Structure Type: Village temple 村廟.
Location: Flower-Pot Village, Yanqing District, Beijing City 北京市延慶區花盆村.
Period: 1809 or thereafter. There is a heavily eroded stele in the courtyard, on which this date is legible. However, the stele isn’t in good enough shape for me to really make out what was taking place. In any case, the murals are certainly not from before this date – the style is very 19th century, I would have guessed later.
Artist: Unknown.
Mural Contents: Two temple halls survive, a forward hall dedicated to Lord Guan 關公 and a rear one dedicated to the Goddesses 娘娘. Both of these have very interesting and unusual murals.
Only one mural-wall survives in the Lord Guan Hall 關公殿; the opposite wall has been recently repainted. This one wall shows a unique composite iconography. The upper registers have panel narratives from the Romance of the Three Kingdoms 三國演義. The lower register shows the return procession of a number of un-labeled deities. So far as I recognize the iconographies, these include the Dragon Kings 龍王, the Horse King 馬王, the God of Grass and Water 水草王, the Ox King 牛王, and what might be the River God 河神 or the Master of Rain 雨師 leading the way. Before them, life-giving water pours out of the palace gates, and they are met at the source of the inundation by the God of the Earth 土地神 and the God of the Mountains 山神. Behind them, demons are lead in captivity.
Below in a very narrow register is the section for ritual images. Here we see the harvest, the millstones, villagers carrying sacks into a building marked “The Hall of Surplus Grain” 餘麥堂, then beyond them a temple fair, with actors on the stage, the villagers watching beneath, and the figure of the god in the temple door.
The rear hall to the Goddesses 娘娘殿 has a curious melange of paintings. The two side-walls show scenes of the judgements of hell 地獄判命. The rear walls behind the statues show either mandorlas or, on the central panel, the throne on which the Goddess sits. This painting has an unusual level of visual verisimilitude, and the inclusion of what appear to be two glass oil- or gas-lamps on either side increase the trompe-l’œil effect. Presumably this technology should confirm or deny the 1809 date, but I don’t know anything about the history of Chinese gas/electric lighting – I’d be curious to hear from someone who does?
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