153 (2006.9): 157-202
157
“Superstition Specialist Households”?
The Household Idiom in Chinese
Religious Practices
Adam Yuet Chau
Departmental Lecturer in the Anthropology of Modern China
Institute for Chinese Studies
University of Oxford
Abstract: This article examines the role of the householder religious service provider and the household idiom in the overall field of religious
practice in China. First I will look at the emergence of a new label, superstition specialist households (mixin zhuanyehu), in the PRC, and attempt
to situate this emergence within the socio-economic and political context
of reform-era China. This label shows how the Chinese party-state now
conceptualizes ritual specialists such as spirit mediums, yinyang masters,
fortune-tellers, and others who make a living in the popular religious
realm (including folk musicians and opera performers who perform at
temple festivals, temple caretakers, non-monastic Buddhist and Daoist ritualists, votive offering manufacturers, etc.). Though sardonic and condemnatory in tone, this appellation also puts these people in the larger category of getihu (private business households), whose existence is not only
legitimate but even celebrated in reform-era China. I then present a couple of vignettes from my ethnographic fieldwork in Shaanbei (north-central China) to illustrate how householder religious service providers typically work (one vignette on a spirit medium; the other on a yinyang master). While operating upon very different principles
yinyang masters
rely on esoteric knowledge and ritual orthopraxy, whereas spirit mediums
rely on deity power and efficacy
both kinds of ritual specialist are religious entrepreneurs taking full advantage of the “household idiom,” in
contradistinction to affiliation with formal institutions such as monasteries,
temples, or guilds. Next I look at what I call “ritual jamming,” referring to
the ad hoc coming together of householder ritualists to stage larger rituals
158 Adam Yuet Chau
in response to some clients’ more elaborate needs. I also examine the
household idiom and see what advantages it has over the corporatist
idiom in terms of ritual service provision at the grassroots level, as well as
its ability to weather political suppression. I conclude by offering some
speculative comments on the probable future of the household idiom in
Chinese religious culture.
Key words: superstition, the household idiom, religious specialists,
Daoist priests, ritual jamming.
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
159
Doing Religion in China: Corporatist versus
Household Idioms
Anthropologists and historians of China have amply demonstrated the penchant and capability of the Chinese to form collectivities
of all kinds: clans, lineages (formed through real descent or through
mergers of previously unrelated descent groups sharing the same
surname), same-surname associations, native-place associations,
alumni associations, trade guilds, chambers of commerce, academies,
literary societies, temple associations, deity cults, village alliances,
sectarian groups, pilgrimage societies, political parties, interest and
hobby groups, gangs, sworn brotherhoods, secret societies, opera
troupes, militias, rotating credit clubs, and, of more recent vintage,
protest committees, hunger-strike squadrons, qigong
circles,
neighborhood yangge
troupes, stocks salons, and NGOs. Even
beggars and pickpockets form their own groups. We might want to
call this a corporatist impulse. As organizational idioms of conceptualizing and acting upon the world, these civic collectivities form the
myriad nodal points in the vast Chinese social world between the
state and the household (see Brook and Frolic 1997; Sangren 1984).
Civic collectivities are especially prominent in Chinese religious
life. From very early on charismatic religious figures founded religious groups and schools of thought that sometimes were not simply
virtual communities of discourse and adherents but were actually
brethrens and co-faithfuls organized to pursue common goals and to
distinguish themselves from other such groups (e.g., the early Daoist
parishes). Though an imported practice, the Buddhist sangha took
root in China and became the most spectacularly successful example
of civic collectivity in dynastic China. The Daoist equivalent of the
order, didn’t fare so badly itself
Buddhist sangha, the Quanzhen
(see Goossaert 2003 and forthcoming). On the regional level, some
deity cults and sectarian groups achieved widespread influence and
spawned intricate networks of cult centers, temples, pilgrim societies, and ritual activities (e.g., the Three in One cult in southeast
China analyzed by Dean 1998; the Mazu incense division and pilgrimage networks in Taiwan; the Emperor of the Eastern Peak cult in
160 Adam Yuet Chau
north China; the sectarian groups studied by DuBois 2005). Rebellions and protests of any significant scale are often clothed in religious mantles (from the different “White Lotus”-related uprisings to
the Taiping to post-suppression, politicized Falungong). On the local
level, a myriad of deities are worshiped in temples, and temple associations organize communal festivals to honor the deities (see Chau
2006).
