The Heritage of the Temples, a Heritage in Stone: an Overview of Beijing's Religious Epigraphy
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China Perspectives 2007/4 | 2007 China and its Past: Return, Reinvention, Forgetting The Heritage of the Temples, a Heritage in Stone: An Overview of Beijing’s Religious Epigraphy Marianne Bujard et Xi Ju Édition électronique URL : http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/2503 DOI : 10.4000/chinaperspectives.2503 ISSN : 1996-4617 Éditeur Centre d'étude français sur la Chine contemporaine Édition imprimée Date de publication : 15 décembre 2007 ISSN : 2070-3449 Référence électronique Marianne Bujard et Xi Ju, « The Heritage of the Temples, a Heritage in Stone: An Overview of Beijing’s Religious Epigraphy », China Perspectives [En ligne], 2007/4 | 2007, mis en ligne le 30 décembre 2010, consulté le 28 octobre 2019. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/2503 ; DOI : 10.4000/chinaperspectives.2503 © All rights reserved provided by OpenEdition View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk CORE brought to you by Special feature s e v The Heritage of the Temples, i a t c n i e a Heritage in Stone h p s c r An Overview of Beijing’s Religious Epigraphy e p MARIANNE BUJARD AND JU XI Out of the thousands of temples that still existed in Beijing before the 1950s, less than a dozen are nowadays active, the remaining ones having been either abandoned or destroyed. However, the commemorative inscriptions that were carved on stelae for centuries and that still remain on rubbings enable us to understand whole sections of the history of temples and of the religious life of the capital. he destruction of Old Beijing, brought on by the urbs were urbanised “upwards .” While the first phase in the property frenzy of the last 15 years, has encompassed closing down of the temples as religious centres had been T the temples . Once precious centres of heritage, the the deliberate consequence of anti-religious policy, the sec - temples have been largely obliterated in the course of two ond was rather to be understood as “collateral damage” re - separate periods . Immediately following the end of the Em - sulting from property development policies in the capital. pire, some temples were converted into schools in line with The religious premises were destroyed in the same property the policy of eradicating “superstitious” practices, imple - boom that destroyed hundreds of the city’s narrow alley - mented first as part of the Hundred Days’ Reform (1898) ways, the hutongs. and later by the new republican authorities. After the Peo - In her magisterial work on Beijing’s temples, Susan Naquin ple’s Republic was founded, the temples were used not only puts their number, built between 1403 and 1911 in the cap - as schools but also as barracks, factories, warehouses, office ital or close to it, at 2,564. To those temples she adds 303 space for local administrations , or accommodation for home - poorly-documented sanctuaries. ((2) According to estimates less families. By this time, the temples no longer functioned made during the Republic, as many as 1,734 still remained as centres for religious practice , but the surviving buildings in 1930 , but the total fell to 1,135 by 1936 and to 783 by could still give tangible expression to the heritage associated 1941. ((3) The drop in number does not necessarily mean the with them. Up until the mid 1960s, it was not unusual for buildings disappeared ; many temples were not destroyed but spaces containing statues and religious artefacts to be pre - reclassified by their owners as ordinary properties. More - served, or even for a monk or a nun to attend them and to over, little district oratories, with no monks or nuns in atten - perform restricted religious services. During the Cultural dance, were not all registered. Indeed, most of Beijing’s tem - Revolution, the clergy was dismantled and its members were ples were quite small. Of the 2,564 temples counted by vigorously encouraged to adopt lay status: they were sent off Susan Naquin, more than 90 percent were three-sided build - to be re-educated and forced to work. ((1) The statues and the ings opening onto courtyards, surrounded by a wall and en - liturgical objects were destroyed and the commemorative ste - tered via a lodge. ((4) Of the rest, few boasted more than two lae were sometimes broken or bricked up in the walls, and often buried , as in the case of the famous Taoist Temple of the Eastern Peak (Dongyuemiao) . Its stelae have since been 1. Re-education was carried out in several monasteries, among them Guangjisi, Dazhongsi, Guanghuasi, and Tongjiaosi (oral testimony collected in the course of the unearthed and dozens stand today in the courtyard. program The Temples of Peking: Epigraphy and Oral Sources — The Social History of The second phase in the obliteration of religious buildings, an Imperial Capital . See note 5 below). 