Xiaxian is the homeplace of Sima Guang the famous politician and historian of the Song Dy-nasty. His tomb can be found on the third list of monuments and sites for protection of a national level. Within the precinct of the ancestral shrine of the tomb is a group of Buddhist bulidings, whose history is closely linked to the tomb, tombstone, hall and the so forth here. Furthermore, the exis-tent hall of an old structure and style is the oldest buildings—only younger than the Hall of the Tang dynasty in the Wulong Temple—in southwestern Shanxi, an area having many architectural survivals from the Jin-Yuan era and later.
