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high. The four great kings stood guard in the shadows and the laughing Buddha greeted people in a friendly manner as they came in the door. The woodwork was generally in dull red, but the beams and rafters were all decorated in designs in red, blue and green on a white ground. This use of the white ground gave a very strange appearance to the decoration. When we came out behind the Buddha, by the image of We T'o, we sat down on the doorsill to contemplate the scene before us. 

Through a large tree-filled court, terraced up and grass-grown, ran the straight wide avenue to the steps leading up to the main hall. This great building was three tall stories in height, bright red and yellow in the sunlight. It stood majestically above the broad stone galleries approaching it, and towered above the giant trees themselves. On each side of the inclosure were minor shrines.

We approached the main entrance of the shrine and bowed in awe before the three great gold images of the Buddhist trinity. In one corner was a desk where incense and candles were sold, and worship here by the laity was continuous. Before the altar table were candleabra so high that step ladders were used to trim and light the lights, and here were hassocks of what looked like palm fibre for the kneeling of many priests. Dull red robes with white lines in patterns like fresh laid bricks were carefully folded and waiting for their wearers. At an elevated desk to one side a single monk, with his red robe over his shoulder, sat reading from the scriptures.

Around in back of this group was a wall which took our breath when we first saw it. Fully fifty feet tall and thirty feet across was a mountainous background, peopled with deities of all kinds, before which stood Kuan Yin, the goddess of the sea. Here again she stood on the head of a kind of fish, and here again were the dragon king and the gate, but [[strikethrough]] the [[/strikethrough]] there was no direct allusion to the Dragon Gate, and indeed the gate wore a quite different inscription. Two large gilt images attended the central one, and the eighteen Lohans walked on the waves, on fishes and frogs. It was a stupendous piece of religious symbolism, all in excellent condition and bright and clean.