Centuries-old temple poised to show its new face

Wanshou Temple, situated close to the Grand Canal beside the West Third Ring Road in Haidian district, Beijing, is more than 400 years old.

Appropriately, the word wanshou translates as "longevity", and is often used to bestow good wishes on the elderly.

Once an imperial venue where emperors and empress dowagers burned incense and prayed to Buddhas, by the 1980s, Wanshou Temple was dilapidated, with its roofs overgrown and weeds growing between shattered floor tiles.

Wang Dan, 55, director of the Beijing Art Museum, which is located inside the temple, said that when she took her post in 2017, the eastern area of the temple resembled a shantytown.

In stark contrast to bustling scenes during the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), when Emperor Qianlong (1711-99) went to the temple to celebrate his mother's birthdays, and Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) visited it 52 times in four years, the temple is now rarely mentioned by Beijing residents and visitors to the city.

In 2017, the temple was closed for an overhaul－its first major face-lift in 126 years. It is scheduled to reopen to the public this month, and will host five exhibitions simultaneously, ranging from a display featuring China's longevity culture, to calligraphy and paintings by Qing emperors.

The temple comprises central, eastern and western sections－boasting seven gardens in its central section. The main buildings, situated along the temple's central axis, include the Hall of Heavenly Kings, Great Buddha's Hall and the Wanshou Pavilion, which were restored during the renovation work.

Late last month, the overhaul entered the final stage, with the statues of the Eighteen Arhats (Buddha's disciples) being revealed at Great Buddha's Hall.

Also last month, the huge bodies of the Buddhas of Three Ages were covered with large moist yellow cloths in this hall.

Wei Jincai, a 40-year-old painter from Yi county, Baoding, Hebei province, who completed work on varnishing the bodies, said: "I began the varnishing at 8 am. The task is not hard for me, but it requires slow and meticulous work."

Along with Wei, nearly 800 construction employees with years of experience in working on ancient buildings took part in renovating Wanshou Temple. Most of them come from Yi county, home to the Western Royal Tombs of the Qing Dynasty.

Wang said the principle of minimum intervention was adopted to restore the temple's cultural relics. "In particular, we wanted to restore the venue to the way it was when it was a royal temple," she said.

Treasures found

When Zhang Liman, construction manager at Beijing Guowenyan Cultural Heritage Conservation Co, first entered Wanshou Temple in 2020, she barely sensed that it was once a royal temple.

The interior of the gate was festooned with cobwebs, side walls were covered in mud, and water was leaking everywhere. As Zhang stepped into Great Buddha's Hall, a huge cloud of dust suddenly rose, and she had to wear a face mask to check the condition of the Buddha statues.

Situated in the center of Great Buddha's Hall, the three statues－each about two to three meters high－appeared black and gray, Zhang said, as copper powder on them had oxidized, and a thick layer of dirt had accumulated over the years.

The arduous task of removing the dust and cleaning up was no chore for Zhang, who viewed the work as a "treasure-hunting journey".

To return the statues to their original appearance, Zhang and her colleagues meticulously used small rubber pipettes to blow away the dust.

A Luoyang shovel, an instrument widely used in archaeological excavations to extract soil samples, tackled dust in the narrow space behind the statues. Woollen brushes were also used to clear dirt and ashes on the statues' pedestals.

Zhang found coins from different periods of the Ming and Qing dynasties among holes on the statues. Cigarette boxes and shoe polish from the Republic of China era were also found on the figures.

These discoveries delighted and excited Zhang, while a small cloth bag containing a piece of partly burned and yellowing paper found by a construction worker on Zhang's team in November, caused widespread surprise.

Zhang said: "When the piece of paper was found in the back of one of the statues, our worker didn't know what it was. But it seems certain that in ancient times the paper must have belonged to the royal family. We immediately reported the discovery to the art museum, and invited professional paper restoration experts to work on the item."

She added that the paper proved to be an elegy written by the fifth son of Emperor Kangxi (1654-1722) for Empress Dowager Renxian (1641-1718), who was buried in the eastern imperial tombs of the Qing Dynasty.

Zhang said the paper should have been burned during a ritual at Wanshou Temple during the reign of Emperor Kangxi, but for some reason it wasn't fully consumed by the flames.

Stone discovery

Duan Haishi, supervisor of the engineering department at Beijing Art Museum, said that in July 2020 a fire control ditch was being built in the temple's third garden in front of the Wanshou Pavilion. About one meter below ground, the edge of a huge stone was found, with some crushed stones lying nearby.

Thrilled by the discovery, Duan thought the huge stone might bear an inscription by Zhang Juzheng, a statesman from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), that was made on a wall at Wanshou Temple, but which had never been found.

On the second day, as the workers dug deeper, the stone was found to be lying flat. Duan then went into the ditch and discovered lotus patterns on the stone.

"It's not the inscription, for sure, but the stone has significance and value. We found that it was a stepping stone made of marble, and was exclusively for the use of emperors," Duan said.

Specialists from the Beijing Municipal Cultural Heritage Bureau later found that the marble came from the Ming Dynasty and was used for the Wanshou Pavilion steps.

Duan said that to protect the stone, which weighs 1.7 metric tons, wooden sticks, rather than shovels, were used to unearth it. A professional team spent seven hours on this task in August 2020. Found at a depth of 31 centimeters, the marble is 2.15 meters long and 1.75 meters wide.

