Temple Fair
01 · Historical Records
Some of the large temple fairs had already reached considerable scale in the Tang dynasty and have been passed down without interruption ever since, exerting a wide influence. In China's Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions, as well as the Taiwan region, the traditional temple fairs commonly observed by devotees were all introduced from the mainland and remain inseparably tied to their origins. The Miaofengshan temple fair is one of the most important temple fairs in northern China. It began in the middle and late Ming dynasty; by the Qing dynasty its incense offerings had reached their peak, and it drew several hundred thousand pilgrims every year.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
Temple fairs, also known as "temple markets", are a type of folk-belief activity held at regular intervals at temples and in their vicinity, popular throughout the country. Every temple fair has its own prescribed session dates, most of which fall on a traditional lunar festival or on a religious or folk-belief commemorative day. Temple fairs are characterized by concentration, mass participation, and fixity. During a fair, all manner of folk activities and commercial exchanges can be fully displayed in public, and the activities are rich and colorful; processions for welcoming the gods are also one form of temple fair. Miaofengshan, known in ancient times as "Miaogaofeng" (Marvelous Peak), lies in the western suburbs of Beijing, 35 kilometers from the city center, and falls under the jurisdiction of Mentougou District, Beijing. The traditional Miaofengshan temple fair is held twice a year: the spring incense season runs from the first to the fifteenth day of the fourth lunar month, and the autumn incense season from the twenty-fifth day of the seventh lunar month to the first day of the eighth; of the two, the spring incense is the grander. The fair's activity area divides into two parts, the Niangniang Temple and the incense-path tea sheds. The Niangniang Temple stands on the summit and consists of buildings such as the Lingguan Hall, the Huiji Shrine, the Huixiang Pavilion, and the Yuhuang Summit. There are more than three hundred incense associations (xianghui), each belonging to a different school or lineage. An incense association is a folk cultural activity organization; it transmits and preserves numerous folk arts, folk athletic competitions, and folk handicrafts, enriching the cultural life of the people. The activities of the incense associations are strongly mass-based and self-entertaining in character, reflecting the people's capacity for self-organization and the traditional social spirit of public-spiritedness, modesty, and mutual aid.
Two sessions in one year
The pilgrimage calendar is split into a long spring session and a brief late-summer one, so the busiest and quietest periods of the year are decided a month in advance.
The summit shrine and the stalls below
The fair occupies two places, a tiered summit shrine for worship and a line of tea stalls below for resting, which pilgrims reach only after descending.
Three hundred teams on the path
More than three hundred associations of different schools share one mountain path without rearranging their routes, making the site a clearing house for northern folk arts.
Two hundred association heads as teachers
The association head organises, commands and teaches, and there are over two hundred in Beijing alone; rules and skills exist only through personal instruction.
Resting and meeting at the stalls
Most conversation happens at the tea stalls rather than in the halls, making the stalls the fair’s real meeting place.
The old custom of funding repairs
Associations traditionally pooled money to repair damaged paths and shelters, making the fair a shared public undertaking as much as a spectacle.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
Miaofengshan, known in ancient times as Miaogaofeng, lies in the western suburbs of Beijing, thirty-five kilometers from the city center, and falls under the jurisdiction of Mentougou District; its fair is held in two sessions, the spring incense and the autumn incense, with the spring incense running from the first to the fifteenth day of the fourth lunar month and the autumn incense from the twenty-fifth day of the seventh lunar month to the first day of the eighth, the spring incense being the grander. This two-session arrangement differs from other temple fairs in the capital: the autumn incense is short and compact, while the spring incense is long and spread out, so pilgrims' itineraries differ in length accordingly. The activity area divides into two tracts: one is the Niangniang Temple on the summit, made up of buildings such as the Lingguan Hall, the Huiji Shrine, the Huixiang Pavilion, and the Yuhuang Summit; the other is the uphill incense path and the tea sheds along the way. The relationship between the two is not one of passage and venue but of ritual and rest: after pilgrims have worshiped on the summit and come down, they stop at the tea sheds to rest, eat something, and watch other processions coming up, so most of the socializing of the fair period takes place on the incense path. The incense associations number more than three hundred, each of a different lineage, and each with its own association head and its own style of performance. This coexistence of many lineages has made the Miaofengshan area a distribution center for folk skills in northern China: raised-pavilion tableaux (taige), yangge dances, drum music, and boxing each occupy a stretch of the mountain road, and none has to accommodate any other's schedule. The incense associations carry their own organizational tradition of public-spiritedness: when mountain paths are damaged or bridges and pavilions fall into disrepair, they raise funds and repair them, so the temple fair is at the same time a public act of mutual aid among the villagers.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
In overseas Chinese communities, many temple fairs brought from the homeland thrive with burning incense, transmitting the cultural lineage of the Chinese nation in a special way. The association head is the organizer, director, and principal transmitter of an incense association; in Beijing alone there are more than two hundred association heads. The various rules, rites, and skills of the associations are all passed down by the association heads through a master-apprentice relationship. The Miaofengshan temple fair preserves the traditional folk auspiciousness culture characteristic of northern Chinese temple fairs, which are grounded in folk belief; it is an important basis for studying the worldview and living conditions of the people of northern China and has significant reference value in folklore studies.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Hu Wenxiang 04-1974
- Guan Zhangxun 04-1975
- Cheng Zhongxin 05-3018
- Wang Defeng
- Luo Binggen
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
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