Small Neighborhood Temples

Small neighborhood temples are among the most characteristic features of the vernacular landscape of Quanzhou. Almost every street has at least one temple. They are strongly associated with a particular place, and are dedicated to gods who once were virtuous officials, warriors, doctors, etc. They are distinctly different from the large temples of the city.

Large temples – like Kai Yuan Si, Cheng Tian Si, the Tian Hou Gong, and the Guan Yue Miao – attract worshippers and tourists from around the region and from abroad. They belong clearly to one or another established sect of Buddhism or Taoism, and are maintained by official orders of monks or priests. Small neighborhood temples, on the other hand, are often harder to categorize religiously, and combine a mix of Buddhist, Taoist and folk symbolism. They are generally maintained and frequented by the residents of the surrounding streets.

The neighborhood temples are typically located at the intersections, bends or openings of the lanes, . . .

. . . though others sometimes occupy "shopfronts" along major streets.

Where there is no room for them to occupy a permanent structure, they are sheltered by a make-shift roof.

This temple has occupied a narrow alley where it runs into the city's central street market. In all these cases, the temples' location enhances their function as centers of social activity as well as worship.

For example, temples often serve as places for informal childcare, gatherings of elderly and youth, and general contact between neighbors.

Temples also often double as sites for the neighborhood committee and other social services. The temple in Beimen (North Gate) Street shown at left is home both to public services – a police auxiliary station, a retired workers' activity center and a job-hunting agency – and also to small businesses probably spun-off from the local government. In contrast to Chinese cities where population mobility is fairly high and where housing is usually inhabited by many families and owned by employers or the government, as in Beijing for example, residents of Quanzhou's Old City do not maintain regular contact with their immediate neighbors by visiting their homes or chatting in the lanes. Quanzhou's strongly family-oriented social life, plus its strong tradition of maintaining a family home in one location over many generations, inhibits this kind of spontaneous neighboring. The temples help to accommodate a different kind of spontaneity among neighbors.

Sometimes temples are the mechanism by which large family- or clan-based organizations remain in touch. In these cases, they can serve as nodes in a cosmopolitan web of relations extending even overseas. But unlike the famous large temples of the city, these relations are limited to one or a few clans. Obscure symbolism helps to distinguish clan temples from the mainstream religious sects and the other more public small neighborhood temples. The householder whose shou jin liao courtyard house is featured in the Common Household Types pages, belongs to a clan organization which is raising funds to rebuild a destroyed family temple, or citang in his lane, Jiu Guan Yi. The obvious improvement in the maintenance and embellishment of neighborhood temples over the past five years is one measure of the economy's growth.

In the image on the left below, this temple in 1993 was dilapidated and abandoned. The image on the right shows the same temple in 1997 (viewed from the front instead of the side), fully restored and lavishly decorated.

One way that local committees raise money for temple maintenance is through the sale of paper money and other offerings which the worshippers burn in stoves attached to the temples. Sometimes residents support the temple by donating their free time to making paper money. In other cases, poorer residents earn extra income by making and selling it to the temples. Thus the temples serve as an indirect channel for charity.

The images at left and right show one household (not a particularly poor one) with half-finished paper money spread out on a balcony floor. The paper offerings themselves are often very finely crafted works of folk art.

Supplementary Gallery of Neighborhood Temples