Open Collections

Paper Burner in the Nanpu Temple (南埔宮)(ศาลเจ้าแม่อาเหนียว) Courtyard

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

The Nanpu Temple (南埔宮) (ศาลเจ้าแม่อาเหนียว) is a one-room Guanyin 觀音 temple in Bangkok, Thailand. According to the temple caretaker, the temple is over two hundred years old and is one of the five oldest shrines in Bangkok. It was originally constructed from the wood of the boats used to by China immigrants who moved into this neighborhood in Thailand. The temple is open from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. The temple has regular chanting groups of mostly women that come every Thursday and chant in Chinese. The temple is run by a committee, but the name and nature of the organization is largely unknown; the temple caretaker said that the committee members are picked from the neighborhood using divination tactics and visit the temple only once a month. The temple caretaker specified that the majority of the people who live in the immediate proximity of the temple are family, and that they are "descendants of Guanyin." It is unclear whether he meant descendants from those who established the Guanyin shrine or literally descendants of Guanyin herself. He continually referred to the community around the shrine by this name. The temple is also said to have a decent amount of tourist activity. Fieldwork participants visited two times over the course of 2023. During the first visit in May of 2023, the temple caretaker made specific note to bring attention to the valuable incense pots given by King Rama V or King Chulalongkorn (จุฬาลงกรณ์) (1853-1910)(1868-1910), as well as antique ceramic plates from China that they held in their cupboard. Many people offer to buy these items, but the caretaker never dared to sell them, believing that his fate would be similar of the two past temple caretakers, who Guanyin supposedly took in their sleep as they were cheating the temple out of donation money. When fieldwork participants visited again in December 2023, however, these items had vanished. The following images show the paper burner on the right side of the Nanpu Temple (南埔宮) courtyard (Image 01). Various painted birds, flowers, and landscapes, including lotus flowers, peonies, roses, the great hornbill, and the yellow-vented bulbul on the burner. Image 02 shows the burner from another perspective. Image 03 shows where the burner is situated relative to the other items on this side of the courtyard. The temple caretaker specified that everything that needs to be disposed of is burned here. Metadata created and compiled by: Kira Johansen.

Bangkok (Thailand); 13.721964; 100.492967

chi; tha; eng

Cluster 3.4: Typologies of Text-Image Relations

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0443927

Non UBC

Faculty; Graduate; Undergraduate

DSpace