Wuwei Confucian Temple and Western Xia Museum 武威文庙与西夏博物馆

About Wuwei Confucian Temple and Western Xia Museum

The institution describes itself as comprising the Wuwei Western Xia Museum, the Wuwei Confucian Temple, a national key cultural relic protection unit, and the Daxing temple and Tang bell, a provincial protection unit. The Western Xia Museum describes itself as one of only two museums in the country devoted specifically to Western Xia material; it was begun in 1999, opened in May 2001 and holds more than 1,000 Western Xia objects unearthed at Wuwei, among them gold, silver, bronze and porcelain ware, stone carvings, thangkas, wooden paintings, coins, silk textiles and documents in Western Xia and Tibetan script. Its best-known holding is the Western Xia stele (重修护国寺感应塔碑), itself a national key cultural relic protection unit.

The Confucian temple was begun in the 2nd to 4th years of the Ming Zhengtong reign (1437-1439). It faces south, is laid out as courtyards, and was originally made up of three groups of buildings — the Wenchang palace in the east, the temple in the centre and the Liangzhou prefectural school in the west — over 30,096 square metres, measuring 198 m north to south and 152 m east to west. The museum calls it the largest and best-preserved Confucian temple in north-west China and notes that in Ming and Qing times it was known as 陇右学宫之冠, the foremost seat of learning in Longyou; the Gansu Daily feature adds that it is called one of the country's three great Confucian temples.

The layout runs from the Lingxing gate, a wooden archway of the Zhengtong era with four pillars and three bays, through the Ji gate to the Dacheng hall — three bays wide and three deep, with a double-eaved hip-and-gable roof. Behind stands the Zunjing pavilion, a two-storey earth-and-timber building on a 2 m brick-faced platform which the feature calls the tallest surviving ancient multi-storey building in Wuwei. The Wenchang palace centres on the Guiji hall, whose plaques the Gansu Daily feature calls the best-preserved, largest and most valuable set in the Hexi region; they run from the Kangxi period to 1939, and 聚精扬纪 and 书城不夜 were included in 中华名匾 in 1992. The prefectural school survives only as the Zhonglie and Jiexiao shrines, the rest having been destroyed in the Wuwei earthquake of 1927. The temple was listed as a fourth-batch national key cultural relic protection unit in 1996 and rated a national AAAA-grade tourist attraction in 2005.

What to look for

• The Western Xia stele (重修护国寺感应塔碑), a national key cultural relic protection unit displayed in the Western Xia Museum
• The Dacheng hall, the temple's main hall, with its double-eaved hip-and-gable roof and glazed tiles
• The Guiji hall in the Wenchang palace, with its plaques — including 聚精扬纪 and 书城不夜, both included in 中华名匾 in 1992
• The Zunjing pavilion, which the Gansu Daily feature calls the tallest surviving ancient multi-storey building in Wuwei
• The Zhuangyuan bridge over the half-moon Pan pool, reached through the Lingxing gate and the Ji gate

Location & getting there

Getting to Wuwei Confucian Temple and Western Xia Museum

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