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Kau Cim Fortune Paper Stand Inside the Niao Shi Temple (鳥石寺) (ศาลเจ้า โอวเจียะ หยี่อาเนี้ยเก็ง) (Sanchao O Jia Yi Ania Keng)

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

The Niao Shi Temple (鳥石寺) (ศาลเจ้า โอวเจียะ หยี่อาเนี้ยเก็ง) (Sanchao O Jia Yi Ania Keng) is a Guanyin (觀音) temple in a quiet neighborhood in Bangkok, Thailand. According to the temple caretaker, the temple was established 200 years ago by Teochew Chinese (唐人) (ชาวเถิง) people. The temple is run by a committee whose membership is passed hereditarily, but at the time fieldwork participants visited in May 2023, there was only one surviving committee member, whom the temple caretaker deemed "too old to walk." The temple is known in the neighborhood for effecting miracles. The caretaker told participants stories of how people who wish to sell their land bring signs reading "SOLD" and leave it in the temple, and then their property is sold, after which the templegoers come back and burn the sales certificate. Some other templegoers claimed that they put the names of ill family members under Guanyin altar, and their family members miraculously recovered. It was said that the CEO of a large grocery store chain called Makro came to pray at this temple when he was a taxi driver, and as he regularly prayed, he became more and more wealthy. He now returns to the temple once a month to donate and help the caretaker renovate certain spaces. There are two regular chanting groups of roughly 60-70 people who frequent the temple. The groups are made up of both older men and women who wear white and speak Chinese. Each of these groups comes around only once a month. The temple is open from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. everyday. The following images show the Kau Cim (求籤) pink fortune paper stand inside the Niao Shi Temple (鳥石寺)(Image 01). This type of divination is also known as lottery poetry and is connected to Kau cim (求籤) divination sticks, called Qiu Qian (求籤) or ไม้เซียมซี in Thai. To find your fortune with these sticks, you must rattle the Qiu qian sticks until one falls to the ground (methods vary geographically). In some Chinese Buddhist temples, you must confirm the fortune by throwing the crescent-shaped wooden moons called Moon Blocks, or Jiaobei (筊杯) a maximum of three times to receive confirmation. The temple caretaker specified that in this temple, the Jiaobei are not correlated to the Kau cim divination sticks (meaning you do not have to use the Jiaobei to confirm the reading of the divination sticks), rather they are used to answer questions about health. To see the Jiaobei and Qiu Qian in this temple, see the entry titled "Right Side of the Niao Shi Temple (鳥石寺) (ศาลเจ้า โอวเจียะ หยี่อาเนี้ยเก็ง) (Sanchao O Jia Yi Ania Keng)." Image 02 shows a close-up of the donor plaque behind the stand, reading three donor names on the right (two from the Wang (王) family). To the left of is the name of a company, likely echoing the Thai, which identifies the Chomsin Trading Company: 永發利有限公司. This company seems to deal with food and drinks. For another entry which deals with this company, see the entry titled "Gold Donor Inscription in the Niao Shi Temple (鳥石寺) (ศาลเจ้า โอวเจียะ หยี่อาเนี้ยเก็ง) (Sanchao O Jia Yi Ania Keng)." Image 03 shows the left portion in Thai, reading บริษัท ชุมสิน อินเตอร์ 1999 จํากัด บริษัท ชุมสิน เทรดดิ้ง 2000 จํากัด คุณพ่อจุ้ยเอี่ยม แซ่เฮ้ง คุณพรเทพ เห็นศิริสกุล คุณสุวรรณา เห็นศิริสกุล พร้อมครอบครัว ตระกูล เห็นศิริสกุล สร้างถวาย This identifies the name of a donor company, Chumsin Trading Company, as well as who they dedicated the inscription to. Metadata created and compiled by: Kira Johansen

Bangkok (Thailand); 13.719533; 100.482269

chi; tha

Cluster 3.4: Typologies of Text-Image Relations

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0441518

Non UBC

Faculty; Graduate; Undergraduate

DSpace