Hanging Temple, China

The Hanging Temple, or Hanging Monastery, is a temple on a cliff (about 75 meters above the ground) near Mount Heng in Hunyuan County, Shanxi Province. The 1,400-year-old monastery was built during the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-557). It is China's only existing Buddhist-Taoist-Confucianist temple. The scientifically designed and skillfully built Xuankong Temple is "odd, suspended and wonderful." Completely built on the mountain cliff, it seems that the wood-structure temple is supported by the beams inserted into the chiseled holes in the cliff, but actually some of the beams don't bear the load at all.

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