Shuntian Prefectural College, Cultural museum in Jiaodaokou Subdistrict, China
Shuntian Prefectural College is a complex at 65 Fuxue Hutong, arranged north-south with the Prefectural Confucian Temple in the west and the school in the east, following the 'temple right, school left' system. The temple's Dacheng Hall and the school's second gate are Qing-era structures; most other buildings were rebuilt in 2000. The site is used by Fuxue Primary School.
The site was originally the Yuan-dynasty Taihe Temple, spared by Ming troops because it held a Confucius tablet. In the early Ming, with the capital at Nanjing, the Yuan national school became Shuntian Prefectural College and the temple became Daxing County School. In 1411, after the capital moved to Beijing, it was renamed Shuntian Prefectural College, with the Daxing and Wanping county schools attached; its Dacheng Hall and Minglun Hall were built in 1414. Repaired repeatedly under the Ming, it was rebuilt between 1665 and 1726 and reached full scale after 1808.
The complex follows the "right temple, left school" layout: the Confucian temple on the west, the school on the east. The school's Minglun Hall and the temple's Dacheng Hall served teaching and sacrifices to Confucius. The eastern Wen Tianxiang Shrine is a separate museum under the Beijing cultural relics bureau, and the primary school rebuilt a hexagonal two-storey Kuixing Pavilion north of it as an alumni memorial.
The complex faces south at 65 Fuxue Hutong, with the Confucian temple on the west and the college on the east, following the right-temple-left-school layout. The site is used by Fuxue Primary School, so the historic halls are not freely open to the public; the Wen Tianxiang Shrine in the eastern section belongs to the Beijing Municipal Cultural Heritage Bureau as a museum. The surviving Qing-era structures are the college's second gate and the temple's Dacheng Hall.
The Lingxingmen gate is a three-bay, four-pillar, three-roofed wooden archway, the formal entrance of the Shuntian Prefectural Confucian Temple. It is one of five gates of the primary school that now occupies the site, serving as a landmark rather than a passage. The temple's Pan Pond beyond it has an oval plan with three stone bridges.
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