'Fairy Palace' café opens at a Song-dynasty temple in Shanxi's countryside

Xinhua News Agency, Taiyuan, October 4 (Reporter Gao Yujie) — During the National Day holiday, cultural-tourism visits to ancient architecture in southeastern Shanxi keep warming up. At the Erxian Temple in Xiaonan Village, Jincun Town, Zezhou County, Jincheng City, Shanxi Province, the elegant and refined Northern Song dynasty dougong brackets lightly lift their ascending arms, inviting visitors from across the country to pause and gaze.

Over 900 years ago, skilled craftsmen turned people’s imagination of a fairy realm into exquisite, intricate miniature wooden ” heavenly palace” structures, suspended within the tiny temple. Plaques reading “Then there was no strife” and “End my gathering of firewood” express the ancients’ sincere wish for national peace and people’s security. Looking up, modern visitors can’t help but sigh with Su Shi’s line: “I wonder what year it is tonight in the palace in the sky?”

At the Erxian Temple in Xiaonan Village, Jincun Town, Zezhou County, Jincheng City, Shanxi Province, a local heritage-protection volunteer (right) explains the Northern Song dougong structure to visitors. Photo by Xinhua reporter Gao Yujie.

Drawing on this imagery, the “Xianque” (Fairy Palace) café officially opened in the west-side wing room of the temple’s outer courtyard, offering a place for tired antiquity-seekers to rest. This July, the local government launched the Erxian Temple cultural-tourism upgrade, introducing a local rural-revitalization entrepreneurship project to revitalize the idle annex buildings in the outer courtyard. “The project adopts a light-asset joint-operation model of ‘government compliance guidance + local founder operation + whole-chain empowerment by a village-café brand.’ It has now been signed and landed at over ten traditional villages, ancient-castle sites, and cultural-tourism spots across the city,” introduced Xu Xiaotian, founder of “China Village Café.”

On the first day of National Day, the “Xianque Café” opened at the Erxian Temple in Xiaonan Village, Jincun Town, Zezhou County, Jincheng City. Children curiously watch coffee being made. Photo by Xinhua reporter Gao Yujie.

Southeastern Shanxi concentrates nearly half of the country’s pre-Song-and-Jin wooden architecture, mostly scattered across towns and villages. In 2023, the Taihang No.1 Tourism Highway opened, stringing the roadside ancient-architecture spots into a line; increasingly complete public transport also gives out-of-town visitors more options for antiquity-seeking. This was Tianjin visitor Ms. Li’s eighth trip to Shanxi, for which she and a friend prepared a 140-plus-page antiquity-seeking guide. “Ever since we got hooked on Shanxi’s ancient sites, we stopped making food guides—we often skip lunch and tour from morning to night.” Peng, a junior at a Wuhan university, chose the more economical self-guided public-transport tour. He went from Yuncheng north to Taiyuan, then south to Jincheng, transferring among buses and high-speed rail, accumulating a dozen-plus tickets over several days. “You often have to get up early to catch the tourist buses; tiring, but worth it.” Beijing visitor Ms. Yang and a friend opened their first-ever bike trip here. After hearing heritage keeper Yang Liangen’s story of guarding the temple, they got two coupon tickets to Qinglian Temple and decided to add that stop to their itinerary.

A tourist group from Hangzhou checks in in costume, starting their antiquity journey with Hanfu styling. Photo by Xinhua reporter Gao Yujie.

Having guarded the temple for 30 years, Yang Liangen best understands how hard it is for such a rural ancient temple to “catch the sky-falling fortune of traffic.” Security facilities fully upgraded, a parking lot and tourist restrooms built and put into use, a small shop stocked with remote-village farm specialties… the face of Erxian Temple changes with each passing day. “In the past we feared people coming because of fire and theft; now the more people come, the happier we are.” The old man’s one line speaks to the decades-long change in rural heritage protection.

Heritage keeper Yang Liangen (right) eats lunch at the visitor registration desk. Photo by Xinhua reporter Gao Yujie.

“In the future, we will use the Xianque Café as a pilot for light-format business at heritage sites, summarizing standardized experience in scene renovation, visitor-flow management, and off-season operation under the premise of heritage protection, forming a replicable template to export to other ancient castles and heritage points in Jincheng,” Xu Xiaotian explained.

At noon break, heritage volunteer Li Man met an archaeology-major college student; the two “tomb-exploring” enthusiasts hit it off at once and ordered coffee to chat. “I used to be frustrated at not finding fellow enthusiasts; now I can introduce these hometown treasures to visitors from all over the country, and I feel genuinely proud.” A cup of coffee’s aroma soaks the thousand-year-old temple, adding further luster to rural cultural tourism.

[Responsible editor: Qiu Lifang]

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