Ta'er (Kumbum, in Tibetan) Monastery is located in the village of Huangzhong, some 25 kilometers, or about a half-hour's drive, from the captial city of Xining.
The city of Xining lies at the floor of Huangshui River Valley, on the banks of the Huangshui River, about 100 kilometers east of Lake Qinghai, while Ta'er Monastery lies on the rim of the mountain range just above and slightly south of the city of Xining (most of the monastery's 25 kilometer distance from the city of Xining represents vertical, not lateral distance). The monastery was erected beginning in CE 1577, in memory of the monk who founded the Yellow Hat (Gelugpa) Sect of Tibetan Buddhism (aka Lamaism), Tsong Khapa (CE 1357-1419), albeit, about 150 years after the monk's death.
The origin of the monastery's name is owing to a legend with at least two variants and two subvariants, wherein the blood of Tsong Khapa came to give birth to a banyan tree (aka sandalwood tree). In one version of the legend, at Tsong Khapa's birth, the father buried the placenta here; in another, drops of blood from Tsong Khapa's umbilical cord is to have spilled on the ground here. The banyan tree in question, known as the "Tree of Great Merit", according to one subvariant legend produced 100,000 leaves, while another subvariant legend says that the bark of this remarkably complex tree (or perhaps cluster of trees) produced 100,000 impressions of Buddha. Kumbum means "100,000" in Tibetan.
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Ta'er Monastery is a very large complex that spreads out over about 14.4 hectares/ 35.5 acres, and consists of numerous structures, some built in a Tibetan architectural style and others built in a Han Chinese architectural style, and includes Buddha halls, scripture ripositories, pagodas, and lama residences, as well as several colleges, since the monastery also serves as a sort of Buddhism university for Lamaist monks.
The monastery is supposed to have originated as a simple temple with stupa (a Tibetan for "mound", or "heap", a place where Lamaist relics, including the remains of revered monks, are kept) to mark the birthplace of the famous monk, on which grounds was later built a monastery that was expanded over the centuries, as the following condensed history explains.