Fuxi Temple

The Fuxi Temple in the old quarter of Tianshui is one of China's oldest surviving Taoist temple complexes dedicated to a mythological ancestor figure. The buildings visible today are Ming Dynasty reconstructions, but veneration of Fuxi at this site is documented from the Song Dynasty and the tradition almost certainly goes back further. The courtyard is planted with ancient Chinese cypress trees — some are over 1,500 years old — that create a canopy impressive enough to draw visitors who have no particular interest in the mythology.

The main hall houses a large statue of Fuxi, depicted as a bearded sage holding a trigram disc. The complex extends over several connected courtyards, and the older buildings have the dark-timbered gravity of serious Ming architecture. A spring festival in the third lunar month draws pilgrims and is one of the larger traditional gatherings in eastern Gansu. The temple is open daily and admission is modest.

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A story
Fuxi is the culture hero credited in Chinese mythology with inventing writing, music, fishing nets, and the eight trigrams of the I Ching — the symbolic system that underlies both classical Chinese thought and the Yi Jing divination tradition. Tianshui claims him as a native son, and the temple is the city's most important cultural assertion: that the foundations of Chinese civilisation were laid here, in a valley that later became the Wei River's headwaters, before the Yellow Emperor moved east to the Central Plains.

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