Folk Beliefs and Customs

Ⅹ-85Folk CustomsGutian, FujianBatch 2 (2008)Newly Added Item

01 · Historical Records

Linshui Temple in Gutian County, Fujian Province, is dedicated chiefly to Chen Jinggu, a goddess of Taoism. Worshipping Chen Jinggu and performing the rites of inviting incense and receiving fire are currently the most influential folk belief activities not only in Fujian Province but throughout the Jiangnan region, and their influence even extends to Southeast Asia and to Chinese communities around the world. The Chen Jinggu customs began in the Song dynasty and flourished in the Ming and Qing periods; the incense fire has been transmitted without interruption ever since. According to the Gutian County Gazetteer compiled in the Wanli reign of the Ming dynasty, Chen Jinggu was born in the Tang dynasty. Legend has it that she was a native of Xiadu, Cangshan, Fuzhou. At the age of twenty-four, she underwent the rite of deliverance to pray for rain and gave up her young life in order to relieve the drought and save the common people. After death she was revered as the protective goddess of children and women, and an old wooden house near the Xu Zhenjun Temple in Xiachi, Cangshan, is also regarded by local people as Chen Jinggu's ancestral house and is worshipped as such. There are more than four hundred branch temples of Linshui Temple in Taiwan, and over the past twenty years or so, pilgrims from Taiwan to the ancestral Linshui Temple in Gutian have numbered more than four hundred thousand person-visits.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Folk customs (xinsu), also called "popular beliefs" (suxin), are a conventionally formed traditional idea that takes shape over the long course of people's productive and everyday lives. Under the governance of such an idea, the populace develops psychological and behavioral identification with a given folk phenomenon. The Chen Jinggu customs extend their influence to the provinces and regions of Fujian, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Zhejiang, Jiangxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Hubei, and Anhui, as well as to Chinese communities around the world. The faithful number more than eighty million, more than four thousand branch temples of Linshui have appeared, and the result is a distinctive folk cultural phenomenon. The rites of inviting incense and receiving fire are performed throughout the year, but the observances in the first lunar month, the month of Chen Jinggu's birthday, are the most solemn. At that time, the faithful from various places form "Madam Societies" and travel to Linshui Temple in Gutian to celebrate her birthday, inviting incense and receiving fire from the ancestral temple to carry home for the jiao offering rites of prayer to the gods. This reflects the widespread wish among the people to pray for blessings and seek peace. Using the rites of inviting incense and receiving fire as a medium, Taiwan compatriots, in ceremonies of shared belief where people share one ancestor and the gods share one bond, have deepened their emotional exchange with mainland compatriots and their identification with the national culture.

Drawing incense and carrying the flame home

Pilgrims draw incense and flame at the ancestral temple and carry it home, where each household receives its own stick in person.

The women's society pilgrimage in the first month

Women's societies travel to Gutian in the birthday month, each group with its own banner and drum line, marching up the mountain road in order.

The canonical order of the rite

The rite follows Daoist liturgy: incense, address, invocation, offerings, the burning of papers, and finally the handing out of blessed incense.

Hand-copied liturgical texts

Liturgical manuscripts such as the petitions and tower rites are copied by hand within temple lineages and are the written backbone of the rite.

The thanksgiving rite performed at home

Back home, a thanksgiving rite is set up with the flame from the ancestral temple and a vow discharged through offerings, wine and theatre.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

In the course of these rites, the Taoist liturgical rites of the various schools, folk music, opera and dance, traditional martial arts, and folk performing arts from different places are all given full display.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

The deities worshipped in traditional folk belief are an important source from which folk customs arise, while praying for blessings and avoiding harm is the inner reason why such customs are transmitted without interruption. The collection of the various expressive forms of folk culture constitutes the cultural space of folk customs. Huang Guanghui (recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, of the Han nationality, born in July 1966, a native of Gutian County, Fujian Province. In 1991 he was elected vice-chairman of the Gutian Taoist Association and abbot of Linshui Temple, and he presides year-round over the rites of inviting incense and receiving fire in the Chen Jinggu customs. The ceremonies he conducts are solemn and dignified, standardized and orderly; taking Taoist liturgical rites as the vehicle and drawing on diverse traditional culture, they display the cultural content and folk characteristics of the Chen Jinggu customs. He has long devoted himself to the transmission and promotion of the Chen Jinggu customs, paying attention to the collection and collation of documentary materials on them, including liturgical exemplars and written materials such as Fazou and Zaolou, and he holds in his collection such ritual objects as the Lushan magical implements and the Five Thunders command tallies. He is a representative inheritor of the folk customs of Chen Jinggu, a project of the fifth national-level batch of intangible cultural heritage.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

Wu Jishan 05-3019
Xu Shunwei 05-3020
Huang Guanghui 05-3021
Chen Jikun 05-3022
Sinapinchu 05-3023
Liu Shimei 05-3024
Zhang Qingming 05-3025
Zheng Quanguang 05-3026
Ye Da 05-3027
Li Yaohui
Luo Shengzong

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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