Temple Fair
01 · Historical Records
Since the Qing dynasty, folk gatherings with fixed festival dates have formed around temples, and these have been transmitted to the present. Blending the diverse beliefs of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism on a single mountain, and gathering the customs of multiple ethnic groups — Manchu, Han, Korean, Mongolian, and Hui — into one body, the Beishan Temple Fair is distinctive.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Beishan Temple Fair is a cultural space for folk activities with a long tradition, held at Beishan (North Mountain) in Jilin City, Jilin Province. Beishan lies to the northwest of the urban area of Jilin City and is a famous urban forest park. During the Kangxi reign of the Qing dynasty, the Guandi Temple was first built at the summit. Afterwards, the Medicine King Temple (originally the Three Sovereigns Temple) and the Jade Emperor Pavilion were built, forming a complex of temples, which earned the praise that "the temples of Qianshan lead the Northeast, and Jilin's temple fair surpasses Qianshan." Each year after the fourth lunar month, temple fairs follow one another in succession: the Buddha's Birthday Festival on the eighth day of the fourth month, the Goddess Temple Fair on the eighteenth day of the fourth month, the Medicine King Temple Fair on the twenty-eighth day of the fourth month, and the Guandi Temple Fair on the thirteenth day of the fifth month, of which the Medicine King Temple Fair is the grandest. During the temple fairs, devout men and women worship piously, vendors cry their wares, and folk performances are lively and spectacular.
The Buddha's birthday on the eighth
The Buddha's birthday on the eighth of the fourth lunar month opens the fair's sequence, with worshippers lighting incense at every shrine.
The Mazu-style festival on the eighteenth
The eighteenth draws many female devotees who offer fruit and flowers, the most intimate stretch of the mountain's fair calendar.
The medicine-king festival on the twenty-eighth
The medicine-king festival on the twenty-eighth is the year's high point, its temple originally dedicated to the Three Sovereigns drawing the thickest crowds.
The Guan Yu festival on the thirteenth
The Guan temple, first raised in the Kangxi era on the summit, extends the fair into early summer on the thirteenth of the fifth month.
A temple cluster ranked first in the northeast
Guan, medicine-king and jade-emperor shrines cluster on the summit, placing three traditions on one hill and giving the fair its character.
Hawkers and the mountain market
Hawkers cry their goods along the steps while worshippers bow, the forested hill serving as both park and market.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
The local character of the Beishan Temple Fair rests on two things. First, the temple complex belongs to different belief systems: Guandi, the Medicine King, and the Jade Emperor each have their own temple, their own circle of devotees, and their own fair day. Second, the festival dates are closely packed, running from the eighth day of the fourth month to the thirteenth day of the fifth month; the eighth, eighteenth, and twenty-eighth of the fourth month and the thirteenth of the fifth month form a long chain, so that fair-goers can attend several fairs in a row, and the itineraries of both vendors and pilgrims are thereby lengthened. The mountain's location also shapes the composition of the crowd: local urban pilgrims go up the mountain on ordinary days, while people from neighboring prefectures and counties and from beyond the pass make special trips during the agricultural slack season, so the temple fair combines two faces at once — suburban recreation and cross-county market-going.
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04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Having the three teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism share one mountain, and the customs of the Manchu, Han, Korean, Mongolian, and Hui peoples performed on the same ground, is the most important folk specimen the Beishan Temple Fair leaves to the present day. The temple complex rises tier upon tier, following the contours of the mountain; its halls, steles, and ancient trees together form a typical pattern in which the space of worship and the space of recreation overlap, providing a complete sample for the study of the construction and use of temple complexes on urban outskirts. The continuous holding of fairs since the Qing dynasty has kept the folk function of this space undiminished to this day: people going up the mountain both worship and enjoy the spring, and the modern identity of an urban forest park and the ancient tradition of fair dates have long been layered together here. The vendors and performance troupes gathered by the temple fair also provide a stage for local ballad-singing, acrobatics, and handicrafts, whose state of preservation is directly tied to the flourishing of the temple fair.
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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