White Cloud Temple

About

The White Cloud Temple — Baiyun Guan — rises in Beijing as one of the most venerable Taoist sanctuaries in China. It is honoured as one of 'The Three Great Ancestral Courts' of the Quanzhen school and bears the title 'The First Temple under Heaven'. Today it serves as the headquarters of the Chinese Taoist Association.

The temple's origins lie in the mid-eighth century of the Tang dynasty, when it was first established as Tianchang Guan, the Temple of Heavenly Perpetuity. During the Jin dynasty it functioned as the Taoist administrative headquarters of the realm.

When Beijing fell to the Mongols in 1215, the precinct came under the care of Qiu Chuji, the Quanzhen patriarch, and emerged as the central seat of his school. Summoned by Genghis Khan, Qiu travelled three years from Shandong to instruct the great khan in Taoist teachings, completing his journey in 1222. After his death his successor Yin Zhiping built a memorial shrine over his grave, and that shrine grew into the White Cloud Temple itself.

The present compound is arranged along a north–south axis with five principal halls: the Main Gate, the Yuhuang Hall, the Laolü Hall, the Qiuzu Hall, and the Sanqing Hall. The Yuhuang Hall, raised in 1661, is dedicated to the Jade Emperor. The Laolü Hall is the setting of twice-daily liturgy. The Qiuzu Hall stands over Qiu's resting place, and the Sanqing Hall holds statues of the Three Pure Ones above and the Four Celestial Aides below.

History

The temple's history began in the mid-eighth century when it was founded as Tianchang Guan under Tang state patronage. After Beijing was taken by the Mongols in 1215, the abbey came into the hands of Qiu Chuji of the Quanzhen tradition, who undertook his celebrated journey to instruct Genghis Khan in Taoist teachings.

After Qiu's death the memorial shrine over his grave grew into the White Cloud Temple itself. Under the Ming, clergy of the Zhengyi school administered the precinct while continuing Quanzhen ordination traditions, until the seventeenth century when the Quanzhen master Wang Changyue resumed direct Quanzhen control. The temple closed for a period after 1949 but reopened as a functioning monastery and now serves as the seat of the Chinese Taoist Association.

Significance

Every year on the nineteenth day of the first lunar month, devotees gather at the temple for a festival celebrating Qiu Chuji's birthday, the day on which it is held the master may return to earth as an immortal. The Quanzhen ordination tradition once observed here was among the most rigorous in the Taoist world, and the temple remains the principal centre of Quanzhen practice in modern China.