Lung Kong Tin Yee Association Shrine, Seattle西雅图龙冈亲义公所神坛

Type

Overseas Daoist Temples

Location

United States · Washington State · Seattle · In the Kong Yick Building on King Street, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues

First built

Its existence is attested by a photograph of 1911; the Kong Yick Building was completed in 1910

Overview

The Lung Kong Tin Yee Association of Seattle occupies premises in the Kong Yick Building on King Street, completed in 1910; a photograph of 1911 records its shrine room behind the balcony. The association is a joint-lineage organization of the four surnames Liu, Guan, Zhang and Zhao, and the altar is dedicated jointly to those four surnames (Zhao Yun was not one of the brothers sworn in the peach garden; his joining them is recounted in the reunion at Gucheng in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms). CINARC judges this to have been a private altar of the association rather than a public temple open to all, an instance of the general shift in Chinese religious space in North America in the early twentieth century from public temples to private society shrines. Today the left-hand half of the Kong Yick Building houses the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience, while the right-hand half still belongs to the Lung Kong Tin Yee Association; the original balcony has been removed, and the present state of the shrine is not publicly recorded.

Highlights

• Housed in the Kong Yick Building, completed in 1910
• Altar of a four-surname joint lineage founded on the Oath of the Peach Garden
• Reflects the shift from public temples to private society shrines
• The other half of the building is now the Wing Luke Museum