Safeguarding national treasure a 'relay race'

So says lone night watchman of 500 Buddha statues at a temple on the Taihang Mountain

Feng Kaiping, 64, is the sole night watchman guarding the Jindeng Temple, in Pingshun county of North China's Shanxi province, since 1995.

The temple is perched on a cliff of the Taihang Mountain, about 1,500 meters above sea level. Built on a narrow platform dug on the cliff in the 16th century during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the temple boasts around 500 Buddha statues carved in grottoes.

Feng was a father of three and doing odd jobs in the county troupe when his former teacher and then cultural relics protection chief in the county came to offer him the job of night watchman at the temple in 1995, after the last temple guard, who was in his 70s, died of illness.

Feng's wife Meng Ximei was fiercely opposed to him taking up the job, as she knew living in the temple, which is nearly 25 kilometers away from the nearest town, meant living the life of an ascetic.

However, Feng managed to convince her to agree to his taking up the job, as it meant a stable income for the family.

Although the temple was recognized as a national cultural relic way back in 2006, it had no power supply till two years later, and a new access road came up several years later, in 2018. That meant the living conditions in the temple were harsher than what the "stable income" would have provided.

To make life easier, Feng began growing potatoes — hares and birds eat up most other vegetables — in the mountains, burned firewood he collected and drank water trickling down from a cliff and forming a pool in a hall of the temple.

"The pool is my only source of water here, but some tourists love throwing coins into it to pray for good luck. Some even wash their hands and feet," Feng said. "I kept telling them not to do that, but they don't listen. I have now given up telling them that."