鸿慈永祜Hongci YonghuVast Compassion and Eternal Blessing

What it was

鸿慈永祜 Hongci Yonghu, "Vast Compassion and Eternal Blessing", is the ancestral temple 安佑宫 Anyou Gong in the north-west of the garden, on what the 1744 preface calls its brightest and driest ground (S05 j81:24a). Begun in 1742 and finished in 1743 on the model of 寿皇殿 Shouhuang Dian (S05 j81:19b-21b, E1556; E1555; E1564, S361; E1560, S360). S05 walks it as a glazed archway with stone 华表 (four by Malone and the PKU record, E1561, S980), three more archways round it to the south, east and west, a moon-river bridge south of them, the three-bay 致孚殿 Zhifu Dian to the south-east facing west, the five-bay gate 安佑门 Anyou Men facing south behind three white marble bridges, a well pavilion and five-bay waiting rooms on each side, and inside the gate the double-eaved nine-bay hall 安佑宫 with five-bay side halls, a stele pavilion and a burner pavilion on each side (S05 j81:19b-21b, E1556). The hall had a hip-and-gable roof in yellow glazed tile (E1560, S360) and held the portraits of Kangxi in the centre and Yongzheng on the east, later joined by others (E1556; E1560; E1564). Malone describes two red walls with yellow-glazed coping, five marble bridges over the moat, two stone qilin and a marble terrace with five stairs (E1561-E1563, S02 pp.83-88). Its halls were burned with the rest of the garden by British troops on Elgin's order on 18-19 October 1860 (S02 pp.187-188); the masonry stood as a ruin until it was pulled down under the Republic (S02 p.218).

The leaf of 1744, its poem and preface

Leaf 17 of the 1744 album (P0017). Preface of 1744: "苑西北地最爽塏爰建殿寢敬奉皇祖皇考神御以申罔極之懷" (S05 j81:24a-b): on the bright, dry ground of the garden's north-west he built halls to hold the portraits of his grandfather and father; tall pines round the wall 'stir reverence and love on sight' (望之起敬起愛); rites at new and full moon (朔望展禮). The stele text of Qianlong traces ancestral halls from antiquity and explains the nine-room hall, Kangxi in the centre and Yongzheng in the east room (E1555, S05).

How it changed before 1860

In the decades after 1860 the ruin served as a quarry. Malone writes that under the Republic 王怀庆 Wang Huaiqing, commanding the Peking gendarmerie, took materials to build his own garden and let carters haul away brick and stone, and that the masonry of the Ancestral Shrine, 舍卫城 and 方壶胜境 was among what was pulled down; pieces from the shrine stood at Yenching University in his day (S02 p.218). Three of the four 华表 were moved to Yenching University in 1925 (S980).

The garden around it

Yellow glazed roofs on the main hall (E1560) and yellow-glazed coping on red walls (E1563); green-glazed incense burners in the inner court (E1562); pines round the precinct (S05 j81:24b); a moat with marble bridges (E1563).

What survives

Pieces of 安佑宫 stand at Peking University (the former Yenching): the white marble 华表, about 8 m high on octagonal bases 1.24 m high, an uneven pair, which stood before the glazed archway (S980); the stone qilin, 1.74 m high on 0.98 m bases, which had stood before 大宫门 until they were moved to 安佑宫 in 1741, came through 1860 undamaged, and were taken out late in the Qing and bought by 载涛 Zaitao, whose 朗润园 passed to Yenching (S943); and one dragon-and-cloud ramp stone 3.15 x 1.30 m, its pair at the east gate of 颐和园 (S943). In 1925 Yenching moved three of the 华表; the fourth went into the city and in 1931 lay before Tiananmen; when the Beijing Library built its new 文津 building it meant to take Yenching's spare one to pair with it, but by a mix-up neither place ended with a matched pair (S980). No dig of the temple platform has been found.