Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Cities

Beijing

Also Known As Peking The older romanisation, still attached to institutions founded under it. · Beijinger
China

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Beijing has been the ritual capital of successive Chinese dynasties since the Yuan, and the imperial state cult was performed at its Temple of Heaven, where the emperor sacrificed at the winter solstice as holder of the Mandate of Heaven. Its religious landscape is layered: the White Cloud Temple is a principal monastery of the Quanzhen school of Taoism, the Yonghe Temple serves Tibetan Buddhism, and the Niujie Mosque has served the city's Hui Muslims since the tenth century. Religious practice in the city today operates through state recognized associations.

Facts
Attributions
Tradition
The imperial state cult at the Temple of Heaven and the altars of soil and grain; Tibetan Buddhism at the Yonghegong, patronised by the Qing; Daoism and Chinese popular religion; Islam among the Hui; and Catholic and Protestant churches 2
Traditions
Sacred and Liturgical Languages
Classical Chinese for the ritual canon and the Buddhist scriptures, with Tibetan and Mongolian at the Yonghegong and Arabic in the mosques 3
Origins
Founded
A northern frontier city made the capital under the Mongol Yuan as Dadu, and rebuilt by the Ming from 1420 around the Forbidden City 1
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The Emperor's Sacrifice at the Altar of Heaven

The Ming and Qing capital was laid out as a ritual instrument. The classical prescription placed the ancestral temple to the left of the palace and the altar of soil and grain to the right, and Beijing follows it: the Taimiao and the Shejitan stand on either side of the approach to the Forbidden City. Altars to Heaven, Earth, the Sun and the Moon were set at the south, north, east and west of the capital, so that the emperor's year of sacrifices traced the compass.

The most important of them was performed at the Circular Mound in the Temple of Heaven precinct, built under the Yongle emperor in 1420 and enlarged afterwards. Before the winter solstice the emperor withdrew to fast, then processed south in silence through cleared streets. The altar itself is open to the sky and unroofed, three tiers of white marble, because Heaven was not housed. Tablets for Heaven and for the imperial ancestors were set out, a whole bullock was burned in a green tiled furnace, and jade, silk and prepared texts were offered while the emperor knelt and prostrated in a fixed sequence. A separate spring service at the Hall of Prayer for Good Harvests asked for the grain crop.

Only the emperor could perform this rite, which is what made it the pivot of the claim to the Mandate of Heaven. It ended with the dynasty in 1912, and Yuan Shikai's attempt to revive it in 1914 was widely read as exactly what it was, a bid for the throne. The precinct is now a public park and a World Heritage site.

White Cloud Temple, Yonghegong and the Niujie Quarter

Beijing's religious map was never single. The White Cloud Temple in the west of the city is the principal monastery of the Longmen lineage of Quanzhen Taoism, a school whose monks are celibate and ordained, and it holds the burial place of Qiu Chuji, the master summoned to meet Chinggis Khan. Its ordination platform made it a national centre for the transmission of Taoist orders, and it houses the China Taoist Association today.

Yonghegong began as the residence of the prince who became the Yongzheng emperor and was converted into a Tibetan Buddhist monastery of the Gelug school in 1744. The Qing court used such foundations to manage its relationship with Tibet and Mongolia as much as to patronise a tradition, and the golden urn procedure the Qianlong emperor introduced for confirming certain reincarnations by lot belongs to that policy; the modern state has invoked the same precedent in its own regulation of recognised incarnations.

The Niujie Mosque in the south west of the city serves a Hui Muslim quarter that has grown around it for a thousand years, its prayer hall built in Chinese timber style with Arabic inscription rather than in any imported idiom. Catholic Beijing dates from the Jesuit mission: Matteo Ricci died in the city in 1610 and was granted burial ground there by the throne, and the Nantang cathedral stands on the site of his chapel. All of these communities now operate through the state recognised religious associations, which is the single most important fact about religious practice in the city today.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Beijing directly: "page, describing its founding in Beijing in October 1994 and registration with China's Ministry of Civil Affairs in 1995, its permanent Beijing headquarters, and its own account of the Sixth..."

This source names Beijing directly: "This is Visit Beijing, the Beijing municipal tourism authority's own official account of the Buddha Tooth Relic Stupa at Lingguang Temple, Badachu, describing the relic as a tooth surviving..."

This source names Beijing directly: "stupa celebrates 60th anniversary in Beijing, a China Daily news report from 2024, is state media journalism marking the anniversary of the stupa's construction, not independent or scholarly analysis."

