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China Elevator Stories
Chunyang Palace in Taiyuan City (China Travel)
Chunyang Palace is located in the city near May First Square and can be visited together with other sights in the area.
13/05/2026
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
I visited this palace on one of the days I spent in Taiyuan. It is a lovely palace, but it was certainly overrun with visitors when I visited (during Spring Festival).
This palace, which looks like a temple, was built during the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368). It is not easy to recognize as a Taoist temple, since it looks a lot like a Buddhist one, but it is purportedly used as the former.
Besides the large number of people, it also had a few cages with colorful canaries, which is a common sight in China, particularly in front of houses and shops, where people keep these birds as pets.
According to my children, the Chinese clip their wings so they cannot fly away. We are going to move in a few months, and my children have already asked me if we could get such birds at our new place, since they are animal lovers. I had to say no because of the cruelty of having their wings clipped in a way that prevents them from flying. The birds look lovely, but the practice does not sound very animal-friendly to me.
When I visited the temple, there was an exhibition of Buddhist statues, which were also skillfully crafted and showed the long history of this kind of craftsmanship in China.
They were moved here from another place, I believe from the temple on Mengshan Mountain, if I understood correctly, so they would not break.
The Buddhist statues can easily make one think this is a Buddhist temple, but sometimes Taoist and Buddhist elements are mixed in these temples, and some are mixed Taoist and Buddhist temples that do not function solely as places of worship for one religion. The picture above shows Budai, who is sometimes also called the ‘Fat Buddha’ due to his big stomach, or the ‘Laughing Buddha,’ as he is often seen with a huge smile on his face.
Here are a few more pictures of the courtyards and different halls:
I believe this palace is worth visiting, but only if it is not overrun with visitors. When I went, there were so many people that moving forward and truly enjoying the temple was almost impossible. It is hard to know in advance whether a place is going to be overrun or rather empty, and when I traveled across China in February, I came across quite a few places that featured tourist sights that were almost empty. But this was a bit before Spring Festival, and things may have been different once people returned to their hometowns for the holiday or when visiting relatives. Maybe it was also due to regional differences. This temple had a low entrance fee; I cannot quite remember how much it was, probably around 30–40 yuan.
Address: No.1 Qifeng St, Yingze District, Taiyuan, Shanxi Province, China
Have you ever visited Chunyang Palace?