Structure Type: Village Temple 村廟.
Location: Hebei Province, Laiyuan County, Dongtuanbu Township 河北省淶源縣東團堡鄉. The temple is located in the north-eastern corner of what appears to be the old fort.
Period: Undated, 19th or early 20th century based on style. There’s a stele recording the donation of charitable monies to the temple in 1911, but nothing on it about repairs or paintings.
Artist: Unknown.
Mural Contents: The style of these murals is quite unique; it seems to bear closest resemblance to the “new-years pictures” 年畫, colorful prints that circulated through north-Chinese villages in this period. The murals show the palace of the Goddesses as a rambling, multi-story complex, in which women comb their hair, prepare food, gaze out from windows, play with their sons, etc. This image, unfortunately damaged, represents the culmination of several trends in north-Chinese mural art – the growth and centrality of the “portico-picture” as the dominant village mural theme, the combination of western perspectival painting and specifically feminine-coded inner space in the creation of temple rooms, the folk-ization of mural painting, etc.
Other Notes: The temple seems to have been used as a school-room at some point, meaning that the lower portions of both walls have been covered over by blackboards, while the surrounding murals were papered over with newspaper. Thus the images are best appreciated in their details, below:
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