★ Tourist location: Suzhou Hanshan Temple

Coming out of Fengqiao is the Hanshan Temple Scenic Area. Also thanks to Zhang Ji's song "Night Mooring on Maple Bridge","Hanshan Temple outside Gusu City, the bell reaches the passenger ship at midnight", Hanshan Temple has also become a famous temple in Gusu.

Of course, this temple itself is an ancient temple. It was built during the Tianjian period of the Liang Dynasty in the Southern Dynasties. It was originally named Miaolipming Pagoda Courtyard. It covers an area of about 10,000 square meters and has a building area of more than 3,400 square meters. The scale should be quite large.

Hanshan Temple belongs to the Linji Sect of Zen Buddhism. During the Zhenguan period of the Tang Dynasty, the famous monks Hanshan He Xiqian founded Hanshan Temple. Over the past thousand years, Hanshan Temple has experienced at least five fires, and the last time it was rebuilt during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty. Historically, Hanshan Temple itself was one of the top ten famous temples in China. Otherwise, Zhang Ji would not have known the name of Hanshan Temple. Of course, Hanshan Temple became even more famous because of this poet who was not particularly famous in the Tang Dynasty. Later, Tang Yin and Wen Zhengming, the talented scholars of Suzhou, lived in Suzhou, and naturally left a large number of poems and poems, all of which had fragments of inscriptions left in the temple.

Most of the temples in Hanshan Temple are buildings in the Qing Dynasty. Unlike common temples, it does not have a strict central axis. Although there are also conventional buildings such as the Gate, Tianwang Hall, Arhat Hall, Great Compassion Hall, Daxiong Hall, Bell Tower, and Sutra Tower, its arrangement and layout are also different from our common temples.

The mountain gate has a beautiful name "Shanmen Sunset". The scenery must be the most beautiful when the sun sets in the west. Because the mountain gate is next to the ancient canal, which is the Fengjiang section of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, the sunset on the river must be very beautiful.

Behind it is the Hall of Kings, but the Four Great Vajra are not colored sculptures, but all gold statues, with a very powerful image. Although the colors are different, the four major King Kong are also standard.

There is a stone carving in the flower bed on the left side of the main garden. This is the "Hanshi Remains", a relic left by two eminent monks during the Zhenguan period of Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty. It is said that Hanshan and Shi De were good friends who grew up together since childhood. Later, Han Shan's parents engaged him to a girl, but the girl liked Shi De. After Hanshan learned the truth, he left his hometown and went to Suzhou alone to become a monk and cultivate. After Shi De knew the truth, he went to Suzhou to find Hanshan and converted to Buddhism with him.

On the left and right sides of the courtyard are the Arhat Hall and the Hall of Great Compassion. The main hall is the Hall of Great Xiong. It is five rooms wide and four rooms deep. It is 12.5 meters high and has a single eaves resting on the top of the mountain. In the center of the terrace, there is a bronze tripod on the hearth, with the words "serious" engraved on the front and the words "refined into steel" on the back. There is also a Buddhist legend here. It is said that the "Diamond Sutra" was put into a cauldron and burned, but the scriptures were safe and sound. I don't know what material the book was made of. The eighteen Arhats enshrined on both sides are said to have been relocated from Wutai Mountain and were forged during the Chenghua period of the Ming Dynasty.

Of course, Sakyamuni is enshrined in the Daxiong Hall, so there is nothing to say. However, the offerings behind the Buddha statue are quite different from those in other temples. It does not dedicate Nanhai Guanyin here, but instead enshrines the portraits of Hanshan in the Tang Dynasty and two eminent monks. The portrait was done by Luo Pin, one of the eight monsters in Yangzhou in the Qing Dynasty. Han Shan pointed to the ground with his right hand and his chest exposed to his belly. He did not recite sutras with a kind expression like ordinary eminent monks.

The bell tower of Hanshan Temple is very famous, which also depends on the widespread circulation of Zhang Ji's Seven Wonders poem. The bell tower is a small two-story building with octagonal angles. The stone tablet downstairs was erected during the reconstruction of Hanshan Temple. It is said that the bell he heard in Zhang Jishi's poem came from here, but the building and bell are no longer from the Tang Dynasty. This large bell, recast during the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, is known as the "World's No. 1 Buddha Bell". It is an ancient bronze bell imitating the Tang style. It has a total weight of 108 tons, a height of 8.588 meters, and a maximum diameter of the bell bottom skirt of 5.188 meters. The main inscription on the clock face is the 69800-word full text of the "Mahayana Wonderful Fa Lotus Sutra", with a total of 70094 words engraved.

Further back is the Sutra Tower, which is three rooms wide, 9.8 meters wide, and 9.2 meters deep. The roof carving is the story of the characters in "Journey to the West". There is a Hall of Hanshi in the building. Statues of the two people stand in the hall. Behind the statue are stone carvings of a thousand-handed Guanyin. The four words "Now Thousand Hands Eyes" came from the hand of Shi Yunyu, the No. 1 scholar in Suzhou during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty.

There is a stone tablet on display in the ancient monument corridor, engraved with Zhang Ji's "Night Mooring on Maple Bridge". This stone tablet was written by Yu Yue, a famous scholar in the late Qing Dynasty. It is about 3.5 meters high and about 1 meter wide. It was not the only Yu family who carved steles for Hanshan Temple by literati and literati in the past. It is said that the first piece was written by Wang Si of the Song Dynasty, but it has long disappeared due to repeated wars. When Hanshan Temple was rebuilt in the Ming Dynasty, Wen Zhengming, a scholar from Gusu, rewritten it, but due to repeated fires, only the ruins of the monument were left, leaving only the words Shuang, Di, Gu, Su, etc. only.

The Puming Pagoda is very grand. In fact, I can see it from afar. It is very tall. It looks like it was built on the central axis of Hanshan Temple, at least it didn't deviate too much. Although it looks very new, due to its height, it is expected that it will soon become a landmark building of Hanshan Temple.

In addition to Hanshan Temple itself, there are many scenic spots around the temple that can be visited for free. The spirit of harmony between Hanshan and Shide can be seen everywhere in these garden-style buildings. The two men's questions and answers are very widely circulated in the Buddhist community and among the people. Han Shan asked: "There are people in the world who slander me, deceive me, humiliate me, laugh at me, despise me, despise me, hate me, and deceive me. How should they be dealt with?" Shi De said: "Just endure him, let him, let him, avoid him, respect him, ignore him, and watch him in ten years!"