Qualla: Cross Temple, Fangshan

Cross Temple, Fangshan: Introduction

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Trevor Powell, CC BY-SA 4.0. In the summer of 1919, a Scottish diplomat named Reginald Johnston was caught in a thunderstorm southwest of Beijing. Seeking shelter, he stumbled onto the ruins of a temple near Chechang Village in Fangshan District. What he found there -- stone blocks carved with Christian crosses mounted on Buddhist lotus bases, one of them framed by an inscription in Syriac quoting Psalms 34 -- launched a century of scholarly debate about how a faith born in the Middle East came to inhabit a Buddhist temple in the hills outside the Chinese capital, and what happened when it left.

Read more: Cross Temple, Fangshan on Qualla

Image: Trevor Powell | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cross Temple, Fangshan: A Temple Between Faiths

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dianelos Georgoudis, CC BY-SA 3.0. According to a Liao dynasty stele at the site, a Buddhist monk named Huijing began building the temple in 317, during the Eastern Jin dynasty, though some scholars believe it was actually constructed during the Later Jin dynasty centuries later. What is clear is that the temple e...

Read more: Cross Temple, Fangshan on Qualla

Image: Dianelos Georgoudis | CC BY-SA 3.0

Cross Temple, Fangshan: The Long Road from Ephesus

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 霧島聖, Public domain. After the Council of Ephesus condemned Nestorius in 431, his followers migrated into the Sasanian Empire and joined the Church of the East, which sent missionaries along the Silk Road into Central Asia and beyond. In 635, a Christian monk named Alopen reached the Tang capital of ...

Read more: Cross Temple, Fangshan on Qualla

Image: 霧島聖 | Public domain

Cross Temple, Fangshan: The Hermit and the Shining Cross

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Gary Lee Todd, CC BY-SA 4.0. Rabban Sauma, a Uyghur Nestorian monk born in Yuan-dynasty Beijing, spent seven years as an ascetic on a mountain a day's journey from the capital before embarking on an extraordinary journey to Baghdad and eventually to the courts of Europe. Scholars have argued that his hermita...

Read more: Cross Temple, Fangshan on Qualla

Image: Gary Lee Todd | CC BY-SA 4.0

Cross Temple, Fangshan: What Remains

Sat, 14 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. No buildings stand at the Cross Temple today. The site holds groundwork, pillar bases, remnants of stairs, two ginkgo trees -- one ancient, one planted to replace another destroyed by fire -- and two steles from the Liao and Yuan dynasties, both broken during the Cultural Revolut...

Read more: Cross Temple, Fangshan on Qualla

Image: Public domain