The Landscape Of Wudang Mountains’ Taoist Temple

Chinese Wudang Mountain, founded in Sui and Tang, developed in Song and Yuan, and fully established in the Ming Dynasty, is the only Taoist mountain that was constructed under the state power in the Chinese history. Wudang Mountain is China and the world’s cultural heritage. It has been changed a lot in terms of size, standing, and spatial pattern since Tang dynasty as a result of a thousand years of development. It has the feature of both religious and royal, epitomizing the Yuan, Ming and Qing three dynasties of artistic achievements of classical gardens and architecture. Therefore, to understand the development process of Chinese Taoist gardens and royal gardens, an in-depth study of the Wudang Taoist temples is essential. This paper studies the Wudang Taoist temples by investigating historical documents, conducting field survey and data collection, and using the GIS method. It conducts qualitative and quantitative research of Wudang Mountain’s landscape distribution patterns, relationships between the environment and temples, and the temples’courtyard space. It provides a theoretical foundation for protecting and improving Wudang Mountain as well as abundant spatial examples and organizational skills for landscape design. The main results show that:(1) By reviewing historical documents and literature, this study investigates the transformation of landscape pattern of Wudang Mountain. The landscape development has been divided into five stages: the originating stage in the Tang Dynasty (before959), the developing stage during the Song and Yuan Dynasties (960-1367), the peak stage in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the decline stage from the Qing Dynasty to the Republic of China (1645-1948), and the new stage of development recently (after1949). Wudang Mountain landscape pattern was shaped in the Yuan Dynasty and further developed to the peak in the Ming Dynasty; moreover, the mountain part of it has been preserved up to now.(2) Wudang Mountain is a typical representative of the Chinese Taoist "Pilgrim’s Progress" spatial patterns. It takes into fully consideration of topography and visual space. This paper summarizes the overall planning model of Wudang Mountain:using "Taihe Palace" as the planning objective, Tianzhu peak as the center,"basaltic faith" as the narrative themes, and relying on the "natural terrain" to illustrate the "Heaven, earth and Man" space of the Taoist. (3) Wudang Mountain Taoist temples are mainly distributed between the Jian River and the Shuimo River. It finds that:1) the distribution of Wudang Taoist temples is highly correlated with the elevation, slope, and distance to the rivers;2) the temples are concentrated between0-25°slope, with a distance to the river between200m and600m, and there are more temples in the area with longer distance to the rivers;3) more temples distribute perpendicular to the trend of the mountain in the west, south and southeast directions;4) most parts of the large and medium temples are in the sight of the Golden Summit, indicating the Golden Summit is a visible landmark which has a prominent controlling role in Taoist temples.(4) Wudang Taoist temples’guiding spaces, not only can stimulate religious sentiment, but also provide guide for the general public. They have multi-functions including transportation, organization landscape and religious activities. There are three types of guide space:heaven gate, memorial gateway, and bridge. There are also three forms of organization including "Heavenly Gate+Shinto,""Heavenly Gate+Nine-winding Yellow River Walls," and "pathway connecting the main Shinto".(5) A typical Wudang Taoist temples’courtyard is divided into three regions including worship area, practicing and living areas. This study divides the most important and best preserved area, the worship area, into the transitional space, the kernel space and the subsequent space, and analyzes the worship area’s spatial ratio and spatial scale. It finds that when the temple is less than1hm2, the spatial rate of worship area is between0.4and0.5. Moreover, the spatial rate increases as the worship area increases. It also finds the courtyard scales are generally less than60m.(6) Nanyan palace located in mountains, with beautiful scenery, was a representative work of royal garden in Ming Dynasty. This study analyzing the characteristics of the scene units and the organization between them, three keystones of the garden were found. First, based on the natural terrain features, spaces were segmented and landscapes were set. Second, by logical organization, the scene units were connected smoothly. At last, though utilizable scenery outside and the possible legend the garden was enriched, so that the "meaning" and "scening" were harmonized.