Bok Kai Temple, Marysville马里斯维尔北溪庙（列圣宫）

Type

Overseas Daoist Temples

Location

United States · California · Marysville · At the corner of D Street and First Street, along the levee where the Yuba and Feather Rivers meet

Coordinates

39.13499, -121.58695 Map ↗

First built

1880 · Completed on 21 March 1880, replacing an earlier temple built nearby in the early 1850s; community fundraising for the project began in 1866

Heritage status

U.S. National Register of Historic Places, NRHP #75000498 (21 May 1975)California Historical Landmark #889

Overview

Bok Kai Temple is the only Chinese temple in the United States that has remained on its original site, was first built in the nineteenth century, and is still in use today. It is dedicated chiefly to the North Emperor (Beiji Xuantian Shangdi, Cantonese Bok Eye), a god who governs water conservancy and flood control — an exceedingly rare focus of worship among Chinese temples in North America. Marysville lies in the floodplain where the Yuba River meets the Feather River, giving the cult of the water god a practical basis. The temple was built by immigrants from the Pearl River Delta region who had come for the Gold Rush; the formal name inscribed on the temple's plaque and ritual texts is in fact "Lit Sing Gong" (Temple of the Sages), a multi-deity temple that, besides the North Emperor, also enshrines Mazu (Empress of Heaven), Guandi, Hua Tuo, and others — belonging to the category of Chinese folk religion rather than an organized Quanzhen or Zhengyi institution. The building has a brick-and-timber structure, and its exterior walls preserve nineteenth-century painted murals and calligraphy, considered a singular example within the United States of the combination of architecture and painting. Every year on the second day of the second lunar month, the "Bomb Day" rite of scrambling for firecracker rings is held; the custom can be traced back to 1873, and is the only such custom to survive continuously in the United States to this day. The temple is now managed by Marysville's Chinese community, and its regular activities center on guided tours and annual festival ceremonies.

Highlights

• The only nineteenth-century Chinese temple in the United States that has remained continuously on its original site
• Dedicated to the North Emperor, the only temple in the Western Hemisphere worshipping this Chinese water god
• Nineteenth-century painted murals and calligraphy on its exterior walls
• Its formal name, "Lit Sing Gong," is a multi-deity folk-religion temple
• The "Bomb Day" firecracker-ring custom traces back to 1873