Henan · Eight Monuments, and the Place They Called the Middle
Shaolin Temple and Mount Song (嵩山少林)
A Buddhist monastery founded in 495, attached to the mountain that Chinese cosmology placed at the centre of the earth. Eight separate monuments here went onto the UNESCO list together, and most visitors see one of them.
Quick Facts
The Short Version
| What it is | A working Buddhist monastery, its burial ground of brick pagodas, and a group of older monuments spread around the foot of Mount Song |
|---|---|
| Where | Dengfeng, under Zhengzhou, in central Henan |
| Founded | 495, under the Northern Wei, for an Indian monk. The Chan tradition traces itself to a later arrival here |
| Heritage status | UNESCO inscribed eight groups of buildings here in 2010, under the name Historic Monuments of Dengfeng in the Centre of Heaven and Earth |
| The Pagoda Forest | Several hundred brick tomb pagodas for abbots and senior monks, spanning the Tang to the Qing. The best thing on the site |
| The martial arts | Real, old, and now also an industry: tens of thousands of students are enrolled in private academies around the temple |
| The mountain | Mount Song itself, with cliff walkways on banded quartzite, is a separate and much longer day |
| Time needed | Half a day for the temple and the Pagoda Forest. Two days to do the listing any justice |
Why Go
You Came for the Temple. The Listing Is Eight Things
1. Dengfeng was the middle of the world, and somebody measured it
Chinese cosmology placed the centre of the earth here, at the foot of Mount Song, the central one of the Five Great Mountains. That was not only a belief. It was a working assumption that the imperial state acted on: this is where you came to make the sacrifices that certified a dynasty, and where the astronomers came to take the measurements that fixed the calendar.
The physical result is a set of monuments across two thousand years within a few kilometres of each other: three carved stone gate-towers from the Han, a brick pagoda from the sixth century, the Zhongyue Temple, the Song dynasty academy at Songyang, the Shaolin complex, and a Yuan dynasty observatory at Gaocheng. The calendar worked out from the observatory’s measurements in the 1280s gives the year as 365.2425 days, the same figure the Gregorian reform adopted three centuries later. UNESCO inscribed the whole group in 2010 as the Historic Monuments of Dengfeng in the Centre of Heaven and Earth.
2. At Shaolin itself, go to the Pagoda Forest
The monastery is small, heavily rebuilt and extremely busy, and an hour covers it. A short walk away is the reason to have come: a grove of several hundred brick pagodas, each the tomb of an abbot or a senior monk, dating from the Tang period through to the present. They vary in height, shape and brickwork by period, standing close together under conifers, and the effect is of a cemetery that is also an architectural sequence.
The martial arts are the other true thing here, though not in the form most visitors expect. The monastery’s fighting tradition is genuinely old and genuinely connected to the place. What surrounds it now is a schooling industry: private academies along the approach road with very large numbers of students, training in blocks on paved ground. Seeing several hundred of them in formation is more interesting than the ticketed demonstration in the hall.
The catch. The approach is a long commercial strip, the temple interior is a slow shuffle in season, and the martial arts demonstration is a stage show sold as an add-on. Expect to be offered a great deal on the way in. The seven other monuments in the listing are scattered around Dengfeng, have no shuttle between them and receive almost nobody, which is the reverse of the problem and needs a car.
Orientation
Two Cities, and What a Car Buys You
Dengfeng sits between Zhengzhou and Luoyang, roughly ninety minutes from either by road, and both have high-speed rail and airports. Buses run to the temple from both cities. Without a car you will see Shaolin and nothing else.
With a car you can add Songyang Academy, the Zhongyue Temple and the observatory at Gaocheng in the same day, which turns a kung fu stop into the thing the UNESCO listing is actually about. None of the three takes long and none of them is crowded.
Practical
Things Worth Knowing
Get to the Pagoda Forest first
It is past the temple and most groups reach it tired. Early it is quiet and the low light on the brick is worth the timing.
Watch the schools, not only the show
The academies train in the open along the approach road in the morning. That is the real scale of it.
Decide about the mountain before you go
The cliff walkways on Mount Song are a full separate day with a lot of stairs. They are not something to add on after the temple.
Take cash for the small sites
The outlying monuments are run separately and are not all set up the way the main gate is.
Timing
When to Go
| Season | The case for | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| October to November | Ginkgo in the temple courtyards, clear air and the best light of the year on the pagodas | The first week of October is the national holiday |
| April to June | Green, mild and long daylight for combining the monuments | Henan spring can be dusty and hazy |
| July to August | Everything open and late afternoons that thin out | Hot, humid and the peak of the domestic school-holiday traffic |
| December to March | Very quiet, and the Pagoda Forest is better bare than green | Cold, and the mountain walkways may close in ice |
Context
Chan, Fighting Monks, and What Is Actually Old
The monastery was founded in 495 for an Indian monk named Batuo. The tradition that matters more to its fame attaches to a later arrival, Bodhidharma, whom Chan Buddhism regards as its first patriarch in China and whom legend places in a cave above the temple for nine years. Chan travelled to Japan as Zen, which is why this small Henan monastery has a name in languages spoken a long way from Henan.
The fighting tradition is documented from the Ming at the latest, when Shaolin monks were recruited as soldiers, and the monastery’s martial reputation was established well before the twentieth century. What it looked like in practice is harder to recover than the films suggest, and much of the modern repertoire was systematised recently.
Very little of what stands at Shaolin is ancient. The complex burned in 1928 and the halls you walk through are largely later reconstructions. The genuinely old fabric is elsewhere: the Pagoda Forest, the Chuzu Hermitage above the temple, the sixth century pagoda at Songyue, and the Han gate-towers. Knowing which is which is the difference between a disappointing visit and a good one.
Nearby
Other Stops on the Same Trip
Spot · 45 km west
Longmen Grottoes (龙门石窟)
Tang and Northern Wei Buddhist carving on a scale this temple cannot match, and the obvious pairing over two days from Luoyang.
Spot · 110 km north
Yuntai Mountain (云台山)
Gorges, waterfalls and boardwalks in northern Henan, and a complete change of subject.
Where to Base
Zhengzhou (郑州)
Dengfeng belongs to Zhengzhou, which has the province’s main airport and a very large high-speed rail hub, and the Henan Museum there is the best single preparation for anything you will see in this province.
Luoyang is the same distance the other way and is the better base if you are pairing this with the Longmen grottoes, which most people should. Two nights in Luoyang covers Longmen, the White Horse Temple and a day out to Dengfeng.
Experiences
What You Can Actually Do Here
On site · half day
Temple, then the Pagoda Forest
An hour in the halls and as long as you like among the pagodas, which is where the time is better spent.
On site · full day
The rest of the listing
Songyang Academy, the Zhongyue Temple and the observatory at Gaocheng, with a driver. Quiet, unvisited, and the reason the group was inscribed.
Guided · 3 days
Henan’s Buddhist axis
Longmen, Shaolin and the outlying Dengfeng monuments from a base at Luoyang, with someone who can tell you what was rebuilt and when.
Give the temple an hour, give the Pagoda Forest as long as it holds you, and if you can manage a car, spend the afternoon on the monuments nobody visits. The thing to carry away is not the kung fu. It is that this unremarkable stretch of Henan was treated for two thousand years as the middle of the world, and that somebody standing here in the 1280s measured the length of the year and got it right to within half a minute.
See More of Dengfeng Than the Temple
Tell us your dates and our local team will put Shaolin, the Pagoda Forest and the outlying monuments into one day with a driver, and pair it with Longmen from a base at Luoyang.