2. Susan Naquin, Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400-1900 , Berkeley, University of Cali - physically this time, began in the closing decade of the last fornia Press, 2000, p. 23. century, when Beijing was transformed into a vast building- 3. Beijing simiao lishi ziliao , edited by the Beijing Municipal Archives, Beijing, 1997, p. 3. site , and when whole districts of the Old City and the sub - 4. Naquin op. cit., p. 26 22 N o 2007/4 The Heritage of the Temples, a Heritage in Stone s e v i a 1. Map of Beijing and its temples t c n i e h p s c r e p 23 N o 2007/4 Special feature The capital’s Chenghuang temple in 1930. s e v i a t to five buildings. The great foundations were rare in Beijing. c n i e While researching our project The Temples of Peking: h p Epigraphy and Oral Sources —The Social History of an Im - On the subject of Miaoyuanguan, a former Taoist temple s c r perial Capital ,((5) which is entirely focused on the northern founded during the Ming dynasty in 1451 by a Vietnamese e p part of Beijing or the Inner City (see map), we counted eunuch, we found in the records for 1935 the following ex - nearly 1,100 temples for the period between 1750 and change between the priest in residence and the inspector 1949. ((6) from the Bureau of Social Affairs carrying out the census: Field surveys have shown that fewer than 200 still exist today: of these, hardly any have survived complete, being re - Inspector: Have you found the bronze statues? duced often to a door, a room , or a courtyard. With few ex - [which were missing from the inventory] ceptions, they have all been converted for other purposes. Priest: I’ve found them. There are six, large and Among the hundreds of working temples at the start of this small. century, within the perimeter of the Inner City, only four Inspector: Where did you find them? Buddhist temples still provide premises for religious activi - Priest: As we let out one of the temple rooms to a pa - ties: Guangjisi, ((7) Baitasi, Guanghuasi , and Tongjiaosi. To perworks, they store paper there. They had piled up them may be added Yonghegong or the Lama Temple, a the scrap on the statues. centre for Tibetan and Mongol Buddhism, and Lüzugong, a Inspector: Since you’ve found them, you must enter small Taoist temple in the west of the city dedicated to the them on the inventory. ((10) immortal Lü Dongbin. ((8) But this idealised picture of the former temples partly re - Oral testimony flects a reality: how living conditions in Beijing once were. Before courtyard houses became overcrowded to the point In those areas that have been entirely redeveloped, it is al - when the courtyard itself disappeared and was filled up with most impossible to gather testimony on religious practice in extensions to the original buildings, the hutongs offered res - the past. Unless some portion of the former residents were idents markedly better living conditions than they enjoy re-housed on the same spot, the new residents, coming in today. Housing stock, never properly maintained, has been from elsewhere, know nothing of the former geography of deteriorating ever more quickly since 1976 , when Beijing’s their new homes. But where older buildings have survived, citizens, terrified by the Tangshan earthquake, built them - mainly in northern districts of the Tartar City, fragments of selves temporary, open-air shelters that, strengthened and the history of the temples, even those demolished, linger in enlarged, became permanent. The temples, idealised or not, the memory of former residents. The time laps involved — occupy special places in people’s memories, places so impor - more than 50 years since the period under examination — tant that many elderly residents, on seeing a tree or a length directs researchers towards older witnesses, and their stories of fencing, can mentally reconstruct whole buildings. have to be treated with caution. However, the data they pro - Such memories are fallible, however, when it comes to pro - vide - - the names of monks or nuns in residence and ele - viding details not merely about the characters of the monks ments of their lives, the identity of statues, the layout of buildings, the status of the temples, the pattern of life once 5. The project The Temples of Peking: Epigraphy and Oral Sources — The Social History of followed within them, the stelae that once stood there - - can an Imperial Capital is a joint undertaking by the Ecole française d’Extrême-Orient and often be partly checked against information acquired from the Research Center for Folklore, Ancient Writing and Chinese Characters of the Beijing Normal University. This article is based on data gathered collectively by the participat - ((9) censuses carried out between 1928 and 1947.