The Lifeline Express road trip from Beijing to Lhasa began the day before with a long official ceremony followed by a long late-night drive to Taiyuan, in Shanxi Province.  After a quick sleep, and after driving our fifty vehicles to a Lifeline Express event in the morning, we drove back to our hotel, loaded up on a couple of buses, and spent the rest of the day visiting the sights nearby.  First up was the Jinci Temple, about fifteen miles southwest of Taiyuan.  This is an old wooden dragon wrapped around a column of the Goddess Mother Hall, the main structure within the Jinci Temple complex.

The Goddess Mother Hall, with dragons coiled around all its columns.  This structure, the oldest at Jinci Temple, is approaching its thousandth birthday.  Though the precise date of the original temple complex construction is not known, records from fifteen hundred years ago make reference to it, and the history that inspired its creation goes back another fifteen hundred years.

An old cypress, and beyond it the Mirror Terrace, near the entrance to the temple complex.  Over twenty trees at the temple are over a thousand years old.  One cypress near the main temple hall, sprouting from the ground at an odd angle, is around three thousand years of age.

Wall detail of the Mirror Terrace structure.  Around the time when that very old cypress was just a sapling, a Zhou dynasty king appointed his younger brother, Shuyu, to lead this region, known then as the Tang State.  Shuyu did so well at bringing prosperity to his state that the Tang Shuyu Memorial Temple - the original name for this temple complex - was built in his honor.

Beam detail of the Mirror Terrace structure.  When Shuyu’s son later came to power, he changed the name of the state from Tang to Jin, because this land is the source for the Jin River; even today, the short name for Shanxi Province is Jin.  One reason for Shuyu’s success in leading the state was his use of the Jin River for irrigation.  When his son renamed the state, he renamed the temple as well, to King Jin’s Memorial Temple - Jinci Si.

A dragon carving along the beams of the Mirror Terrace structure.  Jinci Temple has been expanded and repaired many time since its creation - and as you can see from some of these photographs, it’s due for another round of reparation.

A rather tall and intimidating guard at the entrance of the Goddess Mother Hall.

Dragons, some broken, on columns of the Goddess Mother Hall.

Temple structures next to the Goddess Mother Hall.

Roof tiles on a hillside structure behind the Goddess Mother Hall.

Jin power!  This temple guard is one of a series of iron statues at Jinci Temple.  Over nine hundred years old, he still looks tough enough to ruin your whole weekend.