Chunqiu Temple 春秋祠

About Chunqiu Temple

According to the temple's own 春秋祠记 record, Shaanxi and Shanxi salt merchants raised 3 million taels of silver over six years to demolish an earlier Guandi Temple on the site and rebuild it as a guild hall dedicated chiefly to Guan Yu, naming it for his fondness for reading the Zuo Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals; the main hall holds statues of Guan Yu, Zhou Cang and Guan Ping, with Guan Yu shown holding the Spring and Autumn Annals.

The State Council listed it as a national-level key cultural-relics protection unit in its sixth batch, in May 2006; Sichuan Online also records it as a national AAA-rated scenic area and a Luzhou municipal patriotic-education site, most recently added to Sichuan's third batch of place-name protection listings. The complex covers 4,500 square meters.

Its lintels, wooden lattice windows, braces and architraves are carved with historical scenes, opera episodes, scenes of daily life, landscapes, and other motifs such as dragons, phoenixes, flowers, birds, insects and fish, worked in round, relief and openwork carving; a Xuyong museum docent singled out the Nine-Dragon beam, Nine-Phoenix beam, Hundred-Birds Plum-Blossom window and a set of 'Eight Views of Xuyong' carvings as the finest examples, and noted that the whole-log carving technique used to make them is no longer practiced.

The complex also houses a salt-transport history display recalling Xuyong's role as one of Sichuan's four Qing-dynasty salt-transport ports, and an exhibition hall on the wartime Xuyong branch campus of the National Southwestern Associated University.

What to look for

• the Nine-Dragon beam, Nine-Phoenix beam and Hundred-Birds Plum-Blossom window, worked in round, relief and openwork carving
• the main-hall statues of Guan Yu, Zhou Cang and Guan Ping
• the salt-transport history display, including a porter's rest-support tool and a stone counterweight inscribed '永边公司'
• the exhibition hall on the wartime Xuyong branch of the National Southwestern Associated University

Location & getting there

Getting to Chunqiu Temple

Check which interiors and courtyards are accessible. Active places of worship and protected monuments may have different visitor rules.

• Search for 春秋祠 with 泸州市 and 叙永县.