BEIJING WATER ORAL HISTORY SERIES
MY HOME AND WATER: A PEOPLE’S ACCOUNT
The Xishan Dajue
Temple’s Spring Runs Dry
By An He and Wang Jian
Translation by Madeleine Ross and Fang Li
Below is the tenth in a series of oral histories about Beijing water, as told to An He and Wang Jian by
Guan Zhanxiu, a forestry specialist at the Xishan Dajue Temple (Great Awakening Temple, or Temple
of Enlightenment) in Beijing’s Haidian district.
GUAN ZHANXIU (MALE, 48 YEARS OLD)
Y
ou’ve probably heard of the “Three
hundred temples in the Western Hills.” Of
these 300, one is the “Enormous Buddhist
Temple.” It is also known as ‘one of Emperor
Jinzhang’s eight temples in the Western Hills.’
This temple – the Great Awakening Dajue
Temple – is the subject of our discussion.1
One gets the feeling there is something unusual
about this temple, and there is – the front faces
east and its back is turned to the west. It was built
this way by the Khitans in the fourth year of the
reign of Xianyong (1068 AD) during the Liao
Dynasty (916-1125 AD). The temple’s orientation
reflects the Khitan custom of worshipping the
rising sun in the east.
When it was first named, there were two crystal
clear springs inside the temple, one flowing in
from the south and one from the north. These
inspired the temple’s name – Qingshui Yuan or
Clear Water Garden. During the Jin Dynasty
(1115-1234 AD) it was renamed Lingquan
Temple (Magic Spring Temple), again, in
1 There are 300 temples in the Western
Hills, eight of which are big and well known. The
Dajue Temple is one of these eight.
tribute to the springs. In the Liao Period, a
philanthropist by the name of Deng paid to have
the temple reconstructed, and a stone tablet
was placed on the east side of the pool in the
courtyard. This is the ancient stone tablet you
have just seen, sitting northwest of the Dabei
Hall. It dates from the Liao Dynasty and is
engraved with four characters, ‘Da Jue Chan Si’
(Great Enlightenment Buddhist Temple), so the
name Dajue Temple was settled upon thereafter.
It is also said that the stone tablet was erected by
order of the Emperor Daozong and Empress Xiao
in the Wushen year (45th year) of the sixty-year
cycle (in 1068 AD).
In earlier times the temple took its name from
the water close by. The whole of the ancient
temple complex rests on granite, which is
very strong, hard and unable to hold water.
Fortunately however, a creviced limestone
mountain enclosing the temple’s back allowed
water to seep through. The water gathered into
little streams that flowed crystal clear down to
the granite on which the temple was built. It was
said that the temple had two advantages: one,
that it had a solid granite foundation and, two
that it was placed adjacent to limestone and had
access to water.
The formal name for the Dajue Temple is
 The Xishan Dajue Temple’s Spring Runs Dry | Beijing Water Oral History No. 10 | June 2010
the ‘Dajue Buddhist Temple built by Imperial
Decree,’ a name which tells us three things. First,
“imperial decree” means it was built by order
of the Emperor, with national funding and in
compliance with a national plan. Second, “Dajue”
was its original name, chosen after the Ming
Dynasty reconstruction. And third, Buddhist
Temple (chansi) means it was a place where the
emperor made sacrificial offerings to Heaven
and Earth, and not a site where ordinary Chan
Buddhist rites were performed, in which case it
would have used the usual meaning of the word
Chan Buddhism (chanzong).
Looking at historical documents we can see that
the Dajue Temple used to enjoy a lot of water.
Photos taken by a German envoy in the 1930s,
show a free-flowing small waterfall built into an
artificial hill made of stones. But the amount of
water has gradually diminished. The weather in
Beijing has been quite dry since 1949.
Do you remember the chant that goes like this?
We’ve been liberated,
The communist party is here,
There are no spirits where there used to be2
There’s no water where there used to be.
Water in the Dajue Temple flowed for a thousand
years, as far back as records are kept, but in
the last fifty years there has been a significant
decrease.
Water in the Dajue Temple flowed for a thousand
years, as far back as records are kept, but in
the last fifty years there has been a significant
decrease. Spring water from the mountain first
accumulated in a small square pool called the
2 Meaning, the kinds of religious
activities where people go into trances and sing
incantations.
