Jinzhou is in Liaoning, in Northeast China.
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Liaoning · City Guide
Jinzhou, Where a Liao Hall Still Holds Seven Buddhas.
Overview
Why Go
The main hall at Fengguo Temple in Yixian was raised in 1020 and is a large single-storey timber hall surviving from the Liao. Its bracket sets carry a roof of nearly 2,000 square metres with no interior partition.
Inside stand seven painted Buddhas about nine metres high, side by side across the full width of the hall, with flying figures on the beams above them. The set has been in place since the hall was built.
Yiwulu was designated the guardian mountain of the northeast in imperial ritual, and emperors sent sacrifices to the Beizhen temple below it. The temple keeps a stele forest recording those visits over several dynasties.
A gravel bar links Bijiashan island to the shore and is uncovered twice a day as the tide drops, then submerged again. People walk out and back on the exposed bar, which is about 1.6 kilometres long.
Jinzhou barbecue puts small skewers over charcoal at each table and grills things other places do not, from clams and tofu skin to whole garlic. Several thousand shops trade in the city and the style has spread across the country under the city's name.
See
A hall of 1020 on a raised terrace in Yixian, nine bays long, with the original structure and much of the original painted decoration on the beams. It is one of a small number of pre-Song timber buildings anywhere in China.
The imperial sacrificial temple for the northeastern garrison mountain, with halls up a slope and a forest of stelae left by visiting emperors. The mountain behind holds Qing rock inscriptions, Taoist sites and walking paths.
An island with temple buildings on its summit, linked to the mainland by a natural gravel bar that surfaces at low water. Tide tables are posted at the gate; the crossing window is a few hours and people do get caught out.
A walled county town with Ming wall sections and a pair of Liao brick pagodas standing over the roofs. It is lived in rather than restored for visitors, and the grape trade runs out of it in autumn.
A thirteen-storey Liao brick pagoda in the middle of Jinzhou, with carved Buddha niches and the remains of a temple compound around it. The city grew around the tower and it is now surrounded by ordinary streets.
A morning market that runs for more than a kilometre along the street, which locals call a large in Asia. It opens around four and is finished by nine, selling produce, breakfast and household goods to the city rather than to visitors.
On the Map
Approximate locations of the attractions above, across Jinzhou.
Eat
Small skewers grilled at their own table over charcoal, ordered by the handful and turned as visitors talk. The range is the point: lamb and chicken, but also clams, chicken hearts, tofu skin, garlic and whole small crabs.
Chicken brined with a spice mix, cooked and then smoked over sugar until the skin goes dark amber. Made at Goubangzi in Beizhen since the 1890s and sold whole, vacuum packed, at every station in the province.
Around a dozen vegetables shredded and pickled together in soy, salty rather than sour and eaten with porridge. It was a tribute product in the Qing and is still sold in the same squat jars.
Beizhen grows table grapes across the slopes below Yiwulu and holds a geographical indication. They are sold by the crate along the roads from September, and much of what is eaten fresh in the northeast in autumn comes from here.
Do
The structure is the reason to go: bracket sets several tiers deep, and Liao painting surviving on the beams above the figures. Photography without flash is usually allowed. Give it longer than the statues alone would need.
Check the posted times and start back well before the turn. The bar is wet gravel and uneven, so shoes matter. On days when the low water falls at dawn or dusk there is almost nobody on it.
Order in rounds rather than all at once and let the opening batch tell visitors what to order next. Shops fill from about seven and stay open late. Many will be happy to grill something visitors point at without a shared language.
The market is at its fullest in the hour before light, lit by bare bulbs and strung out along the street. Breakfast stalls are at the near end. It packs up by mid-morning and there is nothing to see afterwards.
When
Mild and dry, with the tidal causeway comfortable to walk and the mountain paths at Yiwulu green. The ideal window.
Hot, humid and the coastal season, with the beaches south of the city busy. Barbecue moves outdoors and the evenings run late.
Grape harvest at Beizhen, clear air and the other good window. Fengguo Temple in low autumn light is the one to plan around.
Cold and windy off the Bohai. The markets run in the dark under bare bulbs and the temple sites are empty. The causeway is walkable but bitter.
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Jinzhou is in Liaoning, in Northeast China.
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