Hangzhen Temple, commonly known as majiawan Temple, is said to have been built in the Tang Dynasty. Xingzhen Temple has been a Buddhist temple since ancient times. The main hall is Mahayana Hall dedicated to Sakyamuni Buddha, Kaye Buddha and Maitreya Buddha. On the right is the Amitabha Hall, dedicated to Amitabha, Guanyin Bodhisattva and Megatrend Bodhisattva. The front hall is a three-way hard mountain hall and a mountain gate, which is dedicated to Guanhe Sifa. This Buddhist temple is called the Temple of Heaven. In addition to offering sacrifices to Buddha, Xingzhen Temple also offers sacrifices to folk gods such as the King of Medicine, the God of Sending Children and the God of Strengthening.
Xingzhen Temple is a temple fair on January 16th and July 15th every year. Temple fairs are often accompanied by fireworks, gongs and drums, singing big dramas and other competitions. These two temple fair days are the biggest festivals in Xizhuang Village except Chinese New Year. Every time he sings a drama, majiawan is surrounded by good men and women from ten villages and eight miles away. Small vendors selling food, clothes, department stores and playing games meet each other, and the sound of hawking and the sound on the stage come and go. It's really lively.
The current Hangzhen Temple was built in the early 1990s, and it was built on the original site according to the original temple regulations. The old temple was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and statues, confessions and water and land paintings were all eradicated and used as schools. There is no evidence to prove whether this ancient temple was built in the Tang Dynasty. 1958 before steelmaking, there was still a big iron bell with a height of more than one person in the temple, which was a relic of the bell tower of the temple. The names of merits and demerits engraved on the ancient clock are clearly written, and people who do good often look at them word by word, looking for clues to the development of their ancestors. Such a huge ancient clock must have a casting age and background, but it was smashed into pieces and thrown into the iron smelting furnace.
There is an ancient pagoda dozens of meters away from Xingzhen Temple. Due to disrepair, it collapsed in the 1970s, only half of it was less than a foot high, and the tomb under the pagoda was exposed. The layout of the tomb is extremely simple, with only a wooden stool, a few white bones and a blue brick epitaph. There is no doubt that a monk in Xingzhen Temple is buried under the tower. This wooden stool is used to place the monk's ashes. The cloth wrapped in the monk's body has already rotted, causing the bones to be scattered all over the floor. The epitaph number, some old people vaguely remember the words "Yuan monk, please sit down". The author analyzes that the words on the epitaph should be "Yuan Monk's Upper and Lower Seats", and the missing two words should be the monk's legal name. However, whether the word "Yuan" represents the Yuan Dynasty or "Orphan" or the common surname "Yuan" cannot be judged, because the ancient people used interchangeable words widely. From this broken pagoda, we can see that Xingzhen Temple has a long history. Many influential monks once presided over it, and they used the tower burial very carefully.
In the late 1970s, the tower was completely destroyed and its epitaph was unknown. Some bricks and stones of the tower foundation can still be found in the homes of nearby villagers. Not sure if it's Donta.
There is a blue brick in the lower corner of the eaves of the monk's room in Xingzhen Temple, which is the only antique in the temple. There is a clear handprint on this square brick, which is called "handprint brick" in academic circles. Bricks with handprints first appeared in Qin and Han Dynasties. Scholars believe that leaving fingerprints or handprints on bricks and tiles is a sign that craftsmen can easily identify. However, some people think that handprint brick belongs to some kind of crushed material. Yin and Yang Feng Shui masters believe that this kind of handprint brick combines the theory of Yin and Yang, and a big handprint is pressed on the brick to suppress evil spirits and protect the safety of the house. Judging from the unearthed cultural relics, this kind of clay-plastered ceramic square brick with handprints mostly appeared in the Tang Dynasty, but what purpose it is is still inconclusive. The old people in the village said that similar bricks were left over from the old temple, but some people said that the bricks appeared on a slope one mile away from majiawan and were moved home by the villagers. The best use of this generous brick is to place water tanks, buckets and saucers, because it is firm and flat and absorbs water. It is impossible to judge whether there are a lot of blue bricks on the slope near the old secret place, whether it is a sloping building or an ancient tomb. Only this square brick with clear fingerprints is left as evidence for future generations to explore.
This temple, rebuilt in the 1990s, belongs to the original site. The only thing that has not been restored is the theater. The theater of the old temple is in the square on the west side of the present temple. The theater is divided into two floors, exquisite and compact, which is convenient for using steam lights and sound reinforcement. With the use of electric lights and public address equipment, this theater has not adapted to the needs of the modern stage, so it has not been rebuilt. Although the temple was rebuilt as it was, the antique buildings eventually lost their charm because of the red bricks, even carving beams and painting buildings did not help.
Xingzhen Temple is the spiritual home of the elderly. On the fifteenth day of the first month, people gathered in temples from different ditches, burning incense and chanting a few words to pray for a long life, less disasters and less difficulties, and peace. Under the epidemic situation, the gate of Xingzhen Temple was locked and rarely opened. Lonely majiawan Temple, without the past incense, there are fewer people. Only the national flag hanging high in the yard adds a warm color to the cold and desolate winter.