Foshan was called the hometown of Ji Hua in ancient times. In the second year of Long 'an in the Eastern Jin Dynasty (AD 398), he sailed to the east in Dakunyeshe, a monk in Shiban State (present-day Kashmir), and built a temple in Tapogang (present-day Tapo Street) to give lectures. After he returned to China, as time went by, the temple collapsed. In the second year of Zhenguan in the Tang Dynasty (AD 628), villagers dug the ground on the tower slope and got the third-class bronze Buddha. They rebuilt the temple on the pillars and offered three bronze buddhas. Since then, Ji Hua Township has been renamed Foshan, which is the origin of Foshan's name. Therefore, there is a traditional proverb in Foshan: "There is a tower slope in front of Foshan". By the end of Yuan Dynasty, the temple was destroyed by war.

In the twenty-fourth year of Hongwu in Ming Dynasty, villagers rebuilt the temple, but at this time, residential buildings gradually appeared near Tapogang, which brought inconvenience to the construction of Buddhist temples. They chose the reconstruction site in the suburbs (formerly known as Shige, which belongs to the East Production Brigade of Suburban Commune, that is, part of the current site of the Party School of Foshan District Committee) and named it Tapo Ancient Temple. During the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, Qin An, a monk, went to Beijing to celebrate the birthday of Empress Dowager Cide and received a batch of Buddhist scriptures from the imperial court. Qin 'an also raised funds to expand the Buddhist temple in Beijing, and built a Buddhist scripture building in the temple to store these Buddhist scriptures, so Tapo Ancient Temple is also called Jingtang Ancient Temple. As for the original Tapo Temple, it was the villagers here who converted it into an ancient temple. Dedicated to the statue of Dongyue Emperor, renamed Tapo Temple.

Later, it was a long time ago, and it was renovated many times. In order to commemorate the first place in Foshan, during the renovation, the villagers deliberately embedded two stones in front of the bottom, one engraved with "the first place in Foshan" and the other engraved with "the legacy of pastoral songs" (there were eight scenes in ancient Foshan, one of which was called "Tapo pastoral song"). In addition, a stone tablet engraved with the words "two years of Zhenguan in Foshan" was installed on the well in front of the temple.

The historical relics of these stone carvings have been removed from the ancestral temple by Foshan Museum and preserved after liberation.