Leyouyuan Plateau, Xi’an, Shaanxi 陕西西安乐游原
The Leyouyuan Plateau is an upland in the southeast of urban Xi’an, Shaanxi, around Qinglong Temple in today’s Yanta District; in the Tang it was the high ground in the southeast of the capital Chang’an. From its open heights one could look out over the whole city.
The name comes from the Leyou Park that Emperor Xuan of Han laid out here. In the Tang, the people of Chang’an came up in crowds on the last day of the first lunar month, the third day of the third month and the ninth day of the ninth month, and poets wrote of it often. Best known are Li Shangyin’s lines in “Leyouyuan”: “The setting sun is infinitely fine, only it is close to dusk.” Du Mu climbed it to gaze toward Zhaoling before leaving to govern Huzhou, and Li Bai’s lyric “Yi Qin’e” also mentions it.
Qinglong Temple on the plateau was a Tang centre of Esoteric Buddhism, where the Japanese monk Kūkai studied under Huiguo.
