Magong Taihe Hall

The women-only companion zhaitang (齋堂) to the adjacent Chengyuan Hall, conventionally dated to around 1902, though an alternative tradition reported in a 1925 article traces it to 1874, which would actually make it the older of the two halls. It was built on land donated by the daughter of Chengyuan’s patron Huang Butie (黃步梯), who considered it improper for women to frequent a hall regularly used by male adherents, and was most popular in the 1950s under the abbess Huang Shi (黃市). Since her death the congregation has scattered, and the hall has drifted through a series of secondary uses, briefly housing a deity from a nearby temple and later being rented out as a martial arts practice space. More recently it has been left to the elements and is now overgrown and disused.