Hoi Tong Monastery
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The Hoi Tong Monastery, also known by many other names, is a Buddhist temple and monastery on Henan Island in Guangzhou, China. It shares its grounds with the city's .


Names

The official English form of the name is "Hoi Tong Monastery", a transcription of the Cantonese pronunciation of the
Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
translation of the Indian Buddhist monk Sāgaradhvaja ( sa, सागरध्वज, "Ocean Banner" or "Flagpole"), who appears in the Flower Garland Sutra as a devout student of the Heart Sutra. Variants include ; the translations or Monastery, , and or ;. the
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Hae Chwang,. Haichuang, and ; and the misreadings "Hoy Hong Temple" and "Haizhuang Temple".. From its location, it has also been known as the Temple of Honan or Honam.


History

The monastery was first established as the Qianqiu Temple under the Southern Han, a 10th-century
Tang Tang or TANG most often refers to: * Tang dynasty * Tang (drink mix) Tang or TANG may also refer to: Chinese states and dynasties * Jin (Chinese state) (11th century – 376 BC), a state during the Spring and Autumn period, called Tang (唐) b ...
successor state whose capital was at Xingwang (now Guangzhou). The walled city lay north of the Pearl River, while Henan Island and the monastery lay to its south. By the end of the Ming, the temple operated within the private garden of Guo Longyue (). He was responsible for renaming it after the Buddhist monk Sāgaradhvaja. The monastery, surrounded by majestic
banyan tree A banyan, also spelled "banian", is a fig that develops accessory trunks from adventitious prop roots, allowing the tree to spread outwards indefinitely. This distinguishes banyans from other trees with a strangler habit that begin life as a ...
s, flourished under the early
Qing The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaki ...
. Jin Bao (), a former
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of the Yongli Emperor, retired here. During the reign of the Kangxi Emperor, it was expanded continuously by the monks Azi (), Chee Yut, and others, sometimes prompting English sources to place its establishment in 1662. Around a hundred monks lived at the monastery; the treatment of the wealthy and poor members was very unequal. It was the principal temple for Henan (then known as "Ho-nan") and sometimes even acclaimed the most famous of southern China's Buddhist temples. The temple complex was particularly important to foreign visitors as it was one of the few locations in Guangzhou ("Canton") open to them before the
First Opium War The First Opium War (), also known as the Opium War or the Anglo-Sino War was a series of military engagements fought between Britain and the Qing dynasty of China between 1839 and 1842. The immediate issue was the Chinese enforcement of the ...
. The main hall's large buddhas were removed to other temples so that
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and his retinue could rest there for three weeks 1–20 January 1817 before returning home via Macao following their failed embassy to Beijing ("Pekin"). The
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Auguste Borget visited the temple repeatedly during his world tour, stating "The noise outside the temple was so great and the silence inside the temple was so solemn, that I believed myself transported to another world". The temple faced the row of factories on Guangzhou's waterfront. Regulations issued in 1831 restricted foreign access to its grounds to the 8th, 18th, and 28th days of the lunar months. Prior to the advent of photography, paintings of the grounds at Hoi Tong made up one of the fifteen classes of Qing export paintings.. At the time, the river entrance was the most used, leading to a courtyard guarded by a pair of wooden statues. Beyond, there were flagged walks amid banyan trees, leading to colonnades filled with numerous idols "of every sect and profession". At the far end were three halls, the center of which held three idols of the Buddhas past, present, and yet-to-come—"''Kwo-keu-fuh''", "''Heen-tsa-fuh''", and "''We-lae-fuh''"—in a seated position. On each side were 18 early
disciples of the Buddha A disciple is a follower and student of a mentor, teacher, or other figure. It can refer to: Religion * Disciple (Christianity), a student of Jesus Christ * Twelve Apostles of Jesus, sometimes called the Twelve Disciples * Seventy disciples in ...
, considered at the time to have been the precursors to the
Qing The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-speaki ...
emperors. Illustrations were made of the trial and punishment of sinners in the afterlife, but none of the Buddhist paradises. The side walls were covered with silk embroidered in gold and silver thread with passages of scripture, and the whole lit with several hundred lanterns suspended from the roof's crossbeams. The garden included rare plants and penjing, miniature trees grown into the shape of boats and birdcages. On the grounds, pigs and other animals were kept as an "illustration of the Buddhist tenet not to destroy but to care for animal life". The pigs became famous, some being so enormously fat that they were nearly unable to walk. Some of the
sties A sty or pigsty is a small-scale outdoor enclosure for raising domestic pigs as livestock. It is sometimes referred to as a hog pen, hog parlor, pigpen, pig parlor, or pig-cote, although pig pen may refer to pens confining pigs that are ke ...
were located with the temples and, upon their deaths, they were accorded funereal rites and laid within a special mausoleum on the grounds. Its library was well stocked. The monastery ran its own printing press, as well as a crematorium and mausoleum for the monks. This dagoba was considered "magnificent", if not on the level of Beijing's Baita. The abbot's cell included a separate reception room and a small chapel with a shrine to Buddha. The entire grounds spread over about . The monastery was also a site for instruction in kung fu. The master Liang Kun ( Leung Kwan) died while training in the 36-Point Copper Ring Pole technique under the monk Yuanguang in 1887. In the 1920s, it housed Guangzhou's Chin Woo Athletic Association.. The great trees of the monastery were ruined during the Taiping Rebellion. The monastery faded from importance in foreign guidebooks after the Opium Wars opened Guangzhou proper to visitors, although the principal factories were removed to Henan during the years 1856–1859 after a devastating fire along the north bank and the number of monks grew as high as 175. During the reign of the Empress Dowager Cixi, the area around the monastery became more residential and it began to fade. As part of the educational reforms surrounding the end of the imperial examination system, the monastery was obliged to make room for the Nanwu Public School (). It was severely damaged during the early years of the
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, although it was protected for a time by local elites. The entire compound aside from two halls was demolished and in 1928 its land was confiscated and opened as . Its scriptures were removed to a public library. An official embassy of the city's Buddhists to the capital at Nanjing the next year was a failure, but the park was permitted to keep some of its idols as statues "for public appreciation". Praying and burning incense in the park were outlawed, but locals continued to tie paper offerings to the Buddhas and several women came at night to pray. Their murmuring was sometimes mistaken by other visitors as the sounds of ghosts haunting the grounds. In September 1933, the area was renamed "Haichuang Park". The surviving buildings of the complex were severely damaged again during the Cultural Revolution of the late 1960s and early '70s. Following China's opening up, the Guangzhou Municipal People's Government permitted the monastery to resume official operation in 1993, identifying it as a heritage conservation unit. The grounds of the monastery were repaired and renovated but continue to only occupy the western half of the former site, the rest making up Guangzhou's Haichuang Park. This was restored to the temple by the Haizhu District People's Government on 1 July 2006 but remains open to the public.