In all of these institutional contexts of religious life, the Chinese
make good use of their organizational skills and what might be called
an organizational or corporatist idiom to lay out principles of inclusivity and exclusivity, organizational hierarchy, leadership selection
and succession, division of ritual and organizational labor, expansion
and segmentation, etc (see Sangren 1984). While some of these religious organizations are for the religious specialists or clerics (e.g.
monastic groups), the majority of them are actually lay organizations.
It certainly seems that these religious organizations are crucial
means by which the Chinese “do” religion. Yet we would be grossly
remiss to leave out the less glamorous, more prosaic and basic religious organizational idiom: the household. I do not mean here the
carrying out of worship at the household, domestic level (e.g.,
ancestral and deity worship at domestic altars), though this has
important bearings on my argument, as I will show later on (see
Chau 2004 for the importance of the concept of the host household
and hosting in engaging in religious activities). Rather, I refer to the
ways in which religious services are provided by specialists who are
not regular members of any larger religious institution, who do not
live in special dwellings separate from the common people, who are
most often householders themselves, and who provide religious services to their clients for a fee or its equivalent. In contrast with clerics
who live collectively in cloisters (e.g., monasteries, nunneries, Daoist
belvederes and temples), these religious specialists are atomized, living within the community of their prospective clients but sometimes
far removed from other, similar specialists. I have in mind of course
the proverbial yinyang
master, the huoju
(or sanju
)
Daoist priest, the spirit medium, and other similar types of householder religious specialists (or householder religious service provi-
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
161
ders). This might be called the household idiom for doing religion in
contrast with the corporatist idiom.
This article lays out a preliminary analysis of the household
idiom in Chinese religious practices. I explore the following questions: How does the household idiom work? What are the advantages of the household idiom for religious service providers and their
clients in contrast to those of the corporatist idiom? Why has the
household idiom persisted despite the fact that different regimes in
traditional as well as modern times have tried to suppress it? How
does the household idiom articulate with the corporatist idiom? What
are the implications for our understanding of Chinese religious history and religious culture when we look at the household idiom more
seriously? The rest of the article is divided into a few sections. First I
will look at the emergence of a new label, superstition specialist
households (mixin zhuanyehu
), in the PRC, and attempt
to situate this emergence within the socio-economic and political
context of reform-era China. Then I present a couple of vignettes
from my ethnographic fieldwork in Shaanbei, north-central China, to
illustrate how householder religious service providers typically work
(one vignette on a spirit medium and the other on a yinyang master). Next I look at what I call “ritual jamming,” referring to the ad
hoc coming together of householder ritualists to stage bigger rituals
in response to some clients’ more elaborate needs. Then I examine
the household idiom and see what advantages it has over the corporatist idiom in terms of ritual service provision at the grassroots level
as well as the ability to weather political suppression. I conclude by
offering some speculative comments on the probable future of the
household idiom in Chinese religious culture.
Superstition Specialist Households (mixin zhuanyehu), or, Householder Religious Service Providers
While conducting ethnographic fieldwork in Shaanbei (northern
Shaanxi Province) in north-central China in the 1990s on the revival
of popular religion in the reform era, I occasionally heard on the
radio and read in the newspapers that nowadays there are many
162 Adam Yuet Chau
“superstition specialist households” (mixin zhuanyehu) active in
rural China that contribute to the re-surfacing of “feudal superstitious
grime” (fengjian mixin chenzha fanqi
), and that
grassroots-level cadres and the Public Security Bureau should be vigilant and try to crack down on these undesirable elements. By superstition specialist households the authorities seems to be referring to
all kinds of people who make a living doing what are considered
superstitious activities in the popular religious realm. These include
fortune tellers, fengshui
masters, spirit mediums, ritual healers,
uncertified Daoist priests, folk musicians who play at weddings and
funerals, story-tellers, opera singers and orchestra members of private folk opera troupes performing at temple festivals, makers of
votive paper offerings, printers of hell bank notes, full-time temple
caretakers, etc.1 A couple of quotes from sources I culled from the
internet suffice to convey the tenor of such condemnations:
[Excerpt One] When a person dies, it usually costs over a thousand yuan to hire a yinyang master to see fengshui, delimit the
gravesite, make paper offerings, chant sutras, play music, and
deliver the soul. In some rural areas one has to hire a yinyang
master when there is a death, which makes yinyang masters into
) attracting high bids. As a
“fragrant buns” (xiangbobo
result many yinyang masters have emerged. There are now more
than 200 fengshui masters in Suizhou City in Hubei Province and
spirit mediums are very active in both the city and the countryside. There are twenty to thirty yinyang masters in one county in
Yinnan Prefecture of the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region. Some
places have even produced “superstition specialist households”:
the son inheriting the father’s trade, and the whole family is
involved in raking in money. According to someone’s estimates, a
yinyang master’s annual gross income can be more than ten
thousand yuan. It is the peasants’ attitude towards superstition
consumption that has produced all these superstition specialist
1. Other terms for these people include mixin zhiyezhe
(superstition
(superstition professional eleprofessionals) and mixin zhiye fenzi
ments).
