Guan Gong
If Guan Gong, one of the presiding deities at the Weaverville Joss House, has any say in the matter, Arnold Schwarzenegger and his legislative enablers can expect to “suffer fire, flood…bandits [and] plague.” They will “give birth to idiots, be destroyed themselves, and have their family line extinguished.” Such are the curses that await those who “cheat the gods,” according to the Chinese War God’s “World-Awakening Prayer
Guan Gong has every reason to feel cheated by California’s decision to include the Joss House on the list of nearly 100 state parks to be shut down under Schwarzenegger’s newly negotiated “compromise” budget cuts. After all, the 156-year-old temple – arguably the oldest continuously used Taoist shrine in the Western hemisphere – was deeded to the state in 1956 on the express condition that it be kept open as an active house of worship for any and all Taoist believers.
“That was my father’s clear intent,” says Carol Lee, 66, of Weaverville. Her late father, Moon Lee, made the bequest as patriarch of the last remaining family from the Chinese community that once comprised a little over half of Trinity county’s population.
In the years since the bequest, the shrine has taken on importance far beyond Weaverville’s now-defunct Chinatown. Shortly after the normalization of U.S.-China relations in the 1980s, Beijing’s newly established consulate in San Francisco sent a delegation to the pay respects to the symbolically charged temple. Bay Area Taoist divines make the pilgrimage all the way up to Weaverville to perform periodic rites.
“To us, the Joss House represents a direct link back to our honored ancestors” says Rev. Jefferson Lee, chief priest of San Francisco’s Ching Chung Taoist Association.
The temple’s visitor log includes many Chinese-Americans in search of their roots, according to Monument Guide Jack Frost, the only full-time, year-round staffer at the Joss House State Historic Park. Nor is the roster limited to Chinese, either, he adds; Thai, Lao and Hmong families from all over the state also come to worship. “We even have a lawyer all the way from Malaysia who always prays here at the start and finish of his annual hunting and fishing trips.”
Busloads of Shanghai teenagers regularly visit the Temple as part of their exchange student sojourns at Trinity High School. A Google search on the ideograms for “Cloud Forest Temple” (as the Joss House is called in Chinese) turns up rapturous accounts from Asian tourists who are amazed to stumble upon a still-functioning Taoist shrine in a remote corner of Northern California. These blog-posts reserve special mention for Weaverville’s annual Lunar New Year celebrations, when a score of all-American townies (none of Chinese ancestry, as it happens) stage a full-dress Lion Dance in honor of Trinity’s long-departed Chinese denizens.
The Lion Dancers train at a local martial arts school, the White Tiger Studio, whose director, Randy Bashaw, also chairs the Joss House Association.
“To close down the temple would be a disaster,” he emphasizes. “Not only would it be a slight to the North State’s current and former Asian inhabitants, but also an body blow to the all-important tourist industry that sustains so many of the remaining jobs in this economically stressed county.”
To forestall such setbacks, the association has stumped up about $2,000 to keep the Joss House open on the three extra days per month that it would otherwise be closed, under the new budget deal, as an emergency cost-cutting measure during the rest of this year’s tourist season (through Labor Day).
“But who knows what will happen after next month?” Bashaw frets. “If the state really goes ahead with a total shut-down, neither the Association nor the county would be able to take up the slack.
“This is the smallest park in the whole state system, and presumably one of the least costly to run,” he adds (although so far the state has not managed to provide the Association with precise figures on the temple’s cash flow). “So it’s not as though they’d save all that much by closing it. But to do so would be an affront to our community, North State tourism and Asian devotees, both state-wide and world-wide.”
Not to even mention the cold, hard cash costs of preserving the century-old artifacts in the Temple – plaques, scrolls, statues, musical instruments, brocade banners, lavishly carved furniture. Such accoutrements once adorned dozens of Chinese temples sprinkled throughout California’s Gold Rush country. Almost all have been wiped out by fire, decay, vandalism and sheer neglect after the departure of Chinese miners and laborers in the last century.
The relics at the Weaverville Joss House have been spared a like fate thanks to modern climate control and alarm systems that have been installed under the State Park aegis, Bashaw points out. “What happens if you now pull the plug on all that?”
The state has facilities to store much of this treasure if needed, according to Sacramento-based Park Service Museum Curator Winnie Yeung. “But it’s still too early to make specific plans,” she adds, pending final resolution of the Temple’s fate.
“To split up the Joss House collection would be a shame,” says Weaverville old-timer Duane Hereford, 71. As a teenager and shop-hand in Moon Lee’s store, he doubled as an assistant caretaker at the Joss House before it was deeded over to California.
“Back then, Moon and I could handle it all right just between the two of us,” he recalls. “But it was a simpler time. Moon knew it couldn’t go on like that forever. When he gave it to the state, he thought he had it taken care of for good. Who would have imagined…?”
• • •
What You Can Do
The same Guan Gong prayer that rains curses on the heads of those who affront the Chinese gods also promises prosperity and longevity to those who “respect Heaven and Earth, sacrifice to the gods…put the souls of your ancestors at peace, be kind to your neighbors…educate your children and grandchildren [and] amass merit through anonymous good deeds.”
Concretely, the way to achieve these boons with respect to the present perils of the embattled Joss House would be to deluge bureaucratic decision-makers with appeals to keep the temple off the 100-park “hit list” to be released after Labor Day. Send snail mail and/or email to:
Ruth Coleman, Director
California Department of Parks & Recreation
P.O. Box 942896
Sacramento, CA 94296-0001
RUTH@parks.ca.gov <
Robert Foster, Superintendent
Northern Buttes District Office
400 Glen Drive
Oroville, CA 95966
RFOST@parks.ca.gov
Heidi Horvitz, Superintendent
Cascade Sector Office
P.O. Box 2430
Shasta, CA 96087
HHORVITZ@parks.ca.gov
The Joss House Association will hold a special board meeting at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Aug.6, at the temple, on the corner of Main and Oregon Streets in Weaverville. On the agenda will be how to mount a public opinion campaign against the closure of the park, alternative funding sources and how to mobilize volunteers to keep the temple functioning. All are invited.
