Word: soong
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...gilding of Chih Hang [June 8] is not the first, nor will it be the last such deification of a revered monk by a Chinese congregation. My favorite is that of Abbot Soong Chiu-cheng, who in death takes a much nicer picture than does Chih Hang...
...Abbot Soong headed the Tien Chen Cloister in Shanghai. He died at the age of 62 in 1942. What makes Abbot Soong unique that he predicted, a year before his death, not only the time of his death but the fact that his body would not decompose...
Like Chih Hang, Abbot Soong was sealed after death in stone urns, placed one on another. But he did not stay there any five years. After 76 days of a heat wave and the covering urn was removed, Soong was found to be in good condition. But one of the incense sticks that propped up his head had snapped (children playing in the cloister had bumped against the urns), and so now his head rests on his shoulder as if in sleep...
...autumn Festival of the Eighth Moon, some five months after Soong's death, his body was gilded by a member of his congregation. A red satin cloak was draped around his gilded shoulders, and he was placed in a glass case...
There he sat until the Communists came to Shanghai some ten years ago. Abbot Soong moved out just before the Pa Lu moved in, and where he sits now I do not know. But I believe his impoverished congregation, which moved with him, still reveres Abbot Soong...