation.
The soaring sky on the cloud dragon and the bodhisattva slowly moving forward are like a pure, special, bright and harmonious Wonderland of the Buddha Kingdom. Under the auspicious clouds are the waterfalls of the trees, the rocks of the mountains, the auspicious grasses of the flowers, and the purple and red dust of all sentient beings.
The narrator told us that the murals of Fahai Temple still maintain bright colors, mainly because the court painting non-commissioned officers adopted the "stacked halo dyeing" technique of layers of paint.
"Stacked halo dyeing" is layered or smudged dyeing, or light in turn, or thick in turn, and some parts of the murals of Fahai Temple are stacked and dyed up to seven layers.
The painters with extraordinary skills directly inherited and developed the heavy color painting method of "stacking halo baking dyeing" in the Tang and Song Dynasties, and they are also quite elaborate in the use of pigments, and more natural mineral pigments such as lapis lazuli, crystal, and cinnabar are used, so that the murals are still vividly colored.
But the dust and light accumulated over time also have a great impact on the mural. From the "Buddha's Meeting Map", you can glimpse the wandering and haunting traces of light and shadow.
About a meter from the bottom of the wall is a group of more brilliant auspicious clouds. It is said that the east and west walls originally enshrined eighteen arhats, which were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Since the base of the arhat obscures the auspicious clouds at the bottom of the wall, these murals, which have revealed their true faces for only a few decades, are more fresh and bright than the colors of the bodhisattvas at the top of the wall.
Turning to the back of the Third Buddha, the wall presents three "Three Great Scholars": the Water Moon Guanyin is centered, the right side is Manjushri Bodhisattva, and the left side is Puxian Bodhisattva.
The most breathtaking thing is the "Water Moon Guanyin Statue". More than 3 meters high, Shuiyue Guanyin wears a crown on her head, her face is serene and warm, she wears a green skirt on the upper body and a loose jacquard violet skirt on the bottom, and her whole body is covered with string of jewels and gorgeous decorations, and a hazy white light veil is wrapped around her.
But seeing this white light and delicate as spider silk, as thin as cicada wings, exquisite to the extreme, and as if there is a gust of light wind blowing, let Guanyin's clothes flutter, and the atmosphere is vivid and natural.
In order to explain the white yarn that presents the naked eye "3D" effect, the narrator uses side light to illuminate the corner of the white yarn. We were pleasantly surprised to see that the white yarn was decorated with six diamond petals, outlined with muscovite, and made of real gold gold jacquard at the intersection of the fibers, each petal consisting of 7 points and 48 threads.
The shawl of less than 0.7 square meters was painted with nearly 20,000 strokes, so dedicated to the exquisite work, to create a natural beauty like spring clouds floating in the sky, flowing water and clouds.
When the light shines on the water moon Guanyin picture from below to the top, we can clearly see the outline of the golden thread protruding from Guanyin's body. It turns out that this is a "asphalt pile gold" painting technique. Asphalt gold stacking techniques include highly difficult techniques such as gold sticking, mixing gold, drawing gold, and allocating gold.
The gold powder stacking makes each contour line have a unique three-dimensional effect of relief, which is also not available in the Dunhuang murals or Yongle Palace murals. From the front, the gold thread is hidden in the pattern, and when backlit, the outline of the gold thread protruding from the outer edge of the gem on Kannon's body can be clearly seen.
It has to be mentioned that the non-commissioned officers of the Fahai Temple have applied two major painting techniques to a divine realization - asphalt powder stacking gold, stacking halo dyeing, these two "stunts" constitute the so-called "naked eye 3D" effect. The multicolored gemstones worn by the bodhisattvas, Guanyin and celestial goddesses in the murals are three-dimensionally vivid and radiant, emitting dazzling light. If you don't look closely, you will completely mistakenly think that the fresco is inlaid with real gems.
Opposite the "Three Great ShiTu" are the two sides of the back door of the main hall, which can only be seen in the murals of Fahai Temple, which is in line with the Tang and Song Dynasties.
The "Emperor Shi Brahma Ritual Buddha Protector Map" depicts the marching scene of the twenty heavenly gods and goddesses headed by Emperor Brahma Buddha.
There are emperors, queens, kings, maids, luxes and boys in the picture, nearly 2 meters high, only 50 centimeters low, and there are auspicious clouds, flowers, animals and so on. Gods and Buddhas and ghosts, with different postures and different looks, but they are all subtle and lifelike.
