Early afternoon - Da Ci'en Temple
Da Ci'en Temple was founded in 648 by the emperor Gaozong in memory of his mother, the empress Zhangsun, and it has been one of the great temples of the Chinese Buddhist world ever since. Its fame belongs to one monk. Xuanzang came back overland from India in 645 with 657 Sanskrit manuscripts and a set of reliquaries and images, and the court gave him the temple as a translation house; he was its first abbot, and the work carried on here became the standard Chinese rendering of a large part of the Buddhist canon. His account of the journey, the Great Tang Records on the Western Regions, remains one of the most useful books about Central Asia written in the seventh century. The halls you walk through are later reconstructions, but the axis, the incense and the chanting are not.
Afternoon - climbing the pagoda
The original pagoda went up in 652, five storeys of rammed earth and brick built to hold the texts and relics that were at risk from fire in the timber halls. It collapsed and was rebuilt in the early eighth century as the seven-storey brick tower you see now, about 64.5 metres high and tapering by stages to the top. The climb is by internal stone stairs, narrow enough that two people pass with care, with a window on each level; from the upper floors the Bell and Drum Towers line up north across the old city and, on a clear day, the Qinling ridge closes the southern horizon. At the base, the four door frames carry Tang line engravings in stone - the earliest dated architectural decoration in the building, and one of the few parts of the structure that is original. In June 2014 the pagoda was inscribed on the World Heritage List as part of the Silk Road corridor listing.
Late afternoon - the Tang Da Ci'en Temple Ruins Park
South of the temple, the site park opened in 2008 over the excavated footprint of the Tang monastery, which was several times the size of what survives - a walled compound of courtyards and cloisters of which the pagoda was one building among many. The foundations and gate piers are laid out at ground level, grassed over and labelled, and the paths run through them past a lotus pond and a stand of trees. It is the quietest half hour available in this part of the city, and it is the only place where the scale of Tang Chang'an's religious architecture is legible without a plan in front of you.
Cultural Insight - a living temple, not a monument
The pagoda is not a ruin under glass. Monks live here, the bell and drum are used, and visitors walk through the middle of a working religious day - which is a useful thing to see if the rest of your itinerary is museums. The compound also holds the memorial hall to Xuanzang and a small exhibition on the translation work, with block-printed sutras and seventh-century manuscript fragments in the same cases; the plainest way to understand what he did is to look at the shelf of texts he produced and then at the distance they came from. In the courtyards, the incense burners are thick with wax and the notice boards are in Chinese and English because the temple is a place of pilgrimage as well as a monument, and the two roles have to be managed. Photography inside the halls is restricted; the grounds and the pagoda itself are not.
Evening - dinner in Qujiang, and the Grand Tang Mall
Dinner is at a restaurant in the Qujiang district, a short drive or a fifteen-minute walk from the pagoda, and it is the sensible place to end an afternoon spent on Tang history: the district is built on the ground the Tang pleasure gardens once occupied, and the evening economy here is organised around that fact. Afterwards you have the option of the north square, where the musical fountain runs on a published evening schedule in season, and the Grand Tang Mall, the lantern-lit pedestrian avenue that runs roughly two kilometres south from the pagoda toward the Kaiyuan Square. If you would rather see the street performances properly - the swing performer, the quiz officials, the parades - that is a separate evening and the guide will arrange it; the walk back to the hotel is by car in either case.
Meals
Dinner
Accommodation
Day tour - no hotel night included.
