564 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1911. 



The Ch'en family, a young member of which is at this time a stu- 

 dent in Berlin, has such an ancestral temple in the home at Canton. 

 The temple consists of a series of courts and halls arranged on five 

 parallel axes. The great guest room for family feasts is handsome 

 and airy and most elaborately decorated. Each compartment con- 

 tains the four tables and eight seats, repeating the well-known genii 

 table arrangement of eight (pi. 9, fig. 1). 



The ancestral hall proper has room for 4,000 small ancestral tablets 

 on five most elaborately carved altars. In front of each of these five 

 altars there are five blue ritual vases. Everything is built of the 

 richest materials and significant also from an architectural point of 

 view. 



The mountains play an important part not only for the sites of 

 temples, tombs, and ancestral temples but for the locations of the 

 cities of the living. They prefer sites near a mountain, and when 

 other advantageous conditions are available, such as the course of a 

 river near the mountain, they consider the beauty of the location per- 

 fect. The Chinese designate this as Fengshui, meaning that the citvA 

 relations to wind and water are perfect. 



The large cities and almost all others are located in most clever 

 concord with the natural conditions to combine most advantageously 

 the industrial interests with the most beautiful environment possible. 

 The manner in which the Chinese artistically build their structures 

 to harmonize with the natural environment is astonishing. The 

 Province of Szech 1 uan has the most beautifully located cities. Kia- 

 tingfu on the Min River, a branch of the Yangtze, is a conspicuous 

 example. European gunboats steam by this city in the very heart of 

 the Empire, among others the German gunboat Vaterland (pi. 10, 

 fig. 1). 



The river flows along the south and eastern sides, and the city 

 spreads out from the corner northwestward where there is a moun- 

 tain that is conceived to have been the progenitor of it, and from 

 which it derives its forces and soul. With this conception the temple 

 was built on its summit for the protecting god of the city. This 

 temple has a pantheon arranged with a central compartment for the 

 main god, Yu-huang, the Jewel Emperor, who is preferably conceived 

 as the incorporation of the spirit of the mountain. He appears in 

 three images, three manifestations, that are disposed one behind the 

 other, so that the image most advanced in front appears to have a 

 more human resemblance than the others that are more in the dim 

 shadow of the altar in the rear. This is a most impressive represen- 

 tation of the triad. The great pantheon of the gods fills the other 

 space within this temple. These gods are the embodiment of virtues 

 and religious ideals that are specially revered in physical forms. 

 The altars are placed in the axial lines. The two pillars on the sides 