2
Dragon Pool or Dragon King Pool, behind the
temple. Then it was drawn out on both sides
of the central axis, splitting into northern and
southern branches that flowed through the
entire temple. There were many courtyards in
the temple – they all had spring water flowing
through them. The two branches eventually
met in the Merit and Virtue Pool in front of the
temple. An overflow spout allowed water to flow
out of the pool when it was full.
Twenty years ago, the northern branch inside
the temple still had water in it, but the southern
branch stopped flowing before 1912, when the
Republic of China was established. In recent
years the southern branch has been restored to
look like it did in the past when water flowed
through it. But now it can only be considered an
artificial landscape.
There is a saying that water is as high as the
mountain – meaning that there are springs
on the mountain that provide surface water.3
Now, the temple relies on water replenished
from deep wells,4 but before that, all the water
at the Dajue Temple was surface water from
mountain springs. This fresh surface water
is created when rain falls onto the vegetation
covering the mountain, and then soaks into the
3 The narrator means that springs could be
considered a form of “surface water,” i.e. water in
a river or lake.
4 The narrator is drawing a distinction
from the spring water or surface water by saying
that the temple must now pump its water from
“groundwater” supplies through wells because
the springs have dried up.
 The Xishan Dajue Temple’s Spring Runs Dry | Beijing Water Oral History No. 10 | June 2010
ground, permeating the rock layers. Later on it
dribbles out of tiny crevices in the rock and flows
naturally downward. People at the Water Bureau
have told me that what we drink now from the
well is crevice water that has seeped into the rock
layers formed deep below the surface during the
Cretaceous period. It is pumped from wells a
thousand meters deep. Some think that, provided
there is enough rainwater, the groundwater we
have extracted will be able to replenish itself,
but this simply demonstrates a lack of general
knowledge. It doesn’t matter how much it rains,
the water table level in the deep layers of rock
won’t rise for quite sometime – unless the water
pours straight in.5
The water in the Dajue Temple was clean
and sweet because the rain fell on the dense
vegetation on the mountain behind the temple
and this surface water was constantly filtered
as it percolated through the rock. The temple’s
tea gardens, known as ‘Dajue Tea Culture,’
had already gained a modest reputation, but
the key to this tea culture was the water. The
spring water was tested in the 1990s and found
to contain three elements, one of which was
Water has its own culture. The different
cultures of the north and the south are linked to
differences in their water.
selenium. The effect of drinking this water was
not immediate but would be felt twenty-four
hours later. If you stayed at the Dajue Temple
and drank the spring water, by about four or
five o’ clock in the afternoon the following day
– before it was time for the evening meal – you
would already be hungry. If a person, after eating
5 By this the narrator means current
rainfall doesn’t have an immediate impact on the
water level deep in the aquifers. If one expects
the water level deep underground to rise quite
rapidly, you have to pour water directly into these
areas – which is impossible.
3
a typical meal, feels “distinctly” hungry before
the next meal, it means that selenium has had a
beneficial effect on digestion.
When we promote our tea and call it ‘Dajue
Culture,’ water is one of the most important
factors. Along with the Minghui Tea House in the
Dajue Temple, which has become fashionable in
modern times, a traditional Buddhist tea service
is also served in the temple. With Buddhist tea,
the tealeaves have an added Buddhist element:
the tea has been consecrated. Drinking this
kind of tea is seen as an enlightenment practice.
Water is the priority but the leaves must also
be consecrated. Vulgar speech is not permitted
while drinking and it is wisest to discuss
philosophy, life, or Buddhist practices. Drinking
Buddhist tea is different to drinking black, green
or flower teas – it can’t be summed up in a few
words. We have just made a batch of Pu’er tea,
called Dajue Buddhist Tea. Though I have to be
honest, this batch wasn’t consecrated at the Dajue
Temple because there weren’t any monks there.
It was done at the Tanzhe Temple.
Water has its own culture. The different
cultures of the north and the south are linked
to differences in their water. The character of
northerners is like the northern river. The Yellow
river, with all its sand, is surging and turbulent,
carrying the good with the bad, changing course
without following any rules. Don’t you think
that is just like the rough and straightforward
northerners? They don’t fuss about small things
in their daily life and they handle matters
according to how they feel at the time, without
any particular strategy. They may seem simple
and muddleheaded, like the water in the Yellow
River, but they are generous and warm-hearted.
