Jinci visitors take a walk through time

When famed Tang Dynasty (618-907) poet Li Bai visited Jinci, one of the top attractions in Taiyuan, he wrote a poem with one line going like this: "The flowing water of Jinci is like blue jade."

The immortal line has helped Jinci win a perpetual reputation among tourists, who regard it as a must-see attraction in Taiyuan, the capital city of today's Shanxi province, for many centuries.

Jinci used to be the ancestral temple of kings of the Jin state during the Western Zhou Dynasty (c. 11th century-771 BC) and the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC).

Legend has it that Ji Song became the second monarch of the Western Zhou Dynasty when he was young. He once played with his younger brother, Shuyu, sending him a piece of soil as a gift.

The playful game was recorded by his ministers, who required the monarch to give his brother a certain territory as a fiefdom, appointing him the king of it because the soil represented the land of a state.

Ji Song honored his promise and Shuyu became the first king of the state that was called Tang at that time.

Shuyu made a great contribution to the development of the fiefdom, by leading locals to improve agriculture through building irrigation projects.

When Xiefu, the son of Shuyu, succeeded his father to become the second king, he changed the fiefdom's name to Jin.

Xiefu built the Jinci－which means the ancestral temple of the Jin state－to memorialize his father.

The ancestral temple was renovated and expanded during the following millennia, becoming the largest ancient building complex in Taiyuan.

With structures built in the Song (960-1279), Yuan (1271-1368), Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1911) dynasties still kept intact, the Jinci temple remains a museum of ancient Chinese architecture.