Cross Temple, Fangshan

The Cross Temple is a former place of worship in Fangshan, Beijing. Buddhists and early Chinese Christians used the temple during different periods. Originally built as a Buddhist temple, some scholars hypothesise that it saw Christian use during the Tang dynasty (618–907). The temple was used by Buddhists during the Liao dynasty (916–1125) and by Christians during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368). It returned to Buddhist use during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), before being sold in 1911. It was first recorded in modern scholarship in 1919, damaged during the Cultural Revolution, and re-established as a national-level protected site in 2006. Some scholars consider it to be the only place of worship of the Church of the East (also known as Nestorian Christianity) discovered in China.

Today, the site features two ancient steles, as well as groundwork and the bases of several pillars. The steles date to the Liao and Yuan dynasties, but their inscriptions were tampered with during the Ming. During the early 20th century, two stone blocks carved with crosses and other patterns were also discovered at the site, with one of them also bearing an inscription in Syriac. The blocks are presently on display at the Nanjing Museum.

Early history: Buddhist use
According to a Liao dynasty (916–1125) stele at the temple site, a Buddhist monk named Huijin began building the temple in 317—the first year of the reign of Emperor Yuan, founder of the Eastern Jin dynasty (317–420). In 639, during the Tang dynasty (618–907), a monk named Yiduan re-furnished the temple. The scholar Wang Xiaojing proposed that the author of the Liao stele was mistaken, and the temple was actually built during the Later Jin dynasty (936–947). The name of the monastery during the Jin and Tang periods is not known.

Context of early Chinese Christianity
After the Council of Ephesus in 431 condemned Nestorius, patriarch of Constantinople, his followers went into the Sasanian Empire and joined the Church of the East. The Church of the East later sent missionaries into Central Asia, Arabia, and India, and established metropolitan bishoprics along important cities along the Silk Road leading to China. In 635, the Christian monk Alopen reached Chang'an (modern Xi'an), the Tang capital. According to the scholar Nicolas Standaert, Nestorian Christian communities were "relatively numerous" during the Tang dynasty, particularly in cities with much foreign trade, but these communities were "probably not extremely important". In 845, Emperor Wuzong of Tang initiated the Huichang persecution of Buddhism. Although the emperor mainly intended to suppress Buddhism, he ordered monks of all foreign religions, including Nestorian Christianity, to return to laity. Around the same time, the Tang lost control over modern northwestern China and the routes between China and Central Asia were severed. Although Buddhism rebounded from the persecution, the Church of the East in China disappeared from China along with most other foreign religions.

One of the primary sources of Nestorian Christianity in the Tang dynasty is the Xi'an Stele. It was made around 781 with its text written by the Nestorian monk Adam. The text contains Christian doctrines, a history of the Church of the East in China since 635, various praises, and a list of members of the clergy in China. It was discovered near Xi'an in the 1620s.

Central Asian Nestorian Christians moved to northern China during the 12th and 13th centuries, although it is unlikely that they had any connection with the Tang dynasty Nestorian Christians. In the early 13th century, when the Mongols conquered northern China, some of these Nestorian Christians took administrative positions. In the same time period, the Church of the East also established new metropolitan provinces along the trade routes to China. The Mongol-ruled Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) put Nestorian churches and hierarchy under its governmental administration: the office of Chongfu Si was established in 1289 to oversee Nestorian clergy and practices, and its inaugural administrator was a Nestorian Arab named Isa. Christianity in China declined again after the fall of the Yuan dynasty. The Nestorian missionaries in China probably departed together with the former Mongol rulers, converted foreigners and foreign traders, when they were expelled from China. The records of the following Ming dynasty (1368–1644) do not mention any descendants of Yuan Christians. According to the scholar Qiu Shusen, most Yuan-era Nestorians were Central Asians of the Semu caste, who later assimilated into the dominant Han culture during the Ming and no longer practised their western religions. This ultimately led to the disappearance of Nestorian Christianity in China.

