Laura > Recent Status Updates

[palanquins] in Fresno...donated by local Chinese women....The empty space inside the mini-temple was meant either for a deity's statue or for his/her spirit tablet. The other...part is a box, while the upper part is a fanciful miniature theater.

[procession/embroidered umbrellas] 雲林...commissioned not by the temple but by the organization that had won the contest in a given year and wanted to commemorate its luck in seizing the ring from the prestigious fifth bomb.

[心 boards] One of their functions is to serve as ritual and psychological aid in settling conflicts among members: disputants are directed to stand underneath the board and search their hearts for a solution.

[donor boards] red paper slips pasted on...or stone tablets were affixed to walls or erected in the temple precincts for pubic viewing...Making such gifts public had the advantage of rendering financial processes transparent and, hence, trustworthy.

[inscription boards 匾額] lacquered and often gilded...can be the most admired and culturally significant objects in a temple: sometimes exquisitely composed and with the seals of makers—of poets and calligraphers—whose connection with the temple lends prestige to the whole community. Many are dated and include donors' names.

Most popular:
光被四表
泽及同人
乃聖乃星

[textile draperies and banners] temple donors in Fresno and Oroville appear to have had particular fondness for such hangings...probably made in the well-known workshops of the Zhuangyuan Fang area...couching heavy gold and silver thread on red-orange and green-black backgrounds, with faces and other details picked out in a fine satin stitch

the rows of lanterns overhead bear the characters "Houwang" or "[ta]chiu." They signify that the shop owners have donated to a techie sponsored by the local Hou Wang Temple and that the customary procession of officiating priests should pause and offer blessings as it passes by

they had to be imported...When temples for some reason, perhaps cost, did not have a real bell, a flat "cloud gong," also usually made of cast iron, could be substituted... [Ritual Standards] In temples featuring Guandi, one of these weapons is likely to be the god's Green Dragon halberd

問杯 [crescent-shaped wooden blocks] Yin-yang and yang-yin means "yes," while yin-yin or yang-yang means "no."...By constantly lying on the altar, these blocks are imbued with the spirit of the god who is worshipped there...passing them through the smoke of the incense-sticks

A basic temple layout...copies that of a Chinese judicial courtroom of the Imperial period. The altar is the judge's bench. When he reaches a verdict, he writes it out and authenticates it stamping it with his seal. He then chooses a small flag from the rack and hands it to one of the courtroom staff who carries out the sentence.

...applied over an armature or perhaps a roughed-out statue of wood, reinforced with fiber (in California, often horsehair)...He had gone to the side of a hill nearby and taken his pick of the clay of the soil of this Christian land of ours and made it into three big Chinese gods and now here they are almost ready to be worshipped, baking hard in that bright morning sun of our Christian land.

...a five-piece altar set or wugong, composed of two candlesticks, two flower vases, and a four-legged censer...Most temples in central Guangdong, the Pearl River Delta region, had one or more of those plaques, called here boat-shaped plaques or caimen ("colored door").

Roof tiles seem not to have been common on early temples despite their ubiquity in Mexican-Spanish architecture and their popularity in later times among those seeking to make Western-style buildings look Chinese. Post-Earthquake builders often favored green- or sometimes yellow-glazed tiles on porticos and secondary roofs.

Although civic authorities had hoped that Chinatown could be rebuilt elsewhere after 1906...pressure was brought, especially by the San Francisco Real Estate Board, to build a new "Oriental City"...the designers involved (all of them European Americans)

Weaverville's Won Lim Temple...stepped gables in the southern Chinese style known as "Give Mountains Facing Heaven"

Taxing by local authorities to support village temples was especially common in northern China…often supported by endowments of donated land…supported by income from communally-owned temple fields

…real priests [were rarely] attached to…the Imperial government-sponsored Perfect Truth (全真, Quan Zhen) sects…[on this continent] belonged to the Heavenly Master (天師, Tian Shi) or Correct One (正一, Zhen Yi)...freelancers hired for special events, with fees paid directly by event organizers…[temple] keepers were from working class backgrounds…no more than a combination of janitor, watchman, and ticket-taker

列聖宮 temples signified housing multiple images+shrines to serve arrivants’ many villages' home deities

There is no sign of that abandonment to an emotion, to a passion, good or bad, that marks the western races...There is no fanaticism in it, no appreciable degree of earnestness about it.

Of Guandi- It seems to be the aim of every Chinaman who start out to make a new god to make one a little uglier and more repulsive than any other. If he can succeed in that work he will please the congregation and make his reputation.

Shrines are attached to main building and restricted access, v. Temples- can be operated by respected community members like physicians.

Joss houses were named by the Portuguese "deus"/god, just as they transliterated cina!

Everytime I find myself thinking, speaking ,writing and breathing in two languages though, I disagree with everyone who thinks that speaking both simultaneously is a disgrace.

For too many years I have seen the cycle of poverty of our people. All my life I have seen more wasted minds and lives than Allen Ginsberg ever dreamed of seeing. -Benjamin Alire Saenz, I Want to Write an American Poem III

Each language makes the other relative...When I learn to say those smallest, first things in the language that has served for detachment and irony and abstraction, I begin to see where the languages I've spoken have their correspondences—how I can move between them without being split by the difference. -Eva Hoffman

Occasionally, Polish words emerge unbidden from the buzz. They are usually words from the primary palette of feeling.

I'm sad, too. For the English language robbed of the beat your home talk could give it...robbing the young one...of a fine brew of language, a stew of words and ways that could inspire her to self-loving invention...of the smell of the kitchen on the page. -Rosario Morales, I Recognize You

To be close to another Chicana is like looking into the mirror. We are afraid of what we'll see there. Pena. Shame. Low estimation of self. In childhood we are told that our language is wrong. Repeated attacks on our native tongue...Often with Mexicans y Latinas we'll speak English as a neutral language...So, if you want to really hurt me, talk badly about my language. -Gloria Anzaldua

English is an all-devouring language that has moved across North America like the fabulous plagues of locusts that darkened the sky and devoured even the handles of rakes and hoes. Yet the omnivorous nature of a colonial language is a writer’s gift. Raised in the English language, I partake of a mongrel feast. —Louis Erdrich, Two Languages in Mind, but Just One in the Heart

Nandookomeshiinh, the lice hunter, is the monkey...Aiibiishaabookewininiwag, the tea people, are Asians. Agongosininiwag, the chipmunk people, are Scandinavians...There is a word for what would happen if a man fell off a motorcycle with a pipe in his mouth and the stem of it went through the back of his head. The word for stone, asin, is animate...It is a language that also recognizes the humanity of a creaturely God