The name of the Daming Monastery means : Great Brightness Temple, although Emperor Qianlong renamed it Fajing Temple in 1765 when he dropped in for a visit. The monastery was founded more than 1000 years ago and was subsequently destroyed and rebuilt. Then it was destroyed right down to its foundations during the Taiping Rebellion; What you see today is a 1934 reconstruction.

The original Daming Monastery is credited to the Tang Dynasty monk Jianzhen, who studied sculpture, architecture,fine arts and medicine, as well as Buddhism. In 742 AD two Japanese monks invited him to Janpan for missionary work. It turned out to be mission impossible. Jianzhen made five attempts to get there, failing due to storms. On the fifth attempt he ended up in Hainan. On the sixth trip, aged 66, he finally arrived. He stayed in Japan for 10 years and died there in 763. Later, the Japanese made a lacquer statue of Jianzhen, which in 1980 was sent to Yangzhou.

The Chinese have a wooden copy of this statue on display at the Jianzhen Memorial Hall. Modelled after the chief hall of the Toshodai Temple in Nara(Japan), the Jianzhen Memorial Hall was built in 1974 at Daming Monastery and was financed by Japanese contributions. Special exchanges are made between Nara and Yangzhou; even Deng Xiaoping, returning from a trip to Japan, came to the Yangzhou Monastery to strengthen renewed links between the two countries.

Near the Daming Monastery is Pingshan Hall , the former residence of the Song Dynasty writer Ouyang Xiu, who served in Yangzhou.