Shaolin Temple

Located in the beautiful Songshan Moutains, Dengfeng City, Henan Province, Shaolin Temple is honored as "the Number One Temple under Heaven". It gets its great fame both home and abroad not only because of its long history and China's important Buddhist shrines but also because of the abstruse Wushu Chan (martial arts). The temple is the cradle of the Shaolin Martial Arts and the Chinese Zen Buddhist.

The temple is originally built in 495 during the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534). At that time, an Indian monk, named Batuo, came to Luoyang to spread Buddhist. So the devout Emperor Xiaowen decided to construct temple in the Songshan Moutains to house Batuo. In the temple Batuo translated many Buddhist sutras. In 527, the lengendery Indian monk Bodhidharma came to China and settled at Shaolin Temple. He sit in meditation in a cave facing the wall for nine years and created Chinese Zen. He also invented an exercise of eighteen movements, now known as the Eighteen Routines of Shaolin Martial Arts, imitating the pounce of the tiger, the climb of the monkey, and the jump of the leopard.

Shaolin Temple boasts many exciting attractions, such as the Hall of Heavenly Kings (Tianwangdian), the Mahavira Hall (Daxiongbaodian), the Pagoda Forest, the Dharma Cave and the Shaolin Temple Martial Art Training Center.

The pagoda forest stands on the west side of the temple, containing 167 tombs pagodas. They were built from Tang Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty and featured different styles. The pagodas were built there to keep the remains of the deceased abbots and other eminent monks, and stone table inscribed with the merits and virtues of the dead were erected. The pagodas vary in appearance and are from one to seven stories high, the highest being 15 meters. Some of them have closely-placed eaves, some look like pavilions, and some have a sumeru pedestal. The pagoda foundations are square, rectangular, hexagonal, octagonal, or round.