Zhongyue Temple is located at the foot of Huanggai Peak on the southeast of Mountain Taishi, 4 km away from Dengfeng City of He'nan Province. The temple fair is held on the 10th of the third lunar month and the 10th of the tenth lunar month every year. It originates from the fete of offering sacrifices to the mountain by the ancient rulers. In the Song dynasty, the regime and the Taoism were integrated, thus the temple fair entered its prime times, and gradually, it became an important fair for trade.

The Temple Fair lasts as long as 10 days, and attendants could be as many as 200,000 per day. Many ancient customs are kept till now at the fair, such as “Shuanwawa”, literally “tying down a baby”, an activity of tying a rope on the neck of a clay baby in the temple, “Baigandie”, literally means “worshiping a nominally adoptive father”; “touching iron figures” (a legend has it that one who touches the iron figure could be as strong as the iron figure), etc. At the fair, one can also watch many local performances such as lion dancing, land-boat dancing, stilt walking, fire dragon dancing, and so on. There are also many souvenirs or “mascots”, which are provided with a strong religious belief, for example, longevity lock, jade scepter, precious calabash, sachet, lucky sword, animal sign stone, etc.

Xun County Town is historically well-known in China. The temple fair originates from over one thousand years ago when the emperor of the Later Zhao Dynasty organized people to carve the Pishan Buddha Statue. People at that time usually gathered to burn the incense and worship the mountain and the Buddha. During the period of more than one thousand years, a great number of monasteries and Taoist temples have been built one after another, and the fair has been increasingly expanded. Lasting one month from the lunar New Year's Day to the 2nd of the second lunar month, the Temple Fair of Xun County attracts millions of pilgrims and tourists from about 20 neighboring provinces, such as Shanxi, Hebei, Shandong, Hubei, Anhui and even from abroad, for worshipping or sightseeing. Besides, many pilgrims from the surrounding cities come to burn incense and worship or to redeem a wish to the Buddha on the 1st, the 15th as well as the 3rd, the 6th, and the 9th of every lunar month.

The Temple Fair of Xun County is a big platform to gather and carry on both religious culture and folk customs. Religious belief used to be the subject of temple fairs in history. On the two mountains, Dapi and Fuqiu, where ancient temples stand here and there, the culture of Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism coexist in harmony. All those religious characters can bless and protect mankind in the hearts of the locals. Meanwhile, a great amount of chance occurrences to the numerous pilgrims added up to “epiphany”, so that there arose among the locals within a radius of several hundred kilometers a saying that the Xun County Mountain is epiphanic. Still, there is one more saying that it would take three years to achieve perfect virtues and merits if you go there to burn incense and worship, with the first year to make a wish, the second year the wish fulfilled and the third year to redeem the wish.

The performance of traditional merry-making activities in temple fair of Xun County is peculiarly distinctive, with its snacks, a variety of handicrafts catching the eyeballs of visitors.

At the east side of Zhongyue Gate stand four iron men which were cast in 1064 (Song Dynasty). They are the four largest and best maintained existing “Iron Guards” which people call “Iron Protectors of the Temple”. Legend has it that when the army of Jin invaded Song, the iron men were ready to cross the Yellow River to fight against Jin, but unfortunately, their great ambition wasn't fulfilled. Then, out of admiration and respect, the local civilians worshipped them as their patron saint, and when children were one year old, they would visit the Zhongyue Temple to hold a ceremony of hanging lock on the arms of the iron men. First, they hang a copper lock or a silver lock on the arm of one of the four iron men, and then ask the children to kneel down and burn the incense. At last they would take the locks off the iron men and hang them around the children's necks, which means the locks, as gifts given by the iron men, would bless the children and guarantee their health and safety. Some people call such a custom “hanging locks”, or “worshiping a nominally adoptive father”.

In the north of Huaiyang County stands the Taihao Fuxi Mausoleum, which is called the “Ancestor Temple” by the locals. It is proved in archeology that the Taihao Mausoleum of Fuxi was first built in the Spring and Autumn Period and then developed in the Han Dynasty with a temple built in front of the mausoleum. Covering over 36 hectares, the Taihao Mausoleum of Fuxi is admired for its huge scale and splendid buildings. In the area of Central China, there is no other temple fair which can rival Taihao Mausoleum Fair in its overwhelming influence and long duration. Lasting a month, the fair, according to the lunar calendar, begins on the second day of the second lunar month and ends on the third day of the third lunar month every year.

Burning incense and worshipping the ancestor Fuxi is the basic content of the fair. It is said that February 15th in the lunar calendar is the birthday of ancestor Fuxi, who laid the foundation of the original Chinese civilization with Nvwa, by creating human being out of clay, producing the Eight Trigrams and setting up the rules on marriage. With incense sticks in hands and baskets on shoulders, the pious men and women, who compose the organization of burning incense and worshipping ancestors, hold high the blue-green dragon flags with yellow strips, kneel down solemnly and burn the incense in front of the statue of the ancestor Fuxi, with the instrumental music on, in order to express their greatest veneration to the ancestor. Generally speaking, those who come to worship the ancestor will carry with them a handful of soil from their hometown and add it to the Fuxi Mausoleum after lighting incense, which would bless their descendants to be prosperous.

On the 13th of the first lunar month, numerous novel story tellers and ballad singers from all over the country take with them their musical instruments to gather at Majie. Small as the town is, it is a holy place in the hearts of those artists. Whether they are famous ballad singers or country artists, talking and singing in this town are what they like doing most. These artists tell stories or sing ballads in public, exchanging skills to make friends and hoping to become the champion of the fair. Wherever it is, in the fields or along the rivers, story tellers or ballad singers play the jianban, a traditional percussion instrument, or the huqin, a traditional stringed instrument, and begin their performance. On such a huge country stage, hundreds of artists perform in the open air. They sing or talk about the past and the present as if they were in a dream while the listeners are intoxicated with joy. These artists play the country music which has been handed down from generation to generation to release their inner happiness or sadness to the top of their bent.