NO. 2 FOLK RELIGION IN SOUTHWEST CHINA — GRAHAM 2I3 



maining were concealed behind bamboo mats, and people were not 

 allowed to go in and worship. Several temples were occupied by 

 schools, and a small temple was used as a fire station. One temple 

 had been occupied by government offices so long that most people did 

 not know that it had ever been a temple — we got the information 

 from an old man who had lived on that street for years. Wu Han 

 University was occupying and using several large temples for recita- 

 tion rooms, offices, a middle school, and a library. One temple was a 

 large teashop, with idols worshiped in one large room. No temple 

 that was destroyed by bombs or burned down was rebuilt, and some 

 temples were sold. While Lo-shan is on the way to Mount Omei and 

 many thousands of pilgrims pass through it every year, its temples 

 were in a much worse condition than those of Suifu or Chengtu. 



P'eng-shan is a large walled city above Kiating between Chiang- 

 K'ou and Mei-chou. In this city we found and listed 15 temples in 

 1945, and no doubt a larger number had already disappeared or been 

 transformed into buildings with no worship and housing other insti- 

 tutions. Not one temple was being used for worship only. Four were 

 being used as schools, five as military barracks, and one each as a 

 theater, a government rice granary, the headquarters of the board 

 of aldermen, headquarters for the Peoples* Party or the Kuo-min- 

 tang, a sulphur factory, and an arms factory. In all these temples 

 there was little or no worship. 



In 1944 we made a study of the temples of Ch'ien-wei, a large 

 city on the Min River 35 miles down the river from Lo-shan, A 

 conservative estimate of the number of temples in this city in 1910 

 would be 35 or 40, but we found only 9 temples in and outside the 

 city. The very large Ch'eng-huang-miao was occupied and being used 

 by a cotton-cloth factory and a theater, and three- fourths to four- 

 fifths of the idols had been removed and destroyed. In this temple 

 there was very little worship. The large Confucian temple was 

 occupied by a girls' school, the Buddhist temple Nan-hua-kung by a 

 primary school, the Ch'uan-chu-miao by the Chamber of Commerce, 

 and most of the idols were removed. The large Buddhist temple 

 An-lo-miao was being used as a military barracks. The temple on a 

 hill near the city, Cheng-wu-shan, was a regional office for receiving 

 and transmitting air-raid alarms. The temple outside North Gate 

 called Feng-lai-shan, or Phoenix Came Mountain, was a barracks for 

 soldiers. The Kuan-yo-miao outside North Gate was a granary to 

 store rice received as taxes, and a place for offices. The temple of 

 the fire god, also outside the city, was a military barracks. We were 



