"When nearing a temple, revere the gods." SEND ye "Worship the gods as if they were there. Set "But if you worship not, the god's don't care." ARYOUBANE
While most of the foreign nations were still in their barbaric stages, China was able to point with pride to the fact that she was a civilized country. It is with much sorrow, therefore, that one has now to point out that her great old civilization is on the wane. City walls are being demolished, some have already gone without as much as a stone being left as a landmark; examination halls have disappeared; young (modern?) Chinese men and women are giving up the picturesque dress of the days gone by for imitations of the dress of foreigners; Chinese education, literature, customs and traditions generally are being neglected and thrown to the winds simply because the present-day Chinese have the impression that foreign education is more valuable than a Chinese, which, they think, is more or less useless nowadays; the little Chinese houses exactly like those of their forefathers thousands of years ago are being pulled down and foreign and semiforeign structures are being erected in their stead; and the refined Chinese food also is being given up in favour of foreign (or what purports to be such) and semiforeign.foods. However such things may be, China is still able to point with pride to one sign of her justly famous forms of old civilization, namely, the temples, and it is temples in the neighbourhood of Shanghai with which this article will deal.
Mr. A. G. Hickmott, in his "Guide to Shanghai," states that the earliest sites la Shanghai's history are those of the temples, of which the one at Bubbling Well, known as Ching-an-tz, is the oldest. This, it is claimed, dates back to 250 D., and owes much of its popularity to the one-time famous well opposite, which is known as one of the Eight Springs of the Earth. This, with its muddy water, carbonic acid and marsh gas, is the well-known Bubbling Well. The doors of the Bubbling Well Temple are thrown open only during the festival seasons, but visitors may gain admittance by a small side entrance which is generally left open. The temple is a clean and well-kept place, but is greatly handicapped through lack of funds, the receipts being in-Sufficient to meet expenditure. Passing through several small halls and a couple of courtyards one comes to the main building, which, it is claimed, dates bac! some 1,000 years. This is the real Ching-an-tz, the Temple of Repose (Silence), Purity and Peace.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.