Tang dynasty: possible Christian use
Some scholars suggested that the Cross Temple may have belonged to the Church of the East in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907). The Japanese scholar P. Y. Saeki speculated that believers fleeing from the Tang capital of Chang'an (modern Xi'an) to Youzhou and Liaodong during the 9th-century Huichang persecution began using the temple. Tang Xiaofeng pointed to inscriptions on the Liao stele as an indication that Christian crosses were present at the temple prior to the Liao dynasty. In addition, Tang claimed that another text written by Li Zhongxuan in 987 indicated a Nestorian presence in Youzhou. However, British sinologist Arthur Christopher Moule believed that there was insufficient evidence to show that the Church of the East in China reached Beijing before the 13th century.

Liao dynasty: Buddhist use
During the Liao dynasty (916–1125), the Cross Temple was called "Chongsheng Yuan". Buddhists rebuilt it during the reign of Emperor Muzong of Liao, but the exact date of rebuilding is unclear. The Liao stele on site refers to the tenth year of Emperor Yuan's reign, which corresponds to 960. However, it also states "Bingzi" as the year's sexagenary cycle—an ancient Chinese system of recording years. These two statements do not align, differing by a span of 16 years. The Liao stele does not indicate any relationship between the site and Christianity, and it is believed that Chongsheng Yuan was a Buddhist temple. The scholar Xu Pingfang held that Nestorian activities at the site commenced only after Buddhist activity had ended. Xu also believed that the errors in the stele text were not likely made by the original authors, but by Ming people who re-carved the steles.

Yuan dynasty: Christian use
Nestorian Christianity spread throughout the area after the Mongol capture of the Jurchen Jin capital of Zhongdu (near modern Beijing) in 1215. Under the Mongol-Yuan regime, Beijing had a metropolitan bishop. There are several theories on how the Cross Temple, located outside of Beijing, came into Christian use during the Yuan dynasty. Wang hypothesized that a Nestorian passed by Fangshan, discovered the abandoned temple, and turned it into a monastic retreat. Tang Xiaofeng and Zhang Yingying suggested it is also possible that the Cross Temple was rebuilt during this period.

Rabban Sauma (c. 1220 – 1294) was a Uyghur Nestorian Christian monk born in Beijing during the Yuan, who travelled from China to Baghdad. According to a contemporary record, the young Sauma became an ascetic for seven years on a mountain a day's journey outside of Beijing. Moule conjectured that the Cross Temple was probably near Sauma's hermitage. Shi Mingpei argued that the description of Rabban Sauma's hermitage is "extremely similar" to the Cross Temple and its surrounding terrain "according to records", and in 2011 Tang Li asserted that Rabban Sauma came from the site.

Wang estimated that Nestorian Christians had abandoned the site before 1358. This was the date when Buddhist monks began rebuilding the temple, a project which was completed in 1365. According to the Yuan stele, a Buddhist monk named Jingshan initiated the reconstruction because he dreamed of a deity in his meditation, and then saw a shining cross on top of an ancient dhvaja at the temple site. The stele gives the names of the temple's major benefactors as the prince of Huai Temür Bukha, the eunuch-official Zhao Bayan Bukha (趙伯顏不花), and the minister Qingtong (Yuan minister), with the inscription itself being made by Huang Jin. In 1992, Xu Pingfang suggested that Temür Bukha would have been familiar with Nestorian practices because his grandmother Sorghaghtani Beki was a Nestorian. He might have requested that the Buddhist temple continue to use the name "Cross Temple" when it was rebuilt, and that its Nestorian artefacts be preserved. However, modern scholars generally consider that the inscription on the Yuan stele is a forgery done during the Ming dynasty, and that the information regarding the Yuan benefactors is false.

Wang suggested that the official name of the temple during the Yuan period was "Chongsheng Yuan". She further argued that the Han Chinese population at the time used the term "cross temple" to refer to Nestorian churches in general, and that Nestorians at the time would not have called it "Cross Temple". However, because the name "Cross Temple" was simple and direct, local residents began to use it after the arrival of the Nestorians.

Ming and Qing dynasties: Buddhist use
Nestorian Christians continued to have a presence in northern China during the early Ming dynasty. Around 1437, some Nestorian monks visited the Yunju Temple, which is also in Fangshan, and left a record. The Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci was told by a Jewish informant that there was a Nestorian population in northern China during the early Ming. Ricci was told that the Chinese Nestorians were keeping their religious identity a secret, but they still referred to a former Nestorian church as the "Cross Church".