Abbots

The present abbot is Master Xincheng ().


Gallery

File:The Sea-screen Temple at Honam Canton.png , The "Sea-screen Temple at Honam" in 1838, by Auguste Borget, including some of the temple's sacred pigs. File:Landing Place and Entrance to the Temple of Honan Canton.png , The landing place and river entrance to the "Temple of Honan" in the 1840s. File:Great Temple at Honan, Canton.png, The " Great Temple at Honan" in the 1840s. File:HONAM TEMPLE, CANTON.jpg , The entrance to the inner courtyards of "Honam Temple" in 1874 File:Entrance to Hoi Tong Monastery, 1903.JPG, The land entrance to the "Chinese monastery at Ho Nam" in 1903.. File:Monks at Hoi Tong monastery, Ho Nam, China (1903).jpg, Monks at the monastery in 1903.


See also

* Chinese Buddhism * List of Buddhist temples * Guangxiao Temple (Guangzhou) *
Hualin Temple (Guangzhou) Hualin Temple, also known as the Temple of the Five Hundred Genii or Gods, is a Buddhist temple in Guangzhou, China. History The Xilai Monastery was established in Panyu (now Guangzhou) by Emperor Wu of the Liang in the AD 520s. It is tr ...
*
Temple of the Six Banyan Trees The Temple of the Six Banyan Trees or Liurong Temple is a Buddhist temple in Guangzhou, China, originally built in AD 537. The temple's proximity to foreign consulates in Guangzhou has made it a regular destination for families partici ...


Notes


References


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External links

*
广州海幢寺
at Baike.com {{in lang, zh 10th-century establishments in China 10th-century Buddhist temples Religious organizations established in the 10th century Buddhist temples in Guangzhou Haizhu District Southern Han