A temple's view has its say

From the platform of Foguang Temple's East Hall, the view opens toward the west.

Mountains rise and fall beyond the temple, deep in Wutai county, Xinzhou, in northern China's Shanxi province. Ridges gather around the complex on three sides, while the land opens toward the west. For more than a millennium, that landscape has shaped the temple's setting.

This summer, something that had appeared in that view is gone.

The transmission towers that rose on the mountains southwest of Foguang Temple last year had been relocated, along with hundreds of other planned or newly built power facilities. By mid-June this year, the rerouted lines serving the forthcoming Xiong'an-Xinzhou High-speed Railway were complete, ahead of trial operations.

This was the latest test of a local regulation that extends protection of Foguang Temple beyond its walls and into the surrounding mountains.

The planned Fanshi-Wutai Expressway, a nearly 65-kilometer project included in Shanxi's 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) highway network, was originally set to pass through the mountains. Its route avoided Foguang Temple's officially designated cultural relic protection area and construction control zone.

Under the protection rules then in force, it was not a violation.

But from the East Hall, the road would have been visible. Bridges, concrete structures and traffic would have entered a view that had changed remarkably little since the Tang Dynasty (618-907).

After months of consultations with experts and government departments, the highway was eventually rerouted behind the mountain ridge, avoiding Foguang Temple's environmental coordination area.

The revised alignment added more than 7.6 km to the route, including a 3.9-km tunnel, and was approved by the National Cultural Heritage Administration.

The experience prompted local lawmakers and heritage experts to develop a way to give the surrounding landscape its own legal protection.

For Jia Jianjun, director of the legislative affairs commission of the standing committee of the Xinzhou people's congress, the highway exposed a gap in the existing protection system.

Jia says the original approach was to authorize Wutai county to determine the exact boundaries of the cultural landscape based on local conditions. But that approach was eventually abandoned.

"If the regulation does not define the substantive scope of the cultural landscape, its effectiveness is, in a sense, reduced," he says.

Lawmakers instead chose to put the boundary directly into the regulation.

The resulting regulation on protecting Foguang Temple's cultural landscape took effect on May 1,2025. It is China's first local regulation specifically tailored to protect the cultural landscape of a single national-level protected cultural relic site.

The regulation places about 84 square kilometers around Foguang Temple under protection, an area about 125 times the original cultural relic protection area and 20 times the construction control zone.

The significance of that landscape becomes clearer through the temple's history.

Foguang Temple is one of China's most important surviving examples of ancient architecture. Its East Hall, built during the Tang Dynasty, is the largest and best-preserved surviving Tang wooden structure in China. The temple also retains Tang-era sculptures, inscriptions and paintings.

In 1937, architectural historian Liang Sicheng and architect Lin Huiyin traveled to the remote temple after studying a mural at the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, Gansu province, depicting Foguang Temple.

Their investigation established that the East Hall dated to the Tang Dynasty, challenging the prevailing assumption that no Tang wooden buildings had survived in China.

Lu Yi, director of the Shanxi Academy of Ancient Building and Painted Sculpture and Fresco Preservation, says the combination of surviving architecture and artworks is what makes Foguang Temple particularly significant.

"Through a series of investigations, they ultimately established that Foguang Temple was a Tang Dynasty building, with its Tang architecture, painted sculptures, ink inscriptions and paintings forming its 'four treasures'," Lu says.

He believes the temple's value extends beyond its walls.

Foguang Temple was built into its mountain setting. The complex is enclosed by mountains to the southeast, north and east, while the western side opens toward a broad mountain view.

Unlike the predominantly south-facing orientation of traditional Chinese buildings, Foguang Temple faces west, about 15 degrees south of west.

Lu says the site's selection and construction were major undertakings in ancient times, and that the relationship between the building and its surrounding environment is also part of its historical value.

Wang Jun, deputy director of the historical cities institute with the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design, says that the temple effectively "borrows" the surrounding landscape, making the mountains part of its architectural composition.

The challenge was then to turn that view into a boundary that could be protected by law.

The boundary was not simply drawn as a radius around the temple. Researchers at the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design used geographic information systems to analyze views from key locations, including the East Hall platform. The analysis simulated a person about 1.55 to 1.6 meters tall standing on the East Hall platform and mapped the sections of mountain visible from there.

The result gave planners a way to translate a view into a measurable area they could incorporate into protection planning.

Then the new rules faced their first major test.

In September 2025, four transmission towers appeared on a mountain southwest of Foguang Temple. The towers were part of the external high-voltage power supply project for the Xiong'an-Xinzhou High-speed Railway.

Heritage specialists subsequently examined five high-voltage transmission lines and more than 200 towers under construction or planned. More than one-third of the towers would have been visible from Foguang Temple.

The power grid operator, together with local authorities and heritage specialists, adjusted the routes and relocated the relevant towers while maintaining the power supply needed for the railway.

Jia says the episode showed the practical importance of having the landscape boundary written into law.

"If you draw the boundary, all our protection measures operate within that framework. That was the original thinking, and it would have made things easier for the legislative body. Now the responsibility lies with us," he says.

"Once we legislate, the law should work."

The enlarged protection area also includes nearby villages, where residents continue to live.

Wang Jun from the historical cities institute says the protection framework takes in their traditional patterns, historical appearance and surrounding human environment, rather than treating the mountains as an isolated backdrop.

That broader scope also means closely monitoring what is built within the protected area. The need for such monitoring became clear before Spring Festival in 2026.

A fire-monitoring tower was approved after an assessment found that it would not be visible from the temple. During construction, its actual location shifted by about 600 meters from the point originally submitted for assessment. A field inspection found the discrepancy. After experts verified the situation, the tower was dismantled.

Since March, local temple conservation and utilization authorities have operated eight observation points around the temple and regularly patrolled the cultural landscape. Wutai county's culture and tourism bureau supplements the patrols with drone inspections.

For Lu, such work reflects a broader understanding of what it means to protect an ancient building.

Lu says Foguang Temple's architecture, painted sculptures, ink inscriptions and paintings, and the surrounding landscape should be understood as an inseparable whole.