In 1535, the site was rebuilt by a Buddhist monk named Dejing, supported by local villagers and the family of Gao Rong , a nephew of the powerful Ming eunuch official Gao Feng (eunuch). During reconstruction, the inscriptions of the Liao and Yuan steles were altered—with the building officially known as the "Cross Temple" by this time.

During the Qing dynasty (1644–1912), in the History of Fangshan County compiled around 1664, the Cross Temple was briefly mentioned. It was listed along with other Buddhist temples in the county. In his Yifengtang Jinshi Wenzi Mu written in 1897, Miao Quansun included the text of the Liao stele. Around 1911, the Buddhist monks sold the temple and the surrounding lands.

Modern rediscovery and development
An early mention of the Cross Temple in Western academic context appeared in The New China Review in July 1919, where H. I. Harding noted the temple's existence near Beijing and that its name could have potential links with Christianity. In the same year, the Scottish diplomat Reginald Johnston discovered the site while seeking shelter from a thunderstorm. In October 1919, Johnston published an article about the site entitled "A Chinese Temple of the Cross", writing under the pseudonym "Christopher Irving".

The scholar P. Y. Saeki visited the site in 1931, and recorded that most of the site's buildings still existed at that time. Saeki noted that there was a Shanmen entry (a type of entry hall of Buddhist temples), followed by the Hall of Four Heavenly Kings. Beyond the hall, there was a courtyard with two gingko trees, and the Liao and Yuan steles were next to each tree. The courtyard had a kitchen and a dormitory for the monks to its right and another dormitory to its left. The Main Hall of the temple was at the end of the courtyard, and it contained three statues of the Buddha. A 21st-century study stated that the Shanmen building was 17.5 m south of the Main Hall, with dimensions 7.08 x 11.24 m.



During the Cultural Revolution, the two steles were knocked down and broken into pieces. In the 1990s, the Beijing branches of the China Christian Council (CCC) and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (TSPM) rebuilt the site's walls. In 2006, its ruins were designated as a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level.

Current state
Some scholars consider the Cross Temple to be the only place of worship of the Church of the East discovered in China. It is located near Chechang Village in the Zhoukoudian Area, Fangshan District, to the southwest of Beijing City. Its grounds are 50 m across from east to west, and 45 m across from north to south. It is surrounded by walls on four sides, with entrances in the north and south. After severe rain in 2012 damaged the site and the walls, gutters and surveillance cameras were added.

No buildings remain standing at the site of the Cross Temple. There is some groundwork at the north and west parts of the site, where the Main Hall and the dormitory of the Buddhist monks once stood. The Main Hall site has dimensions 11.32 m from north to south, and 19.6 m from east to west. There are pillar bases scattered the ruins of the Main Hall, and remnants of stairs in front. In front of the Main Hall, there are two ginkgo trees: one ancient and one new. The newer tree was planted to replace another ancient one, which was destroyed by fire. There is a footpath between the trees. On the southern part of the path, there is a Yuan dynasty stele, and a Liao dynasty stele is to its east. To the south of the Yuan stele, there are some hardly noticeable marks of the Shanmen building. A replica of the Xi'an Stele was added to the site during the early 21st century, placed in front of the north wall.

Stone steles
There are two steles at the Cross Temple site: the Liao stele was raised in 960, and the Yuan stele was raised in 1365. Both were re-carved during the Ming dynasty in 1535. During the Cultural Revolution, the Liao stele was broken in the middle and part of its bottom left corner went missing, while the Yuan stele was broken into three pieces. During the early 21st century, both were repaired and re-raised. Both steles bear inscriptions, though they do not explicitly mention Christianity. The Yuan stele features a cross at its top, but according to the scholar Wang Xiaojing, it was probably not made by the Nestorians, as stele making was a Han Chinese practice, and there were very few Han Nestorians during the Yuan dynasty.

