Gee How Oak Tin Association Shrine, Portland波特兰至孝笃亲公所神坛（绥靖伯）

Type

Overseas Daoist Temples

Location

United States · Oregon · Portland · Inside the association hall of the Gee How Oak Tin Association, Portland; the exact street address has not been verified

First built

1904 · The Portland branch was founded in 1904; the shrine's bronze incense burner is inscribed with the year 1904

Overview

The Gee How Oak Tin Association is a joint-surname kinship association of the Chen, Hu and Yuan surnames, whose guardian deity is Suijing Bo — originally named Chen Zhongzhen, a twelfth-century military officer from Taishan, Guangdong, who was granted the title "Suijing Bo" by imperial edict of the Qing court in 1844. He functions both as a local guardian deity and as a god who wards off epidemics, a local god specific to Taishanese immigrants, and constitutes a strand of belief within North American Chinese religion that is independent of the cults of Guandi and Mazu. The Portland branch was founded in 1904, and its shrine has been continuously venerated from its founding to the present day; the bronze incense burner is inscribed with his title and the year 1904. The association also holds a temple bell cast in 1888 and inscribed "Suijing Bo Temple," which proves that an independent Suijing Bo temple did indeed exist in or near nineteenth-century Portland; that temple no longer survives. This shrine belongs privately to the kinship association and is not open to the public; it is one of the best-preserved examples of the cult of Suijing Bo in North America.

Highlights

• Principally venerates the Taishanese local god Suijing Bo (Chen Zhongzhen)
• The shrine has been venerated continuously since 1904
• Holds a temple bell inscribed "Suijing Bo Temple" cast in 1888
• Proves that Portland once had an independent Suijing Bo temple in the nineteenth century