Glorious past

Among the historic buildings in Beijing, Wanshou Temple is not one of the best-known, but it boasts a glorious past.

Established in the reign of Emperor Wanli (1563-1620), the temple was built to house Buddhist texts.

Wang, from Beijing Art Museum, said the temple's abbot acted as a stand-in monk for the emperor.

Emperor Wanli, the 14th emperor of the Ming Dynasty, once moved the Yongle Bell, the largest surviving bronze bell in China, to the temple as a treasure. The bell remained in the temple until the Qing Dynasty, when Emperor Yongzheng (1678-1735) ordered it to be relocated to Juesheng Temple (now Big Bell Temple).

During the Qing Dynasty, Wanshou Temple was refurbished at least three times. Emperor Shunzhi (1638-1661), the first Qing Dynasty emperor to enter Beijing, transformed the temple into a royal courtyard presided over by eminent monks.

During the reign of Emperor Kangxi, Shunzhi's son and successor, the temple's eastern and central sections were rebuilt, with a temporary imperial palace added to the western section.

All buildings in the temple were ordered to be built in the architectural palace style of the Qing Dynasty, and the venue's entire area was nearly double the size it was in the Ming Dynasty.

Some 60 years later, the temple was again reconstructed, on the orders of Emperor Qianlong, the sixth Qing Dynasty emperor. The western palace complex and buildings on the temple's east side were also expanded. Qianlong accompanied his mother, Empress Dowager Chongqing (1693-1777), to several Buddhist ceremonies and celebrated her birthdays at the rebuilt temple.

Each time Empress Dowager Chongqing celebrated a birthday, Qing Dynasty civil officials and military heads gathered at Wanshou Temple.

However, during the reign of the Qing Emperor Guangxu (1871-1908), the temple courtyard was destroyed in a fire, and was soon abandoned, with vegetables being planted on the site.

In 1893, the 19th year of Guangxu's reign, he ordered the temple to be reconstructed to celebrate the 60th birthday of Empress Dowager Cixi, de facto ruler of the Qing Dynasty. Rebuilt as a palace, the temple was restored to its former glory.

Part of the Beijing section of the Grand Canal is situated about 10 meters from the temple courtyard. Records show that Cixi disembarked from her boat to visit the temple every time she traveled to the Summer Palace by water. She enjoyed paying homage to Buddhas with incense, and also had tea cakes at the temple.

After the Qing Dynasty fell in 1911, the temple courtyard became a camp for German prisoners during World War I. In 1934, the area in front of the temple was transformed into a school for students exiled when Japan occupied Northeast China. After this, the site became derelict.

In 1984, the Beijing Municipal Cultural Heritage Bureau took over the temple, and an art museum was built on the site, housing nearly 100,000 items.

Yang Xiaojun, an associate researcher and conservator of cultural relics at Beijing Art Museum, is responsible for preserving these artworks.

After the first national survey of movable cultural relics was conducted in 2012, Yang found the museum housed a total of more than 300 paintings and works of calligraphy from the Qing imperial family.

"Nine emperors from the Qing Dynasty, starting from Shunzhi, and with the exception of Emperor Tongzhi (1862-1875), left their paintings and calligraphy, which have been well preserved in our museum," Yang said.

After selecting 154 pieces for one of the upcoming exhibitions at the museum, he is now considering how to exhibit them in themed displays.

Last month, Yang measured and checked the size of the Qing emperors' artworks to ensure the paintings and calligraphy are displayed in appropriate showcases.

"After doing the measuring and calculations, I found there was insufficient space to display the 154 items, so I reduced the list to 89 pieces for the exhibition," he said.

Poetic painting

One important exhibit is a painting by Emperor Qianlong to mark the arrival of Spring Festival. Unlike other such paintings, this work, which features a poem inscribed by the emperor, is more a blessing for his mother.

Yang said, "Plum blossom, which symbolizes happiness and longevity, was also used by Qianlong in the painting to eulogize his mother."

The special type of paper used for the painting contained a hidden Buddhist sutra, according to Yang.

"This means that Qianlong hoped his mother's life could be blessed," Yang said. "He believed that by circling the three rockeries he built at the temple, they could be blessed for another year, and he also wished that his mother's life could be blessed by the painting with the sutra texts."

Qianlong's painting to mark Spring Festival will be exhibited in the temple's Meditation Hall.

At the abbot's residence in the temple's eastern architectural compound, 48 items of furniture from the Ming and Qing dynasties will be displayed for the first time, including an exquisite full-length mirror from the Qing imperial family.

Two master craftsmen who repaired the furniture also opened a workshop at the temple for visitors to learn how the pieces were made.

A total of 79 artworks themed on longevity will be open to the public on the first floor of the Wanshou Pavilion, while the second floor will be transformed into a small library, where visitors can apply to borrow books and periodicals on cultural relics.

Wang, who is retiring as director of Beijing Art Museum this month, said, "Many people asked me why Wanshou Temple was being given a fifth overhaul, and I often asked them in return who the first four major overhauls were for, and the reason for this one.

"The answers are obvious. We no longer repair the temple for the birthday of an empress dowager, but to allow more people to see our cultural heritage and to encourage the public to take part in the protection of cultural relics.

"I hope the good aspects of our traditional culture, such as filial piety, will continue and that people can have more confidence in our culture by seeing these precious relics."