Scholars generally agree that while the two steles were from the Liao and Yuan dynasties respectively, their inscriptions were tampered with by Ming writers, and there are errors in their stated dates and names of individuals. According to Wang Xiaojing, in order to elevate the temple's status and garner more support and donations from Buddhists, the Ming writers changed the inscriptions of the two steles to claim that the temple received royal charters, that it had received donations from famous figures, and that it had been larger in size during the Yuan period. Tang Xiaofeng and Zhang Yingying suggest that the altered inscriptions were based on rumours.

Stone plaque
A stone plaque inscribed with the characters had previously been installed atop the temple's gate. Records from 1919 indicated the plaque was still present, but in 1931 Saeki noted that it had fallen off and broken. When Wu Mengling visited the site in October 1992, he found one of the broken pieces in front of the gingko trees. According to Wang, the plaque is currently stored by the Fangshan District Bureau of Cultural Artifacts, though Tang and Zhang claimed it is on display at the Beijing Stone Carving Art Museum.

Carved stone blocks
There were previously two blocks of carved stone at the Cross Temple site. The two stone blocks are rectangular, with a vertical hollow in the rear. They are 68.5 cm tall and 58.5 cm wide. For each, the front face and sides are 22 cm and 14 cm thick, respectively. Each have crosses carved into their front face, and flowers carved into each of their two sides. The scholar Niu Ruiji claimed that the two stone blocks were originally connected, with the two crosses at the opposite ends.

Reginald Johnston first discovered the stone blocks and recorded them in his 1919 article. Johnston recorded claims by the monks that the blocks had been discovered underground in 1357, during repairs to the temple's Hall of Heavenly Kings. In 1921, Francis Crawford Burkitt published his identification and translation of the inscriptions on one of the stone blocks.

Fearing that foreigners might remove the stone blocks from the site, Zhuang Yan (Calligrapher) and Wang Zuobin of the Peiping Commission for the Preservation of Antiquities surveyed the site in September 1931. The following month, the blocks were transported to the Peiping Museum of History for exhibition. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, they were transferred to Nanjing, and are currently on display in the Nanjing Museum. A replica of one of the blocks is in the collection of the National Museum of China, and two replicas are at the nearby Yunju Temple.



According to Tang Li, Christians following East Syrian traditions in the Far East often practised adoration of the cross and images. While both feature crosses and flowers in vases, details of the carvings differ between the two blocks. The sides of one block feature chrysanthemums in a vase; the cross on its front is supported by clouds and lotuses, and features a Baoxianghua pattern at its centre. Additionally, the cross is framed by an inscription in Syriac, which reads:

"ܚܘܪܘ ܠܘܬܗ ܘ ܣܒܪܘ ܒܗ

Look towards him and trust in him."

According to P. G. Borbone, the text is often associated with the triumphal cross. The text-cross combination is also found on a funerary inscription near Chifeng in Inner Mongolia, but the text is placed above the arms of the Chifeng cross. According to Moule, F. C. Burkitt found the same Syriac text surrounding the Christian cross, but with the addition of the phrase "the living cross", in one of the Add. 14459 Syriac gospel manuscripts, as the frontispiece of the Gospel of Luke.

On the other stone block, the cross also has a Baoxianghua pattern, but there are two heart-like shapes extensions at the left and right ends of the cross. It is also mounted on two layers of lotuses, one facing up and one facing down. On the side, it depicts peonies in a basin.

Christianity in Beijing

 * Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, Beijing – the oldest Catholic church in Beijing
 * Zhalan Cemetery – a Ming dynasty cemetery in Beijing for Catholic missionaries who died in China
 * Holy Saviour's Cathedral – a former Anglican cathedral
 * Christian-founded institutions: Peking Union Medical College (est. 1906), Yenching University (1919–1952), Fu Jen Catholic University (est. 1925, later re-established in Taiwan in 1961)

Other West Asian religious sites in China

 * Huaisheng Mosque in Guangzhou, built during the 7th century
 * Xianshenlou – the sole surviving Zoroastrian building in China, built during the Song dynasty (960–1279)
 * Cao'an – a Song dynasty temple originally used by Chinese Manichaeists, now used by Buddhists