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
163
households, fattening a horde of yinyang masters and people
who gain without labouring.2
[Excerpt Two] The construction of graves and burial memorials
and the worship of deities and ghosts have become a big public
) in Chinese society. In Wenzhou of
menace (gonghai
Zhejiang Province, the average cost of building a grave is over
2,000 yuan, and the most expensive ones reach well over 100,000
yuan. These graves are all over the mountains and fields, making
them into quite a sight. In some rural areas in Henan Province
“superstition specialist households” almost comprise one tenth of
all households.3
Continuing to use the label “superstition” to refer to the activities yinyang masters and spirit mediums are engaged in, the authorities may sound like they are reviving the virulent Maoist anti-superstition campaigns. However, except in a few locales where such antisuperstition attitudes are occasionally turned into concrete action
(e.g., demolition of temples, banning of lavish funerals, levelling of
conspicuously large graves on supposedly valuable farmland), most
of the talks of cracking down on superstition remain at a rhetorical
level. Most local cadres not only tolerate apparently superstitious
activities but even encourage and participate actively in them (see
Chau 2004).4 The central government has so far avoided using Maoistera campaign-style strategies to deal with the “superstition boom.”
2. Excerpt from an article entitled “Facets of Ignorance Consumption” (Yumei
xiaofei mianmianguan
) in the magazine Xinwen dashijie
(The Great World of News) (sixth issue of 1994), published as an internet
) on
document in Ningxia news net (Ningxia xinwenwang
September 9,2003 (http://www. nxnews.net/602/2003-9-9/[email protected]).
3. http://www.cass.cn/chinese/s14_zxs/facu/cuiweihang/zhicheng/shu.htm.
4. The Chinese government allows religious activities only in places certified as
“venues of religious activities” (zongjiao huodong changsuo
),
which are found only in places of worship of the five officially recognized religions: Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Protestantism, and Catholicism. Religious activities outside of these venues are all considered illegal. However, there is much
room for negotiation between the legal, religious realm and the illegal, “superstitious” realm (see Chau 2005; n.d.).
164 Adam Yuet Chau
Even though the term mixin (superstition), imported as a modern neologism from Japan, has been in use in China for a century by
now, the term zhuanyehu (specialist household) seems to be a new,
reform-era invention. As is well known, after the long Maoist suppression of private businesses of all sorts (from 1950s to 1970s), privately-owned and operated businesses finally came back in the 1970s
and flourished thereafter, contributing significantly to China’s dynamic economic growth in the past two decades or so. Most of these
businesses are very small, family operations, continuing a long tradition in Chinese political economic history of what Hill Gates calls
petty capitalist enterprises (Gates 1996). Along with the slogan “To
get rich is glorious,” new terms such as getihu
(private business households), zhuanyehu, xiangzhen qiye
(village and
township level enterprises), and chengbao
(contract enterprises) came into vogue. The term getihu became especially ubiquitous.
Geti
(private, independent) is of course in contradistinction
with jiti
(collective), the latter referring to the Maoist collectivization of farming, industrial and other kinds of production, goods
distribution, and even consumption (e.g., in the extreme form of collective canteens during the Great Leap Forward). In the Maoist era,
geti was considered petty bourgeois (xiaozichanjieji
) or
of peasant consciousness (xiaonong sixiang
) and thus politically suspect; it smacked of selfishness and immorality while jiti connoted morality and revolutionary civic-mindedness. During the
reform era, the overall socioeconomic atmosphere is a sea change
from that of the Maoist era; now the most important and celebrated
qualities in a person are self initiative, a spirit of adventure and risk
taking, flexibility (linghuo
), a keen sense of market opportunities, sociability (including skills in banqueting and drinking; key to
building and maintaining guanxi with business partners and political
patrons), imagination, management and negotiation skills, personal
flair and charisma, skills in talking and persuading, etc. These are
necessary qualities for successful entrepreneurs. In addition to these
qualities, one would be even more “of the reform spirit” if one specializes in a particular trade or profession, that is, if one becomes a
“specialized household” (zhuanyehu). The term zhuanye connotes
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
165
professional, expert, dedicated trade. The money-making, commercial aspect of these professionals is highlighted, so much so that
ironically an even more professional (in the sense of full-time pursuit
and professional accreditation), certified Daoist priest or Buddhist
monk who draws a salary from the Daoist or Buddhist Association
but does not sell his service for money would not even be included
in this zhuanyehu category (the same goes for the Muslim ahongs,
Protestant ministers, and Catholic priests). Ritualists who do not charge
money for their services are also most likely not included in this category: religious mystics such as Daoist hermits and alchemists; sectarian ritualists performing for their members and neighbors (see
DuBois 2005; Jones 2004); lay devotees chanting sutras or precious
scrolls (baojuan
) at funerals or temple festivals; ordinary villagers who assume the roles of communal ritual leaders or director
) at weddings and funerals.