As for southerners, just look at the Yangtze
 The Xishan Dajue Temple’s Spring Runs Dry | Beijing Water Oral History No. 10 | June 2010
River, it comes from different rivulets of water
high up in the densely forested mountains
that join up one by one. The Yangtze has two
layers of water. On the surface the river looks
placid and the top layer of water moves slowly,
giving the appearance of being gentle and easy-
going. But underneath, 30 centimeters below
the surface, the undercurrent is extremely
strong. Southerners appear to be gentle, quiet
and amiable – outwardly they smile – but really,
underneath they are calculating, figuring out
how much they can benefit from one another,
down to the last cent, so that in the end no one
owes anything to anyone else. Might this have
anything to do with water?
There has been a drought in the area around
Beijing for many years now. Low rainfall means
there has been little surface water, which in turn
has meant little evaporation. And because there
has been very little evaporation there have been
fewer clouds. With ever fewer clouds there can’t
be any rain. On top of this, the level of water in
the water table has fallen – it’s a vicious circle.
The Dajue Temple has no real springs any more.
What we are drinking is mainly well water, which
The Dajue Temple has no real springs any more.
What we are drinking is mainly well water, which
leaves lime scale when it’s boiled.
leaves lime scale when it’s boiled.
And what about spring water? You can see that in
the courtyard there are still water channels, but
the spring water has already dried up because
the village down the hill has dug a well in front
of the water channels that run into the Dajue
Temple. Now all the water from the channels
has been diverted away. The village only has a
hundred or so households and isn’t very big. We
aren’t going to mention it by name because the
local government doesn’t want it revealed.
The villagers dug the well last year to supply
4
groundwater to the village, and the spring water
to the Dajue Temple was officially cut off on the
first of July in 2008. The spring water above the
Dragon Pool hasn’t disappeared completely, it’s
just changed course. Instead of going through
the temple it goes straight to the village. All
the water villagers use for eating, drinking,
bathing and irrigation comes from this spring.
The flow of water has changed to the point that
the water that originally flowed to the temple
has been diverted underground by the well dug
by the villagers. The problem is that, even if the
well were blocked or filled in, the spring water
wouldn’t return to the temple – it might flow
anywhere, one or two hundred meters lower
down because its path has been changed by the
well. There would still be no water available for
the temple.
In fact, before 2008, an older, original well in
the village still had water in it. Then, when
everything had to be spruced up for the
Olympics – and there was such a fuss about
it – the ground water was extracted to such an
excessive degree that the water level across
Beijing fell very rapidly. Last year there was a
lot of rain, but an even larger volume of water
was used – which only became known as a result
of meetings among Beijing’s water authorities.
The issue was discussed for a long time at these
high level meetings, but no one in the village
spoke out about the fact that the problem was
straightforward – too much water was extracted
because of the Olympics. The water table in
many places dropped and in areas at a higher
elevation, such as the Dajue Temple, it dropped
the most. The Dajue Temple is about 140 meters
above sea level, so it was more severely affected
than the city of Beijing.
Wells belonging to the ordinary people of
 The Xishan Dajue Temple’s Spring Runs Dry | Beijing Water Oral History No. 10 | June 2010
Beijing have no water in them anymore. When
there is no water they look for other places to
dig. In the past, at least in theory, government
Wells belonging to the ordinary people of Beijing
have no water in them anymore.
permission was required to dig a well. But
when that village got approval, it wasn’t for this
particular well near the temple. They dug a bit
here and then dug a bit there. In some places
they didn’t find any water, but when they dug
near the temple, they found some. You might ask
what had been approved. The villagers could go
through the formal steps to get permission to dig
a well, and who could stop them? One of China’s
characteristics is that there are no rules to speak
of. The local government has been helping us
look into how we could fill in the well dug by
the villagers close to the temple. But, good grief,
when we tried to do something, a score of the
local people stood around the well and prevented
us from doing anything.6
Who does the water from the mountain springs
belong to, to the temple or to the villagers? It’s
the Chinese condition. There is conflict wherever
there are people, but resolving this conflict by
giving the water to only one of the parties is
clearly unacceptable. Although the temple is
the victim, one must still consider this principle
carefully: the Dajue Temple might be called the
Clear Water Garden but this resource, namely
the spring water, cannot belong entirely to
6 Here the narrator is talking about a
conflict between the temple and the nearby
villagers for the water. After the villagers dug
a well nearby, the temple’s water supply was
disrupted. Both parties (the temple and the
village) claimed the right to the water. The
temple tried to enlist local government officials
to fill in the well – but to no avail. The villagers
fought for the well and prevented the temple
from filling it in.
