Note: Part or all of this painting has now been cut off the wall and stolen. If you see this or a fragment of this in a gallery or collection, you should inform the auction-house, local police or Interpol as appropriate.
Location info and some photos withheld. As of my last visit, this mural site is vulnerable to theft or destruction. I have withheld the location beneath the county level and any photographs (of steles, signs, scenery, etc.) that might identify the place. If you are an accredited scholar and you have a good reason to want to see this information, email me and we’ll talk about it.
Structure Type: Village temple 村廟.
Location: The temple to the Perfected Warrior is located on a small rise outside of the northern gate of the village. The Dragon King temple is a little bit away from the walls, to the north-west of the village fort.
Period: I am genuinely unsure about the dating here. All of it seems inarguably Qing (1644-1912) to me. The Dragon King temple is clearly from the 19th century. The two side-walls of the temple to the Perfected Warrior may be from the same hand, but the front-wall is certainly not, although the palette is actually quite similar. As a guess I’ve put the whole thing in the early 19th century but this may be completely off.
Artist: Unknown.
Mural Contents: This site is complex and has now been partially looted. When I visited in 2014, I was not able to enter the Dragon King temple and could only take a few pictures through the crack of the door. The interior shows a relatively standard 19th century Dragon King procession, showing the Mother of Waters 水母 and the procession of the Dragons out and back from the Crystal Palace 水晶宮. If you look closely at the rear part of the composition, you can see that the Crystal Palace is depicted in Westernized form.
This has now been totally stripped; only the chaekgori-style panels over the door remain.
Similarly, the Temple to the Perfected Warrior was relatively intact in 2014, although I didn’t take particularly good pictures.
Part of one wall has now been cut away, but about 4/5ths of the composition survives. The front wall, although heavily damaged, has a beautiful image of the Perfected Warrior surrounded by his generals, the Duke of Zhou 周公, and the Peach-Blossom Girl 桃花女.
The side-walls, which may or may not be by the same artist, show scenes from the Perfected Warrior’s hagiography.
Full Gallery
