王母宫位于甘肃泾川回山之上,据传,泾川是西王母的出生地,起源地。
Good morning, my friends. We are in Jing Chuan County now, 70 kilometers southwest of Pingliang city. This county, a very important stopover on No.312 National Road, is 200 kilometers from Xi’an and 400 kilometers from Lanzhou. It has a total area of 1049 square kilometers, a total population of about 300,000 and all together 7 nationalities, including Han, Moslem, an and so on.
This place got its name because Jing River is running through it. Five thousand years ago, our ancestors had lived here and increased gradually in number. The long and brilliant history brought up this splendid and colorful culture. Many famous politicians, generals, writers and calligraphers once were brought up, trained and matured in this piece of land.
Jing Chuan is the place of origin of West Goddess. It is said that this is the earliest place where West Goddess descended to the earth, which makes it the place where historical remains of West Goddess culture preserved best, completely and most abundantly. In the fairy tales of remote ages, West Goddess is a great god in heaven, a Human Being God, who will not die for five thousand years and governs the West Heaven. Furthermore, West Goddess is the proper name for female clan chief of matriarchal clan tribe of Rong minority ethnic group in the west of china. Until the Tang dynasty, Jing Chuan had been the holy land of West Goddess approved by Chinese people.
Goddess Temple on Huizhong Mountain in Jing Chuan is the earliest and largest goddess ancestral temple of this kind, which was firstly constructed in Yuan Feng period of Emperor Wu reign in the Western Han dynasty. West Goddess Temple today were rebuilt under the help of Taoism disciples in the early times of 1990s, with the front side of the main hall facing to the east and the back side to the west.
In 1992, a team of disciples from Taiwan went on pilgrimage for West Goddess and took some photos of goddess’s icon. After they returned to Taiwan, they did a lot of checking and verifying works and finally drew a conclusion that Huizhong Mountain is the right place of origin of West Goddess. In lunar calendar, the grand fair of West Goddess was held on March 20th every year. In 1999, the International Folk Customs Association of Asia and the Chinese Folk Customs Association granted it the name of a key national folk customs culture scenery spot.
West Goddess Temple Grotto lies at the foot of Huizhong Mountain, a well-known Buddhism grotto at home and abroad and a key cultural relics unit protected by provincial government. It was cut in 510 AD in the Northern Wei dynasty, with a history of more than 1500 years. This grotto is grand on scale and magnificent in decoration. Through successive ages, the grotto had been being supplemented and kept in good repair to the present dimension. The Central Pillar is the quintessence in the grotto. On all the sides of the pagoda pillar and the three sides of grotto walls, stone statues were cut and ornaments were stick to. After entering the grotto, there is a sitting Buddha statue with a height of 4 meters, engraved in the Tang dynasty and dyed on one surface in the Ming dynasty. All the statues show very vivid postures, easy and smooth vigor of style in engraving, so they have great art value and historical value.