Qingzhou Smiles: The Hidden Legacy of Longxing Temple’s Buddhist Sculptures

Today, we’ll talk about the discovery of Qingzhou’s buried Buddhist sculptures at Longxing Temple. Famous for their serenely smiling expressions, these statues unveil a thousand-year legacy of artistic mastery, religious devotion, and cultural preservation.

Transcript

Qingzhou Smiles: The Hidden Legacy of Longxing Temple’s Buddhist Sculptures

Today, we’ll talk about the discovery of Qingzhou’s buried Buddhist sculptures at Longxing Temple. Famous for their serenely smiling expressions, these statues unveil a thousand-year legacy of artistic mastery, religious devotion, and cultural preservation.

From January 19 to March 12, 2025, the Guardian Art Center in Beijing held an art exhibition called “Seeing the Smile” that featured nearly 50 ancient Qingzhou Buddhist sculptures from Qingzhou and its surrounding area. These sculptures are not only precious testimonies to ancient Chinese sculpture art, but they also embody the unique artistic expression that’s become known as the “Qingzhou Smile,” with each sculpted face conveying a sense of warmth and serenity that transcends time. 

Located more than 460 kilometers southeast of Beijing, in the central part of the Shandong Peninsula, lies the historic city of Qingzhou. While Qingzhou is now a small county-level city, in ancient times the city held significant prominence. It was one of the renowned “Nine Provinces” of ancient China, with a history tracing back over 4,000 years to the era of the Yellow Emperor. Its name, “Qingzhou,” symbolizes spring and represents the Wood Element in the Five Elements theory.

Historically, Qingzhou encompassed a vast area stretching from south of the Bohai Sea to north of Mount Tai, covering the Shandong Peninsula as well as parts of present-day Hebei. With its fertile white soil, it once served as a political, economic, and cultural hub in eastern China. However, as time passed, Qingzhou’s significance diminished, reducing it to a small county town. Despite this, Qingzhou is home to a prestigious cultural institution – the Qingzhou Museum, which is ranked as a National First-Class Museum. That puts it on par with such institutions as the Palace Museum and the National Museum of China!

As the only county-level museum with such a high ranking, the Qingzhou Museum boasts an extensive collection of over 50,000 cultural relics, including more than 3,000 precious artifacts. Among its most famous treasures are the so-called “Qingzhou Smiles”, referring to the Buddhist sculptures unearthed from the ruins of Longxing Temple in Qingzhou. Characterized by their gentle and serene expressions with tranquil smiles, these statues reflect the distinctive Qingzhou style of Buddhist art.

In October 1996, during the expansion of the sports field at Qingzhou No. 8 Middle School, a construction bulldozer accidentally unearthed a hidden underground chamber. Upon hearing the news, Xia Mingcai and his team from the Qingzhou Museum rushed to the site. As they removed the loose soil, they uncovered stone statues. Xia, a renowned Chinese archaeologist who graduated from the Department of Archaeology at Peking University in 1966, quickly identified the statues as likely being Buddhist sculptures. Recognizing the significance of the discovery, he led the team in a preliminary investigation, confirming that it was a Buddhist sculpture cache.

The Qingzhou Museum immediately took measures to protect the site while reporting the find to the local government and higher cultural heritage authorities, seeking approval for a rescue excavation. With authorization from the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, Xia Mingcai and a dedicated team of archaeologists began their official excavation work. Their efforts revealed an astonishing collection of exquisitely crafted Buddhist statues, leading to the subsequent discovery of Longxing Temple, a renowned Buddhist monastery dating from the Northern Qi, lasting from 550 to 577 to the Tang Dynasty, lasting from 618 to 907.

The underground chamber measured 8.7 meters from north to south and 6.8 meters from east to west, containing hundreds of Buddhist sculptures meticulously arranged. These statues, made from limestone, white marble, granite, pottery, iron, wood, and clay, spanned various dynasties, including the Northern Wei (386-534), Eastern Wei (534-550), Northern Qi, Sui (581-618), Tang, and Northern Song (960-1127) periods. The largest statue stood 3.2 meters tall, while the smallest was only 0.2 meters. The sculptures were organized in three distinct layers, with woven mat imprints visible on the uppermost ones, alongside evidence of ceremonial burning. To the east of the chamber, a sloping pathway used to transport the statues to the burial site was also discovered. These findings indicate  that the concealment of the statues was a deliberate and systematic act.

