Hoping to Save the Remains of a Ming Dynasty Temple

THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Didi Kirsten Tatlow

CHINA---First a printing press, then real estate developers, now a welding-machine factory. Everyone has taken a piece of Nianhua Si, or Picking Flowers Temple, a Ming dynasty place of worship in the storied Drum Tower district of Beijing. Yet the real threat to the temple — dozens of historically and religiously significant buildings begun in 1581, the ninth year of the reign of the Wanli Emperor, and given its present name in 1734 during the Qing dynasty — isn’t decay, say residents and conservationists. It’s redevelopment. [link]