Located in the northeast corner of Beijing, the Lama temple is the city’s largest and most perfectly preserved Tibetan Buddhist monastery.

More than 300 years ago, the emperor of Qing Dynasty gave the temple to his fourth son, Prince Yin Zhen, who became the Emperor Yongzheng in the year of 1723. After the new emperor moved into the forbidden city, he still kept the temple as his temporary dwelling and named it Yonghegong, meaning “Palace of Harmony and Peace.”

The mansion was converted into a lamasery and became residence for a large numbers of monks from Mongolia and Tibet in 1744. This was a kind of friendly policy, how the Qing dynasty dealt with relations between Mongolia and Tibet.

The lama temple preserves over one thousand Buddhist figures and rich classical cultural relics of Buddhism. It also displays a large number of other rare cultural relics, over 16,000 pieces of woodblock printed sheet with script that can give a rare insight of its cultural value.

Danbeijianzan(lama):Most of the Scriptures were from the Qing Dynasty, during kangxi period and Qianlong period, mainly they were imperial made, what is found in Tibet and Qinghai, can also be found here.

Some of the Scriptures were carved by Tibetan Buddhists who were invited by the imperials. Others were from other Tibetan Buddhist temples, some of them were carved by Buddhists from the lama temple itself. These scriptures were carved in 5 types of writings, they include, Zang, Man, Han, Meng, Fan. Most were Zang, which is Tibetan, also there were scriptures which combines Man, Han, Zang, Meng four kinds of writings together.

Apart from the scriptures, there are also some Buddhist paintings. Because of its rarity they are very precious. Only ten engraved Buddhist paintings in lama temple itself. They are in different sizes, made from pear wood or peach wood. Some of the paintings are only to decorate the scriptures, along with some individual paintings. Paintings of Buddhist figures, Buddhist pagoda, mandala and so on, not only for worship, they were also used as decorations.

Danbeijianzan(lama):Now, I am going to print one for you.

These scriptures and Buddhist paintings are the Lama temple’s cultural treasures, and they are also a great resource to study Tibetan Buddhism as well as oriental culture.

Video: Cong Fangjun