Anguoyao

01 · Historical Records

Since the Xianchun reign of the Southern Song dynasty, the Anguo medicine market has a history of more than seven hundred years to this day. As the prestige of the Medicine King Temple fair grew day by day, the scale of the medicinal material trade continuously expanded; by the mid-Qing dynasty the "Thirteen Guilds" and "Five Great Assemblies," composed of medicinal merchants from all over the country, gradually took shape, and the "Anke Hall" for receiving merchant guests and managing the market was established. Anguo thereby became the largest medicinal material exchange center in northern China, and was praised as the "medicine capital" and "the greatest medicine market under heaven." From the Ming and Qing dynasties to the Republican period, the temple fair was run in turn by the Thirteen Guilds, and on the first and fifteenth of each month they worshipped at the temple. With the donations of medical and pharmaceutical circles nationwide and of the broad masses, the Medicine King Temple was rebuilt in 1985, and the traditional temple fair cultural activities have developed day by day.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Anguo City is a district under the administration of Baoding City, 100 kilometers south of the provincial capital Shijiazhuang. The Anguo Medicine King Temple was first built in the Eastern Han dynasty and worships Pi Tong (courtesy name Weijun), one of the twenty-eight great generals of Liu Xiu, Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han. The temple fair is said to have "five springs and seven autumns," that is, the spring fair lasts five months and the autumn fair seven months, continuing throughout the year. The main period of the spring fair is the twenty-eighth day of the fourth lunar month; legend says this is the Medicine King's birthday, so it became the grandest day of the spring fair. The winter fair takes the fifteenth day of the tenth lunar month as its main period; legend says this is the Medicine King's death anniversary, and its splendor is the same as that of the main day of the spring fair. The Medicine King market has its own distinctive etiquette of worship. There are many forms, including opera performances, carrying large offerings, presenting tripods, erecting umbrellas, gilding the sacred body, hanging plaques, presenting robes, donating land, and corvée labor. The rites are divided into several kinds, such as three bows and nine prostrations and the four-prostration rite, along with offerings of wheat-flour food and the three sacrificial animals. In between, there are also rich and colorful entertainment activities.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The Anguo medicine market is not only a folk culture with regional and professional characteristics, but also plays a positive role in driving the development of the pharmaceutical industry and promoting social progress.

Other submitting regions for the same item: Yao Customs · Yao Customs · Yao Customs.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

The value of the Anguo medicine market lies first in its layering of professional belief and market trade upon the same site: the Medicine King Temple fair provides the time and the justification for gathering, while the medicinal material distribution provides the flow of people and goods; the two are mutually conditioning and neither can be dispensed with. Counting from the Xianchun reign of the Southern Song, this pattern of using the temple as a market and the market to prosper the temple has continued for more than seven hundred years; though there have been rises and falls in between, the intervention of the merchant guilds allowed it to be rebuilt time and again. The Thirteen Guilds and Five Great Assemblies formed in the mid-Qing, together with the Anke Hall responsible for receiving merchant guests and managing the market, brought trading rules, lodging and reception, and market management into guild self-governance; this evolved into the institutional arrangement, from the Ming and Qing to the Republican period, whereby the temple fair was run in turn by the Thirteen Guilds and worship was held at the temple on the first and fifteenth of each month. The three bows and nine prostrations and the four-prostration rite preserved in the worship etiquette, along with the carrying of large offerings, presenting of tripods, erecting of umbrellas, gilding of the sacred body, hanging of plaques, presenting of robes, donating of land, and corvée labor, have kept the complete set of Ming and Qing temple-fair sacrificial formats in the locality, while opera performances and various entertainments gave the Medicine King Temple fair an unceasing rhythm between the busy and slack seasons of farming. Anguo became the largest medicinal material exchange center in northern China through its pharmaceutical industry; the industry still drives the local processing of prepared herbal slices, the cultivation of medicinal materials, and the sale of patent medicines, and the incense offerings of the temple fair and the donations of the merchant guilds are thereby maintained. After the Medicine King Temple was rebuilt in 1985 the traditional temple fair cultural activities have developed day by day, but the mode of operation centered on guild management and guild accounting can no longer be restored as it was; how to reconnect the "five springs and seven autumns" fair periods with the new market order is the core issue in the protection of this medicine market.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

• Zhu Qingshan 05-2998
• Zhu Youzhou

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Anguoyao (Anguo, Hebei) · China ICH Official Project Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