A ground-breaking ceremony was held in Tongsha Ecological Park on May 24 to mark the beginning of the reconstruction of the Millennium Buddhist temple which dates back to 962 A.D. in Dongguan.
A ground-breaking ceremony was held in Tongsha Ecological Park on May 24 to mark the beginning of the reconstruction of the Millennium Buddhist temple which dates back to 962 A.D. in Dongguan.
Zifu Temple, first built in the Guangcheng District of Dongguan in 962 A.D. (during the Yuan Dynasty), will be replicated in Tongshan Ecological Park, three kilometers away from downtown Dongguan. The new site will cover an area of 100 thousand sq. meters, and will be one of the largest Buddhist temples in Guangdong Province.
Zifu Temple is a Buddhist temple which has the longest history and probably the most glories in Guangdong Province: it is home to the world's largest piece of Sakyamuni's bone remains and has three poems written about it by Su Shi, whose works were universally admired by the people of the Song Dynasty (between 960 A.D. and 1279 A.D.) and today's China, according to Shi Mingsheng, the president of Guangdong Association.
But the temple was demolished in order to build up Dongguan No.1 Primary School (Guangcheng Central Primary School) in the 1970s.
(By Morvin Chow)
