Cultural Intersections in Later Chinese Buddhism

8 Beijing’s Zhihua Monastery: History and Restoration in China’s Capital

on the east side of beijing, just inside the Second Ring Road, across from the International Post O◊ce and hidden behind a cluster of high-rise apartment blocks, there is a walled compound of black-tile-roofed buildings. In the winter of 1986, when as a student exploring the alleys and out-of-the-way corners of the city I first visited the site, it was in disrepair, and a sign on the gate forbade entry to the public. A sincere conversation with the gatekeeper overcame that prohibition, and within I found the remaining buildings of the Monastery of Transforming Wisdom, Zhihua si. With a history of some 550 years and its main buildings essentially intact, the monastery is one of the great architectural treasures of the city. The buildings have now been restored to their original Ming-dynasty appearance, and the site is open to the public, but not as a Buddhist monastery; instead it houses a historical museum, a school of traditional music, and the o◊ces of a cultural travel service. While lacking the grand scale of the former Imperial Palace or the spectacular painting program of the suburban Fahai Monastery (Monastery of the Sea of the Law), Zhihua Monastery is the best preserved example of early-Ming monastic architecture in Beijing.1 In his dissertation “Peking under the Ming,” James Geiss wrote, “The history of the city and its environs was largely shaped by emperors and by their courts, their ministers, and their favorites.”2 This essay will trace the history of Zhihua Monastery and argue that the fortunes of this monastery, like the city around it, remained closely tied to the power and policies of the governments based in Beijing, whether of the imperial state or its successors. The first section of this study is a description of the monastery based on site visits, beginning in 1986 and continuing through the period of the monastery’s restoration in the 1990s. The second covers the history of the monastery from its founding in the midfifteenth century to the end of the Republican period in the midtwentieth.The final section deals with the restoration work and the modern fate of the monastery as a “cultural relic” and an institution seeking to survive and adapt to the changing conditions of China today. The basic source for the history of Zhihua Monastery remains Liu Dunzhen’s site report for the Architectural Survey of China, published in the journal Zhongguo yingzao xueshe huikan (Bulletin of the Society for Research in Chinese Architecture) in 1934.3 For information on the monastery since Liu’s report, I have relied primarily on interviews conducted between 189 8 Beijing’s Zhihua Monastery: History and Restoration in China’s Capital Kenneth J. Hammond Figure 8.1 Ground plan of Zhihua Monastery, Beijing. Ming dynasty. After Liu Dunzhen, Liu Dunzhen wen ji (Beijing: Zhongguo jianzhu gongye chubanshe, 1982), 66–67. 1986 and 1995 with Yang Wenshu, director of the Zhihua Monastery Preservation Group; Liang Yuquan, vice-director; An Jiuliang, who succeeded Yang as director in 1991; and Zhang Xinsheng of the Cultural Relics International Travel Service. On the unique musical heritage of Zhihua Monastery, I was able to interview Kang Qing of the Beijing Buddhist Music Association and Sun Suhua of the Beijing Zhihua Monastery Musical Troupe. I am also grateful to the late Laurence Sickman for his letter recounting his acquisition in 1930 of the monastery’s co¤ered ceiling now installed in the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City. Description Zhihua Monastery is at the east end of Lumicang hutong, in the East City district. It is just west of the ring road that runs along the line of the old city wall, about equidistant from the former Chaoyang and Jianguo gates. In the Ming dynasty, this area was the Huanghua fang. A military school was just west of the monastery, and the granary for storing tribute rice was beyond that. As it currently exists, Zhihua Monastery covers about 58,000 square feet, with a frontage of 130 feet on the street and a depth of a little over 445 feet. Like most monasteries, it is oriented on a north-south axis, with the main buildings facing south (fig. 8.1). Originally three gates in the wall separated the compound from the street outside. Only the central gate (shanmen) (fig. 8.2) was regularly used. The other two, which were...