5
the temple. It would be a small matter for the
Minghui Tea House in the temple to shut down
if the temple no longer had spring water. But the
damage both to a heritage site like the temple,
and to the environment, from the loss of water
would be hard to quantify. The old trees in the
temple depend entirely on that spring water, and
without replenishment, trees that have lasted one
thousand years will wither and die.
Water is the trees’ lifeblood and spirit. No matter
how the watercourses are changed, water must
remain here. Through the local government, we
are negotiating with the peasants, but it would
be totally useless to say who is right and who is
wrong. The peasants say that, no matter who you
are, when water flows to your doorstep you would
die before you give it up!
In fact, history shows us that the village only
began to develop because of the Dajue Temple.
In the last few years there has been an endless
stream of visitors, and the villagers have helped
to provide the tourist infrastructure and other
services needed. They are the ones who ran
stalls outside the temple and villagers have
looked after parking bicycles. Would the temple’s
existence or disappearance be of no consequence
to them? The local people do in fact care about
the temple; otherwise they would have let it be
demolished a long time ago. But when it comes
to a matter of survival, or if it comes down
to not having water, everyone is going to put
themselves first. If the temple has no water, it
still has the government and the state to fall back
on, but ordinary people have no one to look after
them. They are a disadvantaged group.
Some of the trees in the temple have already
died. Many of the Chinese pines became diseased
and infested with pests in 2003, the year when
 The Xishan Dajue Temple’s Spring Runs Dry | Beijing Water Oral History No. 10 | June 2010
SARS appeared. The pine tree next to the pagoda
on the hill, a tree about 400 or 500 years old,
originally grew in about thirty centimeters of
soil on top of the granite. But now its roots have
gone right down to granite, making its continued
growth difficult. Also, at the same time the trees
are getting larger, there is less and less water, and
The Dajue Temple, on the other hand, has gone
from having water to not having water. The
temple’s water is now gone.
there are also large numbers of tourists stomping
around. It’s not that the plants simply lack water
in the ground; they also need moisture on their
leaves. If the leaves are dry for long periods, the
entire plant suffers. By comparison, tree leaves
are bright emerald in the south where damp air
provides leaves with moisture.
The year we arrived at the temple the weeds were
up to my waist. It was 1992, and the country’s
“opening up” policies had formally started. This
Magnolia is over three hundred years old, and
is considered a natural treasure. That tree over
there is a parasitic Buckthorn Cypress, and it
is still beautiful. This ginkgo here is over one
thousand years old. Another one died just over
there and some do-gooders put in a fake one,
which makes me feel uncomfortable. A species
endemic to China, the ginkgo is a living fossil.
Its demands on the natural environment are
few – it can survive harsh conditions and at the
same time be productive and useful. Everywhere
else in the world the ginkgoes died during the
fourth ice age in the Cretaceous period. The only
survivors to be found were on the mainland of
China.
It’s been thirty years since we’ve had “opening
up and reform.”7 The ordinary people have gone
7 Reform and opening-up policies in China:
After the death of Mao Zedong (in 1976), a new
6
from being in a state of fervent revolution to
one in which they have achieved a moderately
good standard of living. The Dajue Temple, on
the other hand, has gone from having water
to not having water. The temple’s water is now
gone. The people who come to pay reverence
are also gradually realizing that their desire to
earn as much money as possible, hand over fist,
while grabbing every opportunity to consume
as much as possible and as quickly as one can, is
futile. The whole world is beginning to share an
understanding that being rich doesn’t necessarily
mean that one has the right to deplete the
resources of others. Everyone is slowly beginning
to feel that consuming less is better than owning
a lot. Consuming less has a two-fold benefit.
In the temple we have introduced the practice of
meditative tea drinking as a way to help people
control their greed. For example, realizing that
one steamed bun is enough and refusing the
other half – otherwise you have to exercise to
work off that extra bit of consumption. Buying
less property, which is a way of taking care of
mountains and forests, is yet another. A feeling
of contentment doesn’t come from owning a lot,
but from consuming less.
