Gaozhou Ancient City and Lady Xian Temple 高州古城与冼太庙

About Gaozhou Ancient City and Lady Xian Temple

A qilou in Gaozhou's old city was built in the late Qing to early Republican period on the middle section of Zhongshan Road, personally designed by Li Jilian, a Malaysia-based industrialist and patriotic overseas Chinese leader whose family origin was Xinyi county, following the Southeast Asian architectural style he had long lived under. Many more qilou followed along Zhongshan Road, Nanhua Road, Wenmingmen Road, Ximen Street and Nanguan. They are mostly two- or three-storey brick-and-timber buildings with tiled roofs, decorated with stucco sculpture at the eaves, window lintels, sills and door surrounds. The old qilou on Zhongshan Road were repaired, rebuilt and repainted with city-government funding in 2006, and the street was repaved with granite blocks.

The Xian Tai Miao stands in the city's urban core and was built in the 14th year of the Ming Jiajing reign (1535); it is a national ethnic-unity-and-progress education base and a Guangdong patriotic-education base. Lady Xian, whom it commemorates, was a Lingnan Li-people chieftain of the Southern-and-Northern-Dynasties-to-Sui period, also called Xian Tai Furen and the 'Lingnan Sage Mother', praised by Premier Zhou Enlai as 'China's number-one heroine'; temples dedicated to her number roughly 2,000 worldwide, including in Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Thailand. The Gaozhou temple has red walls and green-tiled roofs, bracket sets and flying eaves, carved beams, and, above its roof, leaping carp and a pair of dragons spitting a pearl; it is laid out in a front hall, a middle hall and a main hall, with a statue of Lady Xian enthroned in the main hall whose internal mechanism lets it stand, sit, and extend or retract its hands. Its halls hold close to a hundred wall-and-eave murals painted across the Ming and Qing dynasties, plus inscribed steles including 'Record of Lady Xian' and 'On Respectfully Visiting the Lady Xian Temple', and the temple's management office gave annual visitors as about 1.2 million in a China News Service dispatch of 3 April 2022.

What to look for

• The Zhongshan Road qilou designed by Li Jilian in the Southeast Asian style he had lived under in Malaysia, with further examples along Nanhua Road, Wenmingmen Road, Ximen Street and Nanguan.
• The Xian Tai Miao's main hall, where Lady Xian's mechanised statue can be made to stand, sit, or extend and retract its hands.
• The top of the Xian Tai Miao, above which are set leaping carp and a pair of dragons spitting a pearl.
• The close to a hundred Ming- and Qing-dynasty wall-and-eave murals inside the temple's halls, together with the inscribed steles 'Record of Lady Xian' and 'On Respectfully Visiting the Lady Xian Temple'.

Location & getting there

Getting to Gaozhou Ancient City and Lady Xian Temple

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

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