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The Old Gentleman's Abbey at Warm-Springs Township (Nuanquan zhen Laojun guan 暖泉鎮老君觀)

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

The Old Gentleman (Laozi 老子) Abbey is located on a small rise overlooking the large market-town of Warm-Springs Township (Nuanquan zhen 暖泉镇) in Hebei Province 河北省. This institution is one of only a handful of dedicated Daoist abbeys (guan 觀) in the basin of the Huliu River 壺流河, making it unique. In 2018, the abbey was run by a Quanzhen-sect cleric known as Liu Zhenzi 劉真子, a prestigious local ritual practitioner who presided at temple fairs and funerals across the region. No steles or other inscriptions survive at the site. A government plaque claims that a holy spindle tree (simian mu 絲棉木) in the rear courtyard is 800 years old, while other recent plaques set around the complex claim that the abbey was founded in the Jin Dynasty 金 (1115–1234). The central-wall mural in the Hall of the God of Wealth (Caishen dian 財神殿) contains a figure who holds a coin with the words “Common Currency of the Qianlong Reign (1736-1795)” (Qianlong tongbao 乾隆通寶), proving a useful date for the murals. Based on this, as well as on codicological study of the textual sources of the murals, scholar Hu Chuntao 胡春濤 suggests that the murals should be from the late Qianlong 乾隆 reign or the Jiaqing 嘉慶(r.1796-1820) period; this roughly matches the style of the images. (See: Hu Chuntao 胡春濤, “河北蔚縣暖泉老君觀三清殿壁畫的考察與相關問題的研究 [An Examination of the Mural Paintings in the Sanqing Hall of Laojun Guan in Nuanquan, Weixian County, Hebei Province and the Study of Related Issues],” 藝術探索 26, no.1 (2012): 67-72.) The abbey has two main halls and a number of flanking side halls. The first (southern) central hall is devoted to the Three Purities (Sanqing 三清). While the statues here are recent creations, the murals are original. Two panels on the north wall, on either side of the altar, show Daoist worthies. The figures on the eastern panel are labeled (from right to left): 長生明德真君, 長真蘊德真君, 丹陽普化真君, 莊子南華真君, 廣寧太古真君. The western panel reads (from right to left): 清淨順化真君, 東化紫府真君, 純陽警化真君, 正陽傳道真君, 重陽開化真君. There is a narrow corridor between the rear wall of the altar and the northern wall of the room, which contains a door opening into the back courtyard. High up over the lintel of this door is an ink-wash painted image of an “Inner Alchemy Chart” (neilian tu 內煉圖). On the rear (northern) face of the altar wall, facing out into the courtyard beyond, is an image of the Dark Altar (Xuantan 玄壇 / Zhao Gongming 趙公明). The east and west side walls show the “Old Gentleman's Eighty One Transformations” (Laojun bashiyi hua tu 老君八十一化圖), an expanded version of the famous medieval polemical text called “Sutra of the Conversion of the Barbarians” (Huahu jing 化胡經). The narrative details the creation of the universe, the career of Laozi, his journey into the West where he appeared as the Buddha to convert the barbarians, and then a long series of miracle stories thereafter. The text is too long to transcribe here and is available elsewhere; see the paper cited above for a study of mural text and its relationship to various published versions. The narrow space of the room and the curtains hung across the wall make it impossible to photograph these murals in full; each of the two images reproduced here are composites of over forty photographs of each individual panel, resulting in many small distortions and inconsistencies. The front courtyard contains two flanking shrines, both of which have murals that appear to be in the same hand as those in the Hall of the Three Purities. The eastern hall has an image of a Daoist master in a blue robe; this may be Lü Dongbin 呂洞賓 or possibly Lu Ban 魯班. The western hall facing it appears to be devoted to the God of Wealth (Caishen 財神); to the left are “barbarians bearing treasure” (hu ren 胡人進寶), while on the right are the Two Gods of Peace and Harmony (Hehe ershen 和合二神), in some areas considered the gods of homosexuality. Again, curtains set across both of these walls make them difficult to photograph in full; the images reproduced here are imperfect composites. The north and south side-walls of both of these shrines contain panel images known as the Images of the Hundred Trades (Baigong tu 百工圖). This unique genre of mural is found at a number of locations in Yu 蔚縣 and Guangling 廣靈縣 Counties, and shows images of craftsmen going about their trades. The Old Gentleman’s Abbey also has a rear hall devoted to the Perfected Warrior (Zhenwu 真武), but the murals here have been recently repainted.

Hebei Sheng (China); 39.806435; 114.428233

chi

North China Mural Survey

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0435864

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