History
Since the 17th century, during the late Chinese Ming Dynasty, the Dzungar people of northwestern China (modern Xinjiang) were engaged in a civil war and conflicts with other nomadic horse-archer groups in the region. The later Qianlong Emperor dispatched an army to Yili in order to suppress their resistance against the Qing Dynasty. The Chinese attacked Kulja (Yining) and captured the ruling Dzungar khan. After the conquest, Emperor Qianlong personally inscribed his writing on a tablet that is located in the stele pavilion of the Puning Temple. This stele of 1755, called the Puning Sibei, commemorated the founding of the temple and the conquering of the Dzungars. Qianlong ordered for the building of this new Temple of Universal Peace, a symbol of the emperor's ambition to maintain peace among various ethnic minorities and a stable environment within the northwestern regions. The historian Waley-Cohen calls Chengde "a crucial location for the exhibition of Manchu power and the representation of Qing imperial knowledge," being the location of the summer capital. Since the Dzungar were followers of Lamaism, the temple was built in imitation of Samye monastery, the sacred place of Lamaism in Tibet.
The large wooden Buddhist statue of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteśvara within the main hall of the Puning Temple is one of its most renowned features. It shows a thousand different eyes and a thousand different arms stretched out from its frame (in various sizes). The statue itself is made from five kinds of wood, including pine, cypress, elm, fir, and linden.
As of 1994, the Chengde Mountain Resort and Chengde's Eight Outer Temples (including the Puning Temple) were established as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Today, the Puning Temple remains a site of tourist attraction and local festivities.
Read more about this topic: Puning Temple
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