by Steven Frost
Jiuzhou, the historic seat of Huangping Prefecture, Guizhou is located in eastern Huangping County, Qiandongnan, along the southern reaches of the Wuyang River. Until the Great Leap Forward, when water was diverted for grandiose socialist engineering projects, and the old river system destroyed, Jiuzhou was connected by navigable waterway eastwards through Zhenyuan and on to Lake Dongting in Hunan. Guizhou's endless mountains presented a major obstacle to an adequate road network, thus waterways became critically important for transportation and commerce. The waterway to Lake Dongting, plied by Black Hmong boatmen, transformed Jiuzhou into a thriving and prosperous merchant town, developed by entrepreneurs from Jiangxi.
People from Jiangxi followed imperial troops into Guizhou, after the pacification and colonization campaigns of the first Ming Dynasty emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, in the latter 14th century. Businesspeople from the southeastern provinces of Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong also immigrated to Jiuzhou, then known as Huangping Fu. The skeleton of a large temple for the goddess Mazu, protector of the seafaring people of China's southeastern coastal provinces, still stands in the old town. There are several imposing old buildings that once housed regional guilds (huiguan). A large temple for Wenchang, the god of letters, who was prayed to for success in passing China's rigorous imperial civil examinations, is visible evidence of Jiuzhou's past importance, and the historical integration of its' population with China's centers of political power in the east.
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One of a number of Catholic cathedrals in Guizhou, established by French Jesuit missionaries at the end of the 19th century, is also located here. During World War II, the Flying Tigers built an airstrip in Jiuzhou, to aid the Nationalist campaign against the Japanese.
While in Jiuzhou in January 2007, I had the opportunity to witness a ritual funeral ceremony. This ceremony lasted for three days and two nights, a typical length of time for a contemporary ritual program in Guizhou. |
 The front gate of Jiuzhou's Wenchang Temple |
After resting a couple of hours in my room, I grabbed my camera and made my way back into the old town. There were perhaps 150 people seated at the tables in the lane, and as soon as I approached someone immediately stood up to invite me to join them. The food was prepared by a group of fifteen or so women, cooking on the street with very large woks. As I ate and talked with my new friends, I still had no idea of the fascinating spectacle the next few days would hold.
In isolated areas of Guizhou, particularly across the northern and eastern counties bordering Chongqing (Sichuan), Hubei and Hunan (known in ancient times as the area of the five rivers, wuxi), popular religious belief is an amalgamation of shamanism1, sorcery, Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism. This part of Guizhou absorbed the essence of its spiritual culture from two distinct fountainheads, Sichuan (Shu) in the north, and more profoundly, the ancient kingdom of Chu (approximately 700-221 B.C.), whose southern cultural center was to the east, in modern day Hunan. The religious culture of southern Chu was highly theatrical and romantic. The magician- shaman, who could use his or her specialized knowledge of sorcery and incantations to summon the gods to earth and enlist their powers to aid humans, enjoyed high status in Chu society.2
With the unification of China under the Qin, northern Chinese civilization increasingly gravitated towards Confucian rationalism. Religion became institutionalized and less dramatic. Northern rulers looked upon the culture of southern Chu as barbaric and unrefined. People in China's southwestern region continued to hold a dramatic, mysterious and emotional vision of the world, filled with gods, ghosts and demons that needed to be offered sacrifice and appealed to through specialized human intermediaries.3
The wave of Han Chinese immigrants who arrived in Guizhou from Jiangxi, from Jiangxi to Guizhou brought their own southern ritual traditions with them to their new home in Guizhou. Generically called Nuo, their purpose was to ritually purify the living environment by eliminating the malevolent influence of ghosts and demons. Nuo ritual in Jiangxi was deeply influenced by Zhengyi Daoism. Magical incantations, dancing, secret mudras and written talismans were key ingredients in Zhengyi's practice. These Jiangxi practices blended with Guizhou's indigenous, sorcery- based belief systems, creating the unique religious culture that still exists today.4
Because transportation was so problematic in this mountainous region, and most of the population lived in isolated hamlets, ritual masters were ambulatory, and carried the necessary materials for spirit altars and ritual activities with them, to be installed and utilized wherever their assistance was required.
