Photos of South Shaolin Temple Site

According to legend, after the 13 monks of the Shaolin Temple in Songshan, Henan, helped Tang Taizong to unify China, Tang Taizong bestowed him on "monk soldiers" and allowed the establishment of ten branch temples across the country. The Linquan Courtyard in Jiulian Mountain, Putian County, is one of the earlier branch temples established among the ten branch temples of Shaolin Temple. During the reign of Emperor Taizong of Tang Dynasty, monks from Shaolin Temple in Songshan went south and came to Jiulian Mountain not far away and lived in Linquanyuan. After that, Linquanyuan changed its name to Linshan Shaolin Temple. In the Northern Song Dynasty, the temple was more prosperous, with more than 500 monks, and the martial arts style was extremely prosperous. Because of its large scale (covering an area of about 30,000 square meters), the martial arts style was at its peak, affecting southern China. Northern Shaolin's leg work is also known as "North Legs and Nanquan". During the Southern Song Dynasty, the monasteries still maintained a prosperous trend. Liu Kezhuang also praised "the Shaolin of Songshan in the city". Linquanyuan was destroyed in the early Qing Dynasty. In the early Qing Dynasty, the Southern Shaolin Temple was inextricably linked with the Heaven and Earth Society in the anti-Qing and Ming Dynasty struggle. At present, there are only some affiliated temples around the site of South Shaolin Temple, such as Zifu Temple and Honghua Pavilion. From 1986 to 1988, during the cultural relics census in Putian County, the ruins of this monastery, which had been annihilated for hundreds of years, were discovered, and 5 stone troughs of the Northern Song Dynasty were found engraved with the words "Monk Soldiers" and "Zhu Luohan Yu Jiancha San". In 1998, the reconstruction of the South Shaolin Temple was completed. In December 2006, the Southern Shaolin Temple officially accepted the management of the abbot of Guanghua Temple, and became a unified system of the two temples. The name of the "Southern Shaolin Temple" was inscribed by Mr. Zhao Puchu, president of the Buddhist Association of China.