Fire breaks out in 100 year-old Wu temple in Jianshui
Source: InKunming | 2013-11-06 | Editor:
Photo shows the messy wires around a memorial gate in Guan Temple whose main shrine was ruined in a fire on the morning of November 3(Sunday) in Jianshui County, south Yunnan. [yunnan.cn]
A fire broke out in a 100-year-old Wu Temple at 7:40 a.m. on November 3 (Sunday) in Jianshui County, south Yunnan Province. The fire was put out after 9 in the morning and the main shrine was found burnt in the fire.
Fortunately, no casualty was reported.
Wu Temple, is a temple enshrining and worshiping some famous generals in Chinese history, including Kiang Taigong, Guan Yu, Yue Fei.
All things were found burnt in the main temple except the splintered rubble and the charred beam columns.
A stone tablet was carried out from the debris at 4 in the afternoon. This tablet was carved when the temple was built in Qing Dynasty under the ruler of Tongzhi Emperor, the tenth emperor of the dynasty. It record the time to build the temple and officials in Ling’an Government Office(now Jianshui County). It used to stand on a high wall of the temple, but fell down into three pieces after the fire. According to industry source, it is of high historical and cultural value. When local residents tried to remove the tablet into another room, it cracked again after high heat.
The temple was rent to some small furniture companies based on a contract. The main shrine was a workshop for a sofa factories in which flammable sponge, artificial leather and woods were piled up.
Before the fire broke out in the temple, some delicate wooden carvings and wooden beams could be seen in the nearby shrines. But the old doors, windows, and some more stone tools in the temple were lost before the fire.
A local resident said that a tangled mess of wires were noticed on a memorial gate and inside the main shrine, which were of great risk. A head of the factory said they had reported it to governmental department for several times.
According to the contract signed this April, the factory were responsible for the preservation of the cultural relics in the temple and were required to maintain and repair the temple.
The factory introduced that they moved in the temple in 1998. Since then the economic benefits have dropped. They were not affordable to maintain the temple and applied for removal out from the temple, but ended up with nothing definite.
The lack of maintenance funds also hurdled the elimination of the hidden dangers in the temple.
The cause of fire is under further investigation now.
A stone tablet cracks after the fire. [yunnan.cn]
The temple is in ruins now. [yunnan.cn]
