A Study On The Architecture Of The Great Buddha Temple & The Shanxi Guildhall, Zhangye

This disquisition is on the architecture of the Great Buddha Temple (GBT) and the Shanxi Guildhall of Zhangye, with discussion on the characteristic of the Gansu Corridor Architecture of the Qing Dynasty (GCA). Compared with the architecture of the Qinzhou and Hezhou system, the craft and style of GCA is distinctive and rich of endemicity with the simplified Dougong and the curved hiprafter. GBT, which was established in the Xi Xia Dynasty, is one of the most important temples in the Gansu Corridor because of the value of its cultural relic. The Great Buddha Hall, the primary building of GBT, takes a figure of Nirvana Buddha as its main joss, and fuses a space pattern of Dugang Formula of the Tibetan Buddhism with a fabric of Chinese tradition. Tuta (Pagoda of Earth) of GBT taks a form of Tibetan Pagoda, a mode of Vajra-Basod Pagoda is also adopted. GBT has been a local ancient architecture museum now by settled some selected buildings in, and it is an optimal sample to study the architecture of Zhangye even GCA. The Shanxi Guildhall locates near GBT and it is a delegate of the guildhalls in the Gansu corridor with a typical characteristic of the late Qing Dynasty.