This source names Beijing directly: "Yi Seung-hun was baptized in Beijing in 1784 and returned to found a self-organized lay community meeting in Seoul by early 1785, years before any Western priest reached Korea, and the book traces..."

Source Catholics and Anti-Catholicism in Choson KoreaDon Baker with Franklin Rausch

This source names Beijing directly: "Association held its Sixth Congress in Beijing together with an international conference marking the 2570th anniversary of Confucius's birth, hosted by the Association with UNESCO and the China..."

This source names Beijing directly: "International Confucian Association in Beijing, held 16 to 19 November 2019 under the theme Confucianism and Building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind, hosted by the Association, UNESCO..."

This source names Beijing directly: "Wang Changyue became abbot of the White Cloud Monastery in Beijing in the autumn of 1655 and, from 1663 onward, established ordination platforms at Nanjing and elsewhere where he administered these..."

Source The Encyclopedia of TaoismFabrizio Pregadio (ed.)

This source names Beijing directly: "The Guozijian, or Imperial College, in Beijing was founded in 1287 under the Yuan dynasty as the highest state-administered institution of Confucian classical learning, continuing under the Ming and..."

Source Neo-Confucianism in HistoryPeter K. Bol

This source names Beijing directly: "and Rome, the 2018 and 2020 Vatican-Beijing agreements on the appointment of bishops in mainland China, and the Holy See's stated assurance that any rapprochement with Beijing will not come at..."

This source names Beijing directly: "Teaching and Research Press in Beijing, records that in 605, the first year of the reign of Emperor Yang of the Sui dynasty, the system for selecting officials through imperial civil examinations..."

This source names Beijing directly: "a French Jesuit at the Kangxi court in Beijing and the leading Figurist, holding that the Chinese classics, and above all the Book of Changes, preserved a primitive revelation given to all humanity..."

This source names Beijing directly: "for the Buddha tooth relic it holds in Beijing, describing the temple's account of the relic's survival through the temple's 1900 destruction and its later enshrinement."

Source Lingguang Temple (institutional record)the holders' own account

This source names Beijing directly: "Tooth Relic Pagoda at Badachu in Beijing, the temple administered under the national Buddhist association that enshrines what is venerated as a tooth relic of the Buddha in its modern relic pagoda."

This source names Beijing directly: "Lingguang Temple, Beijing, the Wikipedia article on the site at Badachu, is a community edited encyclopedic account of the Zhaoxian Pagoda, built in 1071 to house a Buddha tooth relic, its..."

Source Lingguang Temple, Beijing (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Beijing directly: "Baiyun Guan (White Cloud Temple) in Beijing and the precept texts, including the Chuzhen Jie, that revival was built on."

This source names Beijing directly: "Plan your next trip to Beijing, Niujie Mosque, published by CGTN in 2019, is travel-feature journalism from China's state international broadcaster describing the Niujie Mosque, one of Beijing's..."

The White Cloud Temple in Beijing is a principal monastery of the Quanzhen school.

The Temple of Heaven was the site of the imperial state sacrifice at the winter solstice.

This source names Beijing directly: "the Zhongnanhai leadership compound in Beijing in April 1999, staged to protest the treatment of practitioners in Tianjin, which is widely cited as the immediate trigger for the government's..."

Source Falun Gong and the Future of ChinaDavid Ownby

This source names Beijing directly: "of 1900, covering the siege of the Beijing legations and the international relief campaign, drawing on published memoirs, diplomatic records and secondary scholarship."

This source names Beijing directly: "Yi Seung-hun, baptised in Beijing in 1784, returned home with books and a crucifix, baptised fellow believers, and a self-organised lay community was meeting in a house in Seoul by early 1785, years..."

Source Catholics and Anti-Catholicism in Choson KoreaDon Baker with Franklin Rausch

This source names Beijing directly: "the White Cloud Temple (Baiyunguan) in Beijing, seat of the China Daoist Association since 1957, is part of a dedicated, sustained reference project documenting Daoist temples across China."

Contained In

China, Countries

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Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
2. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source
3. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
John Bowker (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997View the Source
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400-1900
Susan Naquin, University of California Press, 2000
Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China
Susan Naquin and Chun-fang Yu (eds), University of California Press, 1992
Measures on the Management of the Reincarnation of Living Buddhas in Tibetan Buddhism (Order No. 5)
State Administration for Religious Affairs, People's Republic of China, State Administration for Religious Affairs, 2007
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