In total, more than 600 Buddhist sculptures, 142 coins, and two ceramic vessels were unearthed. Further exploration revealed the southern section of the chamber contained the remains of large architectural structures, believed to be the ruins of Longxing Temple, originally built during the Southern dynasties. The temple site extended 200 meters from north to south and 150 meters from east to west, preserving the authentic layout of a pre-Tang Dynasty Buddhist monastery. The main hall foundation, measuring 30 meters in length and 25 meters in width, hinted at the temple’s grand scale. Remarkably, Longxing Temple remains the only large-scale Buddhist temple ruin before the Tang Dynasty in China with a clear and well-preserved architectural layout.

Longxing Temple was originally known as Nanyang Temple and served as the principal monastery in Qingzhou, overseeing many surrounding temples. In 425, Liu Shanming, the then governor of Beihai Commandery, which was located within the modern-day Qingzhou region, donated his family residence to establish the temple. This marked the founding of what would later become Longxing Temple. Over the subsequent Northern Wei and Eastern Wei periods, the temple expanded and prospered. By the Northern Qi Dynasty, it had grown into the largest and most revered temple in the eastern region, earning the title “The First Temple of the East.”

During the reign of Empress Wu Zetian, who lived from 690 to 705 in the Tang Dynasty, the temple was renamed Dayun Temple. It was not until the Kaiyuan era (713-741) that it officially adopted the name Longxing Temple. However, during the transition between the Song and Jin dynasties from 1125 to 1234, the temple gradually fell into ruin due to the ravages of war. In the Hongwu era of the Ming Dynasty from 1368 to 1398, its remaining structures were dismantled to build the residence of Prince Qi. The once-glorious temple, with its nearly thousand-year history, was lost to time. It was only in 1996, with the discovery of the Buddhist statue cache, that Longxing Temple’s mysteries were brought to light once again.

The excavated Buddhist sculptures include stele carvings, Buddha statues, Bodhisattva statues, Arhat figures, and donor portraits. About 200 statues have been reassembled and restored. More than 90 percent of these sculptures date back to the late Northern dynasties, with the earliest inscriptions from the second year of the Yong’an era of the Northern Wei Dynasty. Most of the statues are from the Eastern Wei and Northern Qi periods, with a smaller number from the Tang Dynasty. According to archaeological stratigraphy, the burial of the cache is believed to have occurred around or shortly after 1026, but certainly not earlier.

These Buddhist sculptures showcase exceptional craftsmanship, combining techniques such as round carving, bas-relief, high relief, openwork carving, line engraving, gilding, and painting. The statues are characterized by diverse facial expressions and gestures, exuding elegance and grandeur. One notable artistic feature is the intricate composition. Many sculptures are set against lotus-petal-shaped back screens, with the central Buddha figure in high relief accompanied by two Bodhisattvas or, in some cases, the Buddha alone. The upper parts of the screens often depict celestial beings flying around pagodas, dragons, or jeweled vases, while the lower sections feature dragons with powerful, coiling forms, holding lotus flowers, leaves, and buds in their mouths to serve as bases for the Bodhisattvas. Additionally, the background often incorporates shallow relief carvings or painted elements like halos, body auras, and flame motifs. This artistic approach skillfully condenses Buddhist narratives into limited space, evoking a vibrant and harmonious atmosphere.

When observing these Buddhist sculptures, it is evident that those from the Northern Wei period primarily followed the Central Plains style, characterized by its solid and imposing features. However, starting from the Eastern Wei period, the distinct Qingzhou style began to emerge. The large, elaborate back screens of the sculptures, featuring graceful curves, celestial beings, and pagodas at the top, along with twin dragons coiling and soaring at the base, became a hallmark of this regional artistry.

