Bo On Tong Altar, Astoria阿斯托里亚保安堂神坛

Type

Overseas Daoist Temples

Location

United States · Oregon · Astoria · Originally located in Astoria's waterfront Chinatown; now held in the heritage museum of the Clatsop County Historical Society

First built

The date the shrine was established has not been verified; it was donated to the historical society in the 1950s

Overview

Astoria lies at the mouth of the Columbia River; in the late nineteenth century the salmon canning industry drew a large number of Chinese laborers there, forming a waterfront Chinatown. Bo On Tong was one of the local tongs, and its meeting hall housed a shrine. With the enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the mechanization of the canning industry, little remained of the Chinese community by the 1950s, and the shrine was accordingly donated to the Clatsop County Historical Society, where it is today one of the most important exhibits in the society's heritage museum. The principal deity enshrined there is not recorded. An archivist at the museum once wrote self-critically that the accession procedures at the time were careless, failing to record the ritual context and community background of the artifacts, so that today "only the visual appeal remains"; the society later invited an elderly man, who had worshipped at this shrine at the age of thirteen, to give an oral-history account to help fill this gap in the documentation. This case is a representative example of the "decontextualization" of Chinese religious artifacts in North America.

Highlights

• A tong shrine from the canning-industry Chinatown at the mouth of the Columbia River
• Donated to the Clatsop County Historical Society in the 1950s
• A representative case of the decontextualization of Chinese religious artifacts in North America