Ta'er Monastery
Located at Lusha'er Township, in Huangzhong
County, 25 kilometers south of Xining city, Qinghai Province,
the Monastery covers an area of 144 thousand square meters.
It's a group of buildings constructed on the mountain slope
with lofty temples and halls rising one upon another. The
palace buildings, Buddhist halls, scriptures rooms, sleeping
quarters, as well as courtyards forming an integral whole,
enhance each other's beauty. The magnificent temples and halls
are, in architecture, a perfect combination of the Han's style
of palace buildings with upturned roof-eaves with Tibetan
style under-eave walls and decorations. The spectacular Lamasery
is scattered with tall ancient trees and Buddhist pagodas.
The Ta'er Monastery abounds in fascinating
Buddhist stories as well as arts and crafts of superb workmanship.
Butter sculptures, murals and appliques are its three unique
works of art.
Murals: Its unique characteristic is the fine workmanship,
reputed as "no stroke but fine, no place but excellent".
Mural paintings are done direct on walls and beams, but
in most cases on fabrics. A kind of stony mineral dye is
used in painting to keep pictures fresh for hundreds of
years. The Ta'er Monastery contains countless murals.
There are numerous large-sized colorful
and vivid mural paintings in the Great Temple of Golden
Tiles, the Great Scripture Hall and the Small Scripture
Hall. The pictures of the image of flying Bodhisattva clad
in transparent fine gauze are the masterwork among the temple
murals.
Butter sculptures: Several months ahead of the Spring Festival,
artists get to mix pure white butter with stony mineral
fuels of various colors, and sculpt them into mountains,
rivers, flowers, plants, figurines, trees, elephants, white
cranes, old folk, Buddha immortals, officials and and generals,
halls, towers, pavilions, terraces, stories of religious
life and mythologies. These sculptures, lifelike and in
myriad forms and expressions, are excellent manual work.
Appliques: They are made of colorful silk-fabric
cuttings. These cuttings in the shape of Buddha, man, flower,
plant, bird, wild animal, insect, fish etc. are sewn on
a large silk fabric, in-between stuffed with wool, cotton
or other woolly materials, to achieve three-dimensional
effect. The oblong sheets or streamers of silk fabric with
appliques of Buddha, scripture etc. hang from the ceilings
or upon pillars all over the places in the Lamasery. They
constitute a dazzling silk gallery. Artists of appliques
pay particular attention to projecting the lines and contours
of an individual figure. This fully demonstrates the artistic
style and skill of Tibetan culture.
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