Dule Temple in Jixian County, Tianjin

Dule Temple, also known as the Great Buddha Temple, is located in Jizhou District, Tianjin, China. It is one of the three remaining Liao Dynasty temples in China, and also one of the famous ancient buildings that still exist today. Although Dule Temple is a millennium-old famous temple, its history is quite vague, with origins that are untraceable. The earliest history of the temple can be traced back to the tenth year of the Zhenguan period (636 AD). Dule Temple covers a total area of 16,000 square meters. The two oldest existing buildings within the temple, the Mountain Gate and the Guanyin Pavilion, were both rebuilt in the second year of the reign of Emperor Shengzong of the Liao Dynasty (984 AD). In the nineteenth year of the Republic of China (1930), Dule Temple became famous both domestically and internationally after being successively investigated and published by Japanese scholar Sekino Tadashi and Chinese scholar Liang Sicheng.