Num Pon Soon Society Building, Melbourne墨尔本南番顺会馆

Type: Overseas Daoist Temples
Location: Australia · Victoria · Melbourne · 200–202 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne (Chinatown)
First built: c. 1861 · Said to have been built between 1861 and 1862; listed on the Victorian Heritage Register; today it is a society hall, not a temple open to the public
Heritage status: Victorian Heritage Register

Overview

Num Pon Soon was a society hall established in Melbourne by fellow-provincials from the three counties of Nanhai, Panyu, and Shunde, its premises located at the heart of Chinatown on Little Bourke Street, built around 1861 (some accounts say between 1861 and 1862), making it one of the oldest surviving Chinese buildings in Melbourne's Chinatown, listed on the Victorian Heritage Register. The society hall combined the functions of mutual aid, community meetings, funeral assistance, and worship among fellow-provincials; a shrine and ancestral tablets are enshrined inside, its nature that of an association shrine rather than an independent temple, in contrast to the temple-centered model of the Sze Yup Guandi Temple in South Melbourne — the Sze Yup (Taishan, Kaiping, Enping, and Xinhui) and Num Pon Soon groups were the two major dialect-and-native-place blocs among the Chinese of Victoria's gold-rush era, and the difference in their organizational forms reflects the different ways in which communities from different home regions integrated in their new land. It remains today the property of the society and is generally not open to the public.

Highlights

A society hall of fellow-provincials from Nanhai, Panyu, and Shunde
One of the oldest surviving Chinese buildings in Melbourne's Chinatown
An association shrine rather than an independent temple
Contrasted in organizational form with the Sze Yup Guandi Temple
Listed on the Victorian Heritage Register

References