While I am speaking about burned temples, I might mention ancther interesting temple in the nearer Western Hills, that has suffered the same fate as the temples of Miaofengshan, in the course of the fighting. This is Tientaishan. better known to foreigners as the Mummy Temple.
It got this name from the gilded idol. a seated figure. which was supposed to be the mummy of the first Manchu Emperor Shun Chih who. according to legend, is said not to heve died in the year. when he is Reially reported to have died, but to have abdicated and become a monk in a temple in the Western Hills.
There does not seem to be any real evidence for the legend and. whether the idol was or was not a likeness of the emperor, it most cer-fairly was not his mummy. In the first place, allowing for all possible shrinkage, the figure was much too mall for that of a full-grown man. and anyhow. on repeated occasions when the priests were not looking, I have tapped it and felt it, and it was obviously nothing but gilded wood. I have written of the "mummy" in the past tense, because it no longer exists.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.