The worst enemies of the natural world are
people; especially the nouveau rich who want
economic system was introduced—beginning
with the abolishment of people’s communes
and the planned economy. In its place emerged
a state-run market economy. China also began
to open itself to the global marketplace—
introducing foreign capital, technology and
natural resources, as well as ideological values
from the West.
 The Xishan Dajue Temple’s Spring Runs Dry | Beijing Water Oral History No. 10 | June 2010
to grab everything for themselves. Have you
noticed that wherever there are people, there will
probably be too many and that the trees will have
disappeared, the water will have disappeared and
the animals will have disappeared? The Dajue
Temple has gone from being the beautiful but
unknown Clear Water Garden to being a place
that people flock to. But in the end the water is
all gone, the trees have withered and the temple
buildings are collapsing. At the present rate of
technological development, if human beings
don’t learn to control themselves, it won’t be long
before they will have destroyed the treasures
handed down by their ancestors and they won’t
even be able to guarantee their own lives.
It isn’t an optimistic scenario for the Dajue
Temple. I’m afraid that it is beyond the capacity
of one group of people to preserve an ancient,
one thousand-year-old temple. The key to doing
so will be appealing to society, and having
a proper understanding of what genuine
civilization and culture really is. What will we
be able to trust in the future…skyscrapers and
highways? This city of Beijing has forgotten
about culture. It’s nothing like the Beijing
we once knew. We’ve become accustomed to
pleasure seeking and are still unaware of what
we should be giving back to the natural world.
COMMENTARY
Beijing is surrounded by the Taihang and
Yanshan mountain ranges: temples were often
located near the springs of these mountains. If
water from the springs was plentiful and flowed
steadily, it created beautiful landscapes and
famous gardens. The limestone area in Xishan
has a small number of springs that produce
a large volume of water, whereas the granite,
gneiss and sandstone areas have a large number
of springs with only a small volume of water.
The Clear Water Garden located at the base of
Yangtai Mountain in the Xishan area, and later
renamed the Dajue Temple, the one thousand-
year-old temple that became famous for its
springs, belongs to the former – a limestone area.
7
As old as the temple itself, the ginkgo trees
within its compound are living cultural
artifacts that rely on its clear spring water. They
ingeniously bind together the natural and the
manmade landscapes, passing down information
about the past through their tenacious lives.
They provide an important basis for our study
into the history of the ancient capital’s cultural
development, the establishment of city parks and
the rise and fall of governments. Ancient trees
are unable to speak; yet they have experienced
unpredictable events and have seen great
changes. They are witnesses to history and can
give living testimony to the style and culture of
ancient times.
The Eight Great Temples were located in
Beijing’s Xishan area because it was abundant
in spring water. The ginkgoes have been able to
survive for a thousand years because there was
water. The three hundred-year-old Magnolia
denudata should be considered one of the natural
wonders of Beijing. There are 160 ancient trees
within the Dajue Temple compound, and, in
addition to the thousand year old ginkgoes, there
are one-hundred-year-old magnolias, sal trees
(Shorea robusta), ancient pines, cypresses and
so on. The basis of life for this group of ancient
trees is the temple’s spring water, and the Dajue
Temple still exists because of its interdependence
with the water and trees.
One by one the ancient trees are now withering
because water has stopped flowing to them.
What’s going to happen to the Eight Great
Temples in the Xishan area? In Beijing, uncurbed
development has already caused the water table
to drop, the river flows to be interrupted, and the
springs to be silenced. Unless human beings can
control rampant development in Beijing, it won’t
be long before the treasures handed down by our
ancestors are destroyed and our very lives are put
at risk.
An He is a Beijing-based engineer. Wang Jian is a
Beijing-based water expert.
 The Xishan Dajue Temple’s Spring Runs Dry | Beijing Water Oral History No. 10 | June 2010

MY HOME AND WATER: A PEOPLE’S ACCOUNT

Beijing, once famous for its sweet spring water

and clear-flowing rivers is now infamous for
its polluted canals and dried up riverbeds. My
Home and Water: A People’s Account provides a
rare uncensored glimpse of life and water in the
ancient capital of Beijing and surrounding areas
– as told by longtime residents.

Translation, editing and online publication of

the series by Chinese author Dai Qing and Probe
International has been made possible by funding
from the Foundation Open Society Institute
(Zug). For more information, contact Probe
International at info@probeinternational.org