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Monastery of the Three Purities at Sieve Silks Village (Shaizi lingluo cun Sanqing si 篩子綾羅村三清寺)

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

The Monastery of the Three Purities (Sanqing si 三清寺) is in enigmatic ruin (Image 01). The complex is located within the walls of a fortified hamlet called Sieve Silks (shaizi lingluo 篩子綾羅), in Hebei Province 河北, China. It is one of several villages in the area that have the word “silks” in the name. The word “monastery” suggests a Buddhist establishment, while the “Three Purities” suggests a Daoist affiliation. An opera stage faces the complex to the south, across a little threshing-floor arena (Image 09). At the time of visits in 2017 and 2018, the roof of the main hall was slowly disintegrating, shedding bricks and tiles into the middle of the room (Image 02). No steles survive to date the complex, but a painted almanac (lishu 曆書) in one of the murals contains the regnal title Tongzhi 同治 (1861-1875) and what appears to be the characters for “eleven,” indicating the year 1872. This sly method of recording the dates of murals is found in a number of other temples in the area. From a stylistic perspective, the paintings are undeniably crude, however the themes are unique and interesting. The two side-walls have “many-treasure cabinet” (duobaoge 多寶閣) paintings, with elegant objects placed into shaded panels creating a three-dimensional effect (Image 03, Image 04). The inner (northern) side of each composition shows the portico, or entrance way, of a palace, presumably the gods’ realm. The two flanking walls on the outer part of the main hall, which would usually have images of guardian deities, show scenes of fantastical cityscapes (Image 05, Image 06, Image 07). The complex originally had a front “passing hall” (guodian 過殿) as well as east and west side-halls. Of these, only the western side-hall maintains heavily damaged murals, which show riders on mythological beasts charging through the clouds (Image 08).

Hebei Sheng (China); Yu Xian (Hebei Sheng, China); 39.765313; 114.497255

chi

North China Mural Survey

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0438433

Non UBC

Graduate

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