Talk:Lingyin Temple

The area in 1866

Was Lingyin Temple the same as Pengshan (Pun san, Pun soen, Peng Shan)? Or is Pengshan included in the temple grounds? In 1867 the missionaries of the China Inland Mission including Hudson Taylor retreated out of the heat of Hangzhou city and escaped to a place that they described as a derelict temple about 6 miles journey away where the Buddhist priests allowed them to stay. Apparently there was a village nearby of the same name. The trip was made by canal boat in a matter of hours and during the late Qing Dynasty the Lingyin temple area was in the same state of disrepair and in a similar location that is mentioned by Alfred James Broomhall in his book "Hudson Taylor and China's Open Century vol. 5 Survivors' Pact". But I am curious if this is the same temple where the Taylor's daughter, Grace Dyer Taylor died. If anyone is familiar with the temples in this area, could you please comment? Thanks. Brian0324 16:26, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Brian, I'm just back from China, and only just starting to research the extraordinary Lingyin Temple, so don't take this reply as definitive.

However, I can say that in 1867 the city still would have been centered close to the Lake, and Lingyin temple is a five minute drive from the Lake. "Six mile journey" sounds like some other place. Good luck with the research. Profhum 03:14, 19 July 2007 (UTC)Profhum

Many thanks. Maybe the estimate of miles is wrong. I'm curious if the place called Pengshan could be located, but not sure who to ask.13:38, 19 July 2007 (UTC)Brian0324

Just from a brief online search, the only Pengshan I could find was Penshan county in Sichuan.

Here is a map of mountains and hills (-shan) around Hangzhou. There's a Panshan (盤山) (141 m, on the left of the map), which is quite some distance further than Lingyin (which is at Feilaifeng, 168 m, sort of mid-upper-left of the map). I suspect that Panshan might be what you are looking for? --PalaceGuard008 (Talk) 02:11, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, PalaceGuard008. It does match the general area as well as the similar name. In Hudson Taylor's correspondence from 1867, he "Anglicized" the name as "Pun soen". The late A. J. Broomhall called it "Pengshan" in his 1980's writings - but I have no way of knowing what motivated him to call it that. On a map in one of his books, it is simply listed in the upper left corner above Hangzhou as "Region of Pengshan". It was mentioned that they left the city via the Grand Canal, and there are numerous connecting waterways that led into the hilly region to the west. I would love to find list of the region's temples that may help to make the exact location known.Brian0324 16:37, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Neither here nor there since Lingyin Temple probably wasn't intended but, unless you have other notes about their travel where they're going out of their way to convert local distances to specifically English units, they were almost certainly asking their porters and then talking in terms of li, the "Chinese mile" of ⅓–½ mile. They also would've been traveling from their locations in the city to one of the gates and then out and around the lake, adding travel distance. They likely meant some place in the Wulin Hills (those tall things west of West Lake) but were being extremely uncharitable (although that's standard for missionaries when dealing with "idolators") if they were describing any of them as "derelict" immediately after the destruction of the Taiping conquest and Qing reconquest of the city. — LlywelynII 05:29, 26 July 2025 (UTC)

Additional sources for future article expansion

The volume's 4-page map of Ming-era Hangzhou (no temple details from the Wulin Hills on this one, but most of the metadata could be copied over)

Dated obviously but this edition of Tian Rucheng's (originally) 1547 Xihu Youlan Zhi includes some lovely picture maps of the area around Hangzhou under the Ming, including some cute diagrams of Lingyin Temple and the nearby Upper, Middle, and Lower Tianzhu Temples (now the separately the Faxi, Fajing, and other Fajing Temples). The book file is in .pdf format, so the pages of the picture maps would need to be turned into their large .jpg views and saved as separate files at Wikicommons. Some of them are just two facing pages with the book's gutter in the middle. Larger multipage images would need further editing to make them a viewable whole again. — LlywelynII 05:31, 26 July 2025 (UTC)