Dengfeng Travel Guide

Dengfeng has a long history, and it is known for the old and large religious sites, temple buildings and martial arts academies. The area of Songshan Mountain has some of China's biggest and most important temples and schools for Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. It is one of China's centers for martial arts and was where the Shaolin style of martial arts originated. The city was known as Yangcheng at one time. It was said to be the capital of the earliest dynasty in the area of China, the Xia Dynasty, though historians are not sure about whether their rule was truly dynastic. The city has been important as one of China's main centers for the development of Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and martial arts.

The area has a number of large ancient sites. It has some of the the country's major schools and training centers for Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. There is the Shaolin Temple where the founder of Zen used to live. The Indian monk Batuo founded the Shaolin temple in 495 AD. Then, several decades later in 527, another Indian monk named Damo (or Bodhidharma) moved to the temple to teach the Chan sect of Buddhism best known as Zen Buddhism. Zen is the way the Chinese ideogram for Chan is pronounced in Japanese. Zen was China's most popular kind of Buddhism. Zhongyue Temple is the biggest Taoist Temple among the temples of the Wu Yue (China's five sacred mountains). Songyang Academy was one of the four great Confucian academies in ancient China. The other thre more about Dengfeng »