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intend our website to be regularly updated and always under
construction. Our first priority in our many outreach
efforts is to make Ming history fun for people other than
professional academics specializing in Ming studies.
Our website strives to offer uncommon yet useful items of
interest to the occasional visitor, who want more than the
taped guided tour through the Forbidden City.
We also want to
show through our website the types and scope of studies that
the Geiss Foundation is interested in sponsoring.
We welcome and encourage contributions from all our readers
and hope that like us, all will agree that the world wide
web is a marvelous treasure we should all use, share and enjoy.
 History
of Dongyue Temple
We feature here Dongyue Temple as an example of the vignettes
found in Insider's Beijing.
Founded in 1319
and still located in Beijing's Chaoyang district, Dongyue
Temple had long been relegated to more practical uses than
its original purpose as a Daoist temple.
History records
show that Zhang Liusun (1248-1321), an official of the Yuan,
died shortly after he bought some land in 1319 to build what
was to become Dongyue Temple Wu Quanjie (1269-1346), a Taoist
master, continued the construction. Although the main
gate and halls were completed in 1322 during the late Yuan
dynasty, it was in 1447 during the Ming dynasty, when Emperor
Yingzong had the temple repaired and named it Dongyue Temple
and gave the main halls their current names.
 In
1698 (Qing Dynasty), Dongyue Temple was razed but rebuilt
first by Emperor Shengzu and again by Emperor Gaozong in 1761.
Dongyue Temple was expanded during the Qing to include courtyards,
a school and a total of 224 rooms. Since 1900, the temple
suffered the ravages of war, political upheavals, was extensively
looted and almost destroyed.
Located
at 141 Chaoyangmenwai Street only 500 meters east of Beijing's
Chaoyangmen subway station, Donyue temple contains three main
courtyards and covers about 4.7 hectares. With 376 rooms,
it is the largest remaining temple of the Zhengyi school of
Daoism in north China. The temple served as a makeshift
school, a government office and quarters for hundreds of Beijing
residents until 1996, when it was declared a national treasure
by the Chinese government. Dongyue Temple completed
RMB5.8 million ($707,307.-) worth of refurbishing in 2002.
 On
the south side of Chaoyangmenwai gate stands a magnificent
green-and-yellow glazed arch of four columns. Erected
in 1607, the gate is comprised of three arches and is now
the only remaining arch in Beijing with color glaze.
The
temple, once famous for its statues of gods, couplets, stone
tablets and its horizontal inscribed boards, housed more than
3,000 statues, of which about 1,000 still stand. The
Yude Hall, first finished in 1481, now displays valuable statues
carved of jinsi nanmu, or golden-thread nanmu,
including: the God of Heaven, God of Earth and the God of
Water. Nanmu (southern wood) is a type
of wood treasured for its resistance to decay. Art specialists
certified in June 2002 several of the statues in Yude Hall
as well as three stone tablets in the courtyard as Chinese
national treasures.
 The
Stone Tablets
With stone tablets from different periods dotting each courtyard,
Dongyue Temple now contains the largest collection of stone
tablets in Beijing. A total 140 tablets once stood in
the temple, one originated from the Yuan dynasty; 32 from
the Ming; 99 from the Qing; while six dated from the Republican
period. Only 90 tablets remain today.
Of
the 90 stone tablets still remaining in the temple, the most
prized is one written in 1329 by Zhao Mengfu, one of the "Four
Calligraphers" of the Yuan dynasty. Zhao Mengfu's
calligraphy initiated a classical style, 
whose influence prevailed throughout the Yuan. Originally
one of four stone tablets, the only one now remaining is inscribed
with a total of 2786 characters in 28 lines, comprised of
60 characters on each line. This tablet is four meters high,
and describes the life of the Daoist master Zhang Liusun,
a founder of Dongyue Temple.
Folk Fairs
and Customs
Since the Yuan dynasty, on the 28th day of the third lunar
month, an imperial officer was dispatched to offer incense
for the Dongyue God's birthday. This ceremony later
evolved into a temple fair, attended by many of the local
population. By the Ming and Qing dynasties, Dongyue Temple
increasingly became a cultural and recreational center.
Beside the Temple Fair, fireworks were set off at the time
of the Lantern Festival (the 15th day of the first lunar month)
every year while performances and incense celebrated many
so-called incense fairs during the year.
Other
popular traditions celebrated in the temple included:
| hitting
the golden eye |
It
was said that if one could throw a coin through the
hole of the big bronze coin handing in front of the
Dongyue God statue, the person will have a son as an
offspring. |
| hanging
a baby in Guangcishen Hall |
Any
woman who wanted but had not borne a child would go
to burn incense and obtain a clay doll, which Taoist
priests would provide for a contribution. According
to this tradition, the woman must leave the temple looking
straight ahead and without turning around. If
she treated the doll as a real child, she would then
presumably become fertile. |
| washing
eyes in the basin |
Tradition
has it that ocular and optical problems could be completely
cleared up if one could wash one's eyes in one of two
wooden basins in front of the eastern and western bathrooms.
The basins were supposedly used by the Dongyue God and
his wife; hence, they had magical properties. |
| touching
the bronze mule |
This
mythological beast has a horse's head, the body of a
mule, the tail of a donkey and bovine legs. A
sick person need only touch the part of the bronze mule
that represented his illness and he would be cured. |
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