Dongguang County 东光县

Setting and landscape

The land is flat, sloping very gently from 14.5 metres in the south-west to 9 metres in the north-east, with low ridges, hollows and sand dunes. Neighbours are Wuqiao (吴桥县) to the south, Nanpi (南皮县) to the north, Fucheng (阜城县) across the canal to the west, and Jingxian (景县) and Botou (泊头市) to the south-west and north-west.

History

The county was set up in 203 BC under the Han, and in 458 the Northern Wei moved the seat of Bohai Commandery (渤海郡) to Dongguang. The Ming abolished the county in 1374, folding it into Fucheng, and restored it in 1380. Between 1950 and 1952 it belonged to Dezhou (德州) in Shandong, returning to Hebei in November 1952; it was merged into Jiaohe County (交河县) in 1958 and restored in July 1961.

What to see

Xiejiaba (谢家坝), on the east bank of the canal at Lianzhen (连镇), is one of the three Hebei elements of the Grand Canal World Heritage site inscribed in 2014. In the late Qing a local family named Xie paid for sticky rice from the south, and the dam was rammed in layers of lime and earth bound with rice paste over a base of cypress piles. It is 218 metres long, 3.6 metres thick and 5 metres high, one of two rammed-earth dams left on the Hebei stretch of the canal, and a national key protected site since 2006.

The Iron Buddha Temple (铁佛寺), originally the Puzhao Temple (普照寺), was founded under the Northern Song; the county government gives the year as 973. Its name board was written by the Buddhist leader Zhao Puchu (赵朴初) and its hall plaques by Pujie (溥杰), brother of the last emperor. The Sakyamuni in the Mahavira Hall is 8.24 metres high and weighs 48 tonnes. A memorial hall to the Yuan-era writer Ma Zhiyuan (马致远), author of "Autumn in the Han Palace" (汉宫秋), stands in the south-west corner of the temple grounds, and Ma Zhiyuan's tomb in the county is a Hebei protected site. North-west of the temple, the Taoist Yongqing Temple (永清观), first built in 1534, stands on Erlanggang (二郎岗), a 140-metre mound made anew when the county government rebuilt the temple in the reform era.

Highlights

• Xiejiaba 谢家坝: Late-Qing sticky-rice and lime dam on the Southern Canal; part of the Grand Canal World Heritage site.
• Iron Buddha Temple 铁佛寺: Northern Song foundation; its Sakyamuni statue is 8.24 m high and weighs 48 tonnes.
• Ma Zhiyuan Memorial Hall 马致远纪念馆: Displays on the Yuan-era writer inside the Iron Buddha Temple grounds.
• Erlanggang Yongqing Temple 二郎岗永清观: Taoist temple on a raised mound, first built in 1534.