Structure Type: Lineage Temple 家廟.

Location: Song Family Village, Yu County, Hebei Province 河北省蔚縣宋家莊村. The temple is located within the old fort, up against the north-western wall.

Period: Completed in 1818. A stele set into the wall gives a beautiful history of the creation of this shrine, from the altar association’s 會 difficulties with the family graveyard in the latter half of the 18th century, the purchasing of different plots of land as trusts for the family graves, and finally the creation of a proper ancestral temple between 1810 and 1818.

Artist: The stele has 暨孫文生 (諱) 錦成丹畫, which I think should mean, “And painted by Sun Wensheng (taboo name of the deceased), called Jincheng.” May be wrong about this.

Mural Contents: The main purpose of the murals is to show the votive tablets 牌位 of the ancestors, so that they can be written out in genealogical order and receive worship. Great attention is paid to the geomancy of this imaginary scene; a hill sits at the top (north), shaded by trees, with rivers flowing around it. The apical ancestor’s tablet sits at the commanding spot beneath this hill. Beneath this, there is a “spirit-way” 神道 of tables of offerings and ceremonial arches 牌樓.

Other Notes: Lineage temples were once reasonably common in rural Yu County; I’m aware of at least seven standing pre-Revolution family shrine buildings scattered around the villages and the county town, and there were no-doubt once more than this. Nevertheless, it’s clear that such temples were never a ubiquitous in the way they were in southern China, and were probably a relatively late (18th or 19th century) phenomenon in the area. Of the shrines that survive, only three have intact murals, and the other two are in worse shape than this.

This particular temple has been repaired recently by the Yu County government, which has undertaken a rather too-clean renovation of Song Family Village and intends to do the same to neighboring sites. Nevertheless, it’s good to see a temple cared for.

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