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Ward was buried on his old drill-field near the Temple of Confucius just within the walls of the city of Sungkiang [Songjiang: pinyin], the prefectural capital of the area now dominated by Shanghai, and the city around which much of his military service with the Ever Victorious Army took place. Harry Franck2 visited the site in 1923 and wrote that “the Chinese built a temple of remembrance over his grave, similar to those built by Chinese for their famous men over the centuries, though unlike the majority with their gleaming yellow roof tiles his was a pathetic little gray-walled enclosure, covered with ordinary tiles, in an open space inside the West Gate, littered here and there with graves and unburied coffins. It was not imposing yet it was several times more so than the tomb the adventurer would probably have had in Massachusetts. Though the temple was but a single-room building, it had an altar with the spirit tablet of Ward, and all the other features of a Chinese temple, and now and again Chinese still come to burn incense and bow down before their hero of Taiping days. A conspicuous tablet in red and black tells those who know their Chinese that:
An illustrious man from beyond the seas, he came 6000 li to accomplish great deeds and acquire immortal fame by shedding his noble blood. Because of him Sungkiang will be a happy land for a thousand autumns”.
Franck tells us that the temple was not badly kept, as things went in China. There were some trees and flowers in season, inside the compound, and the whole place has been recently repaired and repainted. Rice-straw and cabbages were drying on everything but the altar itself, and the woman caretaker had gone to market to "buy things" leaving her small son locked inside. The only foreign hint about the place was an unfinished stone recently set up by the "Frederick Ward Post of the American Legion" of Shanghai. He added that the most touching feature of the whole memorial was the mound of earth, like a common Chinese grave, behind the temple, but within the enclosure, under which Ward's big mastiff was buried. After his master's death, the story goes, the dog refused to take food and went wandering about looking for him until it died of starvation.
So, having seen an early photograph of the official temple,3 altar and tablet dedicated to Ward in Sungkiang some dozen or so years previously, I was determined to see for myself whether it still existed
287
Ward was buried on his old drill-field near the Temple of Confucius just within the walls of the city of Sungkiang [Songjiang: pinyin], the prefectural capital of the area now dominated by Shanghai, and the city around which much of his military service with the Ever Victorious Army took place. Harry Franck2 visited the site in 1923 and wrote that “the Chinese built a temple of remembrance over his grave, similar to those built by Chinese for their famous men over the centuries, though un- like the majority with their gleaming yellow roof tiles his was a pa- thetic little gray-walled enclosure, covered with ordinary tiles, in an open space inside the West Gate, littered here and there with graves and unburied coffins. It was not imposing yet it was several times more so than the tomb the adventurer would probably have had in Massachusetts. Though the temple was but a single-room building, it had an altar with the spirit tablet of Ward, and all the other features of a Chinese temple, and now and again Chinese still come to burn in- cense and bow down before their hero of Taiping days. A conspicuous tablet in red and black tells those who know their Chinese that:
An illustrious man from beyond the seas, he came 6000 li to accomplish great deeds and acquire immortal fame by shedding his noble blood. Because of him Sungkiang will be a happy land for a thousand autumns”.
Franck tells us that the temple was not badly kept, as things went in China. There were some trees and flowers in season, inside the compound, and the whole place has been recently repaired and repainted. Rice-straw and cabbages were drying on everything but the altar itself, and the woman caretaker had gone to market to "buy things leaving her small son locked inside. The only foreign hint about the place was an unfinished stone recently set up by the "Frederick Ward Post of the American Legion" of Shanghai. He added that the most touching fea- ture of the whole memorial was the mound of earth, like a common Chinese grave, behind the temple, but within the enclosure, under which Ward's big mastiff was buried. After his master's death, the story goes, the dog refused to take food and went wandering about looking for him until it died of starvation.
So, having seen an early photograph of the official temple,3 altar and tablet dedicated to Ward in Sungkiang some dozen or so years previously, I was determined to see for myself whether it still existed
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