When individuals face momentous events like marriage, illness, opening a business, domestic conflicts, or the passing of a loved one, they enlist ritual masters to act as intermediaries between the worlds of men and gods, to help them attain auspicious blessings. These ritual masters are known by many different names, including tulaoshi, duangong, shifu, wushi, shigong and daoshi.
Rituals are divided into two broad categories, martial altar and civil altar. A martial altar is opened to eliminate evil spirits and pestilence, by employing celestial gods and their armies to eradicate ghosts and demons that might harm the living. The invited gods are then entertained with food, drink and other ritual offerings, before returning to the celestial world. A civil altar is opened to conduct affairs on behalf of the dead, typically funerary rites. Ritual masters today are specialized in conducting one type of ceremony or the other. It would be considered very inauspicious to call upon a specialist in funerals to help manage the affairs of the living.
The ritual masters of Guizhou are not graduates of formal institutions. Their knowledge of ritual practice and secrets, like incantations for summoning the gods, mudras and Daoist talismans is passed down, in most cases from father to son. Each troupe of masters has a “director” (zhangtanshi), and the other members apprentice as disciples of various ranks for a number of years, until the zhangtanshi determines they have reached a level of expertise to become leaders themselves. Their liturgy is contained within handwritten texts. In practice, most of the ritual content is recited from memory, based on oral traditions, with a fair amount of improvisation. Texts are copied from older versions, or written from an oral dictation. These “oral- written” traditions are fluid and subject to seemingly endless minor variations between altars and practitioners.
 A troupe of ritual masters in northern Fuquan County, their zhangtanshi is on the far left. |
After arriving sponsor's home, constructing an altar for the gods and temporary ritual space (daochang), the ritual masters then prepares a memorial called zaodie. This document is usually preprinted, with spaces for the sponsor's name, location of the ceremony, year, date and the request of the ritual master on behalf of his sponsor. This memorial is given to the Stove God, Zao Wang, who then submits it directly to the Jade Emperor.5
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The Chinese elite, influenced by Confucian rationalism, has long viewed folk religion with a mixture of condescension and contempt. For many centuries government and formal religious institutions have repeatedly attempted to quash the influence of sorcery, folk superstition and vulgar gods among China's common people, reaching an apogee in the draconian policies of Chairman Mao after 1949. Yet despite these efforts, at the grassroots level, these traditions survive and provide an important source of comfort and assurance in ordinary people's lives. They also represent a unique regional, cultural- religious complex, deeply rooted in ancient China's pre- Confucian traditions.
I am not a specialist in funeral rituals. What follows is an incomplete description of the wentan ceremony proceedings through a series of photographs. With that caveat in mind, I believe it will be of interest to those drawn to the richness of Chinese folk culture and belief.
Click here to see images.
- “Shamanism” as meaning human intermediaries who can communicate with the gods, rather than actual spirit possession. Ritual priests imply the concept of possession when they don a mask representing a particular god, but today this seems largely metaphorical, rather than literal.
- Hawkes, p. 9
- Li, Zehou, p. 94
- Li Huaisun, p. 109
- The Stove God is a tutelary deity whose duty is to report to the Jade Emperor on the conduct of the family members in each home. Because he has the right to submit memorials directly to the Jade Emperor, without going through the cumbersome celestial bureaucracy, the ritual masters exploit this direct conection.
- Hawkes, David. Ch'u Tz'u: The Songs of the South, Oxford. 1959.
- Li Huaisun 李懷蓀. 五溪地域巫文化的變遷和儺神東山聖公南山聖母 Wuxi diyu wu wenhua de bianqian he Nuoshen Dongshanshengggong Nanshanshengmu, On the Transformation of Shamanic Culture in the Five Rivers Region and the Nuo Gods Dongshan Shenggong and Nanshan Shengmu. Minsu Quyi 民俗曲藝(Folklore and Performance). 106, 97-166.
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Li Zehou. The Path of Beauty- A Study of Chinese Aesthetics, Beijing, Morning Glory, 1988.