Houtu Temple

Houtu Temple is a Taoist temple located in Jixiu City, Shanxi Province, and is one of the key cultural relics protection units in Shanxi Province. According to the inscription, it was rebuilt in the first year of Daming in the Southern Dynasty Song Dynasty (457 AD) and the second year of Datong in the Liang Dynasty (536 AD), and was later destroyed by an earthquake. It was rebuilt in the fifth year of Yuan Yanyou (1318 AD), and the existing halls are mostly Ming and Qing buildings. The temple buildings are all decorated with glazed tiles, most of which are works of the Qing Jiaqing and Daoguang years, and a few of the Ming Dynasty glazed tiles are extremely exquisite. The glazed components are large in quantity, complete in type, beautiful in shape, and exquisite in production. They are the best among the glazed tiles in the Qing Dynasty. There is a stele in the fifth year of Ming Zhengde (1510) and a stele in the 46th year of Qing Qianlong (1718) in the temple, and most of the characters have been blurred.