By the Northern Qi period, the characteristic style featuring an elegant skeleton and delicate features was replaced by a new aesthetic. The back-screen reliefs almost disappeared, giving way to standalone, round-sculpted figures. These sculptures often had full, rounded faces, symbolizing a shift in aesthetic preferences. Unlike the heavy, layered garments of the Northern Wei period, Northern Qi sculptures displayed a completely different sense of beauty. The clothing was thin and clung to the body, revealing the healthy and graceful curves of the figures.

A particularly remarkable aspect of these Buddhist sculptures is the preservation of their gilded and painted decorations. Previously, it was widely believed that Buddhist sculptures were plain and uncolored. However, the gilding, which was applied to exposed skin areas to signify the Buddha’s golden body, also adorned decorative patterns and ornaments. The use of vibrant pigments was even more extensive, with colors applied to clothing, patterns, and narrative scenes illustrating the Buddha’s story. Expensive mineral pigments, such as cinnabar, azurite, ochre, and malachite green, enhanced the vividness of these sculptures. The seamless integration of painting and sculpture created a layered and dynamic visual effect, heightening the sacredness and grandeur of the Buddha and Bodhisattva figures.

The sheer number of sculptures unearthed from the Longxing Temple site, their exceptional craftsmanship, the well-preserved gilding and painted details, and the extensive chronological span they cover make this discovery unparalleled. It immediately drew international attention and was recognized as one of China’s Top Ten Archaeological Discoveries of the year. It went on to be listed among the 100 Major Archaeological Discoveries of the 20th Century.

Professor Dame Jessica Rawson, a prominent British art historian, archaeologist, and Sinologist from the University of Oxford, described this discovery as “a finding that rewrites the history of Eastern art and global art history,” calling it the most significant Buddhist archaeological discovery in China in the 20th century. Due to their strong regional characteristics and unique artistic style, these sculptures have been widely recognized by scholars as representing the “Qingzhou Style” and are celebrated for the serene and gentle expressions known as the “Qingzhou Smile.”

Today, these enigmatic Buddhist sculptures are the crown jewels of the Qingzhou Museum. They have been exhibited in major cities like Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, as well as in countries such as the US, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, and the UK. Rightly regarded as the “Buddhist statues that have traveled the farthest in the world,” they continue to captivate audiences across the globe.

Research on this collection of Buddhist sculptures is still ongoing. While scholars generally agree on the dating and stylistic characteristics of the statues, there are differing opinions regarding their origins and the timing of their burial. Some researchers believe that, judging from the diversity of styles and inscriptions, the sculptures could not have all originated from Longxing Temple alone. They argue that a single temple would not typically house such a wide variety of statues differing in size and design. Instead, the statues are likely to have come from multiple temples across the Qingzhou region, with Longxing Temple serving as a primary site.

Moreover, it is suggested that the burial of these sculptures was not a one-time event. Instead, it may have been a continuous practice carried out over several periods. This theory is supported by evidence indicating that the statues were interred at different times.

The question of why these Buddhist sculptures were buried underground remains a puzzle for researchers. Initially, archaeologists speculated that the burial might be linked to periods of war or religious persecution, particularly during the various “Destruction of Buddhism” campaigns in Chinese history. In times of turmoil, devout monks, driven by a desire to protect sacred relics, may have secretly buried the damaged statues to shield them from complete destruction.

However, recent archaeological findings have provided an alternative interpretation. Near the Longxing Temple site, researchers unearthed a well-preserved stone stele with a clear inscription. This discovery suggests that during the Northern Song Dynasty, Longxing Temple frequently held grand Buddhist ceremonies. As part of these religious observances, monks believed that burying damaged statues from previous dynasties was a meritorious act that could accumulate spiritual virtue and promote the Buddhist faith. Collecting and respectfully burying these damaged sculptures became a symbolic gesture of reverence and devotion.

Thanks to the compassionate efforts of these monks, the enchanting “Qingzhou Smiles” have endured for over a thousand years, allowing us today to appreciate their timeless beauty and serenity.

Well, that’s the end of our podcast. Our theme music is by the famous film score composer Roc Chen. We want to thank our writer Lü Weitao, translator Li Xintian, and copy editor Pu Ren. And thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please tell a friend so they, too, can understand The Context.