Historic Taoist Temple Named Endangered Site

A historic Taoist temple built by Chinese immigrants in the Sacramento Valley more than a century ago was named one of America’s 11 most endangered sites Monday, providing a major boost to efforts to preserve the structure’s ornate murals, gilded altars and cultural artifacts.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, the Washington-based nonprofit group that announced the designation, also unveiled a series of grants that will allow the Bok Kai Temple in Marysville to begin planning conservation efforts for its murals.

“The temple and its very unique decorative features are rapidly deteriorating,” said Trust President Richard Moe. “We hope that by listing [the temple], we will bring positive attention to it, and hopefully some resources as well.”

The temple is dedicated to the Chinese water deity Bok Eye, who is believed to control flooding, irrigation and rains. Ironically, the magnificent murals on its exterior walls are eroding because of rain, as well as wind and other weather damage. The murals, painted by Chinese artists brought to the United States specifically to decorate the temple, are the only known such works in the nation.

“There are serious structural problems which are threatening the state of the murals . . . and if not addressed, those murals [will] be lost,” said Anthony Veerkamp, the senior program officer for the trust’s Western office.

The trust awarded two grants totaling $7,000 to research and plan for the actual work that must be done to preserve the murals, Veerkamp said. It also secured $11,000 in state historic preservation grants that California disburses to local officials for similar purposes.

“These are really just the initial funds for the treatment that will be needed for a long-term preservation project,” he said. “We anticipate that this will be quite an expensive process.”

Despite the uniqueness of the building’s artwork and artifacts, officials said efforts to restore the temple have been hampered by the town’s remote location.

“If this temple were in Los Angeles or the Bay Area, it would be a done deal already,” Veerkamp said. North of Sacramento near Yuba City, “Marysville needed a leg up to draw national attention. These murals are absolutely exquisite, and they’re not the kind of resource one would expect to find in a little agricultural community in the Sacramento Valley.”

Athena Randolph, restoration coordinator for the Friends of Bok Kai, agreed that the temple’s location has been a roadblock to restoration.

“Hidden away in Marysville, [the temple] is very little known, but it’s a beautiful treasure to California’s gold rush history,” said Randolph, whose group was formed last year to unify local preservation efforts.

The Bok Kai Temple was built in the 1880s to replace a similar temple constructed three decades earlier that had been destroyed by fire.

At the time, Marysville was home to a large number of Chinese Americans.

Its Chinese population of 12,000, most of whom had been drawn by the discovery of gold in California in 1848, was the third-largest of any city in the state.

According to Lim Hall, the president of Chinese Community Inc. in Marysville and the head of the temple’s congregation, the temple highlights the role that Chinese Americans played in Marysville’s past and provides a place for them to worship in the present.

“Marysville used to be a Chinese community center, and there’s a lot of historical value in the temple,” Lim said.

Though Lim says the Chinese American population in Marysville and adjacent Yuba City has dwindled to a few hundred, and the Bok Kai congregation to just 20, residents hail the temple preservation drive as a remarkable example of cross-racial cooperation.

“This says a lot about our community,” said Friends of Bok Kai President George Rios. “The few Chinese Americans that are here are going to be telling their offspring, and their offspring will be coming back and helping the temple in the future.”

“The Marysville area has always had a good relationship between the Chinese and [whites], ever since I came here in 1948. There is always really good communication,” Lim said. “Without their help I don’t think I myself can do much.”

Marysville residents cite the annual Lucky Bomb Day festival, which falls in February or March in accordance with the Chinese lunar calendar, as an example of the ongoing power and significance that Bok Kai holds for the town.

The event, which according to Lim draws 2,500 to 3,000 people from throughout North America each year, includes a parade, fashion show, exhibitions and banquets, and culminates in the firing of 100 lucky rings into the air from bursting bombs.

“This temple is not like a lot of other historically preserved sites,” Randolph said. “It lives. It breathes.”

The other sites selected by the trust for its 2001 “Most Endangered” list include America’s historic independent movie theaters; the Telluride Valley Floor in Colorado; the CIGNA campus in Bloomfield, Conn., one of the nation’s first suburban office parks; the Carter G. Woodson home in Washington, D.C.; Ford Island at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu; the Miller-Purdue Barn in Grant County, Ind.; the Stevens Creek settlements in Lincoln, Neb.; the prairie churches of North Dakota; the Los Caminos del Rio region in the Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas; and the historic Jackson Ward section of Richmond, Va.