Whether they are gods or monsters or animals in the murals, their images are real and beautiful. From the character modeling, you can get a glimpse of their legendary story. The exquisite painters skillfully integrate the Buddhist collection and enlightenment meaning into the murals, so that the viewer can feel the deep void spiritual realm and the ultimate ideal of compassion in Buddhism.
Due to the large number of characters, the narrator's sentence "Everyone who has an aura on his head is a god" makes people can't help but be amused, it seems that people often say "god with an aura", there is a reason!
Follow the narrator to swim in the fresh, clear and solemn Buddha Wonderland of the Ming Dynasty murals, and the twenty minutes of viewing time pass by. I wanted to take a closer look at the original murals, but I was not allowed.
Fahai Temple "Five Gems"
Stepping out of the gate of the Great Treasure Hall, in front of the outdoor autumn sun, the clear light is quiet and leisurely. In front of the temple stand two huge whitebark pines.
Their lush green crowns are more than 30 meters high, and their white dry scales are mottled, like two silver dragons guarding the main hall, the two kings of the whitebark pine trees in the capital city that are thousands of years old, and one of the "five gems" of Fahai Temple.
In the middle of the Ancestral Master Hall on the east side of the Daxiong Treasure Hall is a large clay fan bronze bell cast in the twelfth year of the Ming Dynasty. The large bell is exquisitely cast, the Sanskrit on the bell body is clear and neat, and it is also one of the "five gems" of Fahai Temple.
After more than 500 years of ups and downs, there are many ancient trees and famous trees in Fahai Temple today.
What is particularly peculiar is that in front of the mountain gate, there is a small stone bridge on the incense road in the southwest, and there is a cooper tree growing in each of the four corners of the small stone bridge, and the roots of the Sensen cooper grow in the stone crevices of the small stone bridge, forming one of the "five absolutes" of Fahai Temple.
Undoubtedly, the other two are naturally the ming dynasty murals that are still intact and glossy, and the "mandala" moi in the Daxiong Treasure Hall.
Heaven and earth and all things, mysterious and endless, is the Spring and Autumn period spanning more than five hundred years, after various natural disasters and man-made disasters, other buildings of Fahai Temple were destroyed or damaged, most of them disappeared before restoration, only the Daxiong Treasure Hall and the Ming Dynasty murals in the hall were miraculously preserved intact, and they still look golden and brilliant.
Fahai Temple, the pinnacle of Ming Dynasty murals, has vanished the incense mist of the Buddha.
Nowadays, it has become a national cultural relics key protection unit, in order to protect cultural relics and meet the photo needs of tourists, in the four courtyards that have been restored one after another, the staff has used Colo version technology or electronic 3D production technology to fully reproduce the Ming Dynasty murals.
The various exhibitions and elaborate settings in the above pictures allow visitors to come to Fahai Temple to feel the artistic charm of ancient Chinese excellent murals and appreciate the essence of the excellent and splendid culture of the Chinese nation.
The dappled autumn sun shines obliquely through the window ledge of the Medicine Hall, and hordes of students quietly copy the murals in the temple.
People in the world, a few spiritual thoughts, countless truths, such as the fahai temple full of vitality, harmonious and bright murals like traditional art treasures, are also found from the ancestors. Because of what you take, what you will eventually get is a chance, and it is also a definite number!
Practical information
Place: Fahai Temple, Beijing
Hours: 9:00-16:30 (last admission at 16:00, closed on Mondays)
Location: The southern foothills of Cuiwei Mountain at the mouth of the Shijingshan District model in Beijing
Tickets: To visit the original murals, you need to download the "Shijingshan Wen E" APP, and in the reservation of the Shijingshan public cultural service facilities, find the "Fahai Temple Cultural Relics Depository Reservation Area" to make an appointment in advance. Purchase tickets on the spot after reservation, the fare is 100 yuan per person (free of the first ticket of Fahai Temple)
The daily attendance limit for the original murals is 140 people, from 9:40 to 15:50 every hour, a total of seven, each time limited to 20 minutes, each time limit of 18 people. However, only 12 people are open for reservations on the app.
The first entrance ticket to Fahai Temple is 20 yuan for adults, and 10 yuan for students and seniors over 60 years old.
Transportation: Fucheng Gate take bus 336 to Shougang Community, get off and walk for 15 minutes.
The content of this article refers to the exhibition description of Fahai Temple, etc., and the pictures are taken from the scene. For more exciting content, please move on to the video that will be released later.