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Temple of the Dragon Kings at Zhou Family Village South Fort (Zhou jia zhuang nan bu Longwang miao 周家莊南堡龍王廟)

From the Ground Up: Buddhism & East Asian Religions (FROGBEAR Project)

Zhou Family Village South Fort (Zhoujiazhuang nanbu 周家莊南堡) is located about ten kilometers south-west of the Yu County seat. The Dragon King temple is set outside of the east-facing gate of the old walled village, on a small rise and facing south. A stele at the site records the temple’s founding in 1591 by Li Tongnan 李通男 and Li Yanxue 李彥學, together with a number of other donors of different surnames, as an offering in response to an outbreak of disease. (See: Deng Qingping 鄧慶平 ed., Yuxian beiming jilu 蔚縣碑銘輯錄 [Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 2009], 312-13.) A 1730 repair stele (not transcribed in the above) records a painter-artisan (huajiang 畫匠) named Li Wansheng 李萬生, and a graffito in the panels beneath the rafters confirms that the extant murals were painted by this person: “Pictures painted by Wansheng Li [sic] of Jintan County in Pingyang city, captions by Weizhen Li of the present district” 平陽府金壇縣万生李繪圖, 本境維貞李題. Pingyang refers to present-day Linfen cityship 臨汾市 in southern Shanxi, marking an unusual example of a village muralist who was apparently plying his trade over 500 kilometers from home. The murals were plastered over during the Cultural Revolution; afterwards this plaster was scraped off, revealing the very faded images beneath. In 2018, the structure was being used for grain-threshing by a local farmer. The central (north) wall is unfortunately almost completely destroyed. The two side-wall murals show a relatively standard procession of the Dragon Kings, out on the east wall and back on the west. The bottom register of both walls contains figures in the human world: On the east, traveling merchants are seized and abducted by dragons. On the west, a procession of votive figures gather around a table of offerings, and a spirit-plaque (shenpai 神牌) that reads: “The spirit-positions of the Five Emperors of the Five Directions, the Dragon Kings who Dispense Rain” (Wufang wudi xingyu longwang shen wei 五方五帝行雨龍王神位). The monochrome ink-wash triangular panels in the rafters are covered in rather odd poetical graffiti, presumably by the Li Weizhen mentioned above.

Hebei Sheng (China); Yu Xian (Hebei Sheng, China); 39.768943; 114.515267

chi

North China Mural Survey

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0433577

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