of events (zongling
An important fact to keep in mind about the category zhuanyehu is that even though the term hu refers to households, in reality it
sometimes refers to an individual entrepreneur alone, not necessarily
including his or her household members. The reason why the
authorities still prefer to use the term household as a shorthand (i.e.,
a metaphor) reveals the extent to which the household idiom has
become a hegemonic idiom in statist mentality, i.e., the household
being the state’s most basic unit of engagement with society for as
long as China has had a household registration system (huji
).
Though sardonic and condemning in tone, superstition specialist household as an appellation in fact willy-nilly puts the different
kinds of religious service providers in the larger categories of getihu
and zhuanyehu that are not only legitimate but even celebrated in
reform-era China. Indeed, most of these religious service providers
(probably better called religious operators?) have the same qualities
mentioned above that are crucial for successful entrepreneurs.
However, curiously, the authorities continue to consider householder
religious service providers as “people who gain without labouring”
(bulao erhuo zhe
). In the current political economic climate, to make money and get rich is glorious, but not if it is through
mongering superstition or engaging in otherwise morally dubious
166 Adam Yuet Chau
activities (such as regularly selling one’s blood for money), so the
party-state argues.5 Typical of the official press in the PRC, there are
always stories in which bad elements of society are transformed into
good ones through the party-state’s civilizing propaganda efforts (see
Anagnost 1987). Two examples:
[Example One] In this campaign, each locale made “changing old
customs and erecting new ones” as an important content of socialist thought education, which resulted in great accomplishments.
One of the accomplishments was that feudal superstition activities
have been greatly reduced. For example, in Wulian County [note:
in Shandong Province] there used to be more than 300 superstition specialist households that depended on fortune telling and
manufacturing superstition products for a living. They stopped
their activities after having been educated.6
[Example Two] In the Dule Village of Dule Township of the county [note: Yi County in Hebei Province] there used to be a mah)
joong specialist household (majiang zhuanyehu
and a feudal superstition specialist household. They both became
fruit tree technicians after the popular science and technology
education campaign. They even became science and technology
5. It seems that as far as specialist households are concerned, in the eyes of the
authorities there are the good, the bad, and the ugly ones. The good specialist
households include the “agribusiness specialist households” (zhongyang
zhuanyehu
), the “chicken-raising specialist households” (yangji
), the “contract business specialist households” (chengzhuanyehu
), the “cultural specialist households” (wenhua
bao zhuanyehu
), and the “transport specialist households” (yunshu
zhuanyehu
), etc. The bad ones include the “superstition specialist
zhuanyehu
households,” the “funeral specialist households” (sangshi zhuanyehu
), the “burial-site-selling specialist households” (maifen zhuanyehu
), and the “fortune-telling specialist households” (suanming zhuanyehu
), etc. What might be called the “ugly” specialist households include the
“blood-selling specialist households” (maixie zhuanyehu), the “gambling specialist households” (dubo zhuanyehu
), and the “bad-debt-reclaiming
), etc. These are all exspecialist households” (taozhai zhuanyehu
pressions I have come across in online official publications.
6. http://www.shandong.gov.cn/art/2005/11/11/art_5712_59515.html.
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
167
demonstration households (keji shifanhu
), not only
having contracted their own village’s persimmon trees but even
those of other villages. Their story has become a famous legend.7
It is difficult to ascertain the verity of these stories in the official
press. It is also difficult to determine what actual impact such discourse might have on the householder religious service providers and
their clients. I never heard anyone use the expression mixin zhuanyehu in Shaanbei during my fieldwork except in the official media.
Leaving aside the discursive realm, let me now give two ethnographic vignettes on two Shaanbei householder religious service providers, one being a spirit medium and the other a yinyang master, to
illustrate how these specialists typically operate.
Householder Religious Service Providers in
Shaanbei: Ethnographic Vignettes
Vignette One: A Spirit Medium8
Mr. Zhu is in his forties and he is a “divine official” (shenguan
, a type of spirit medium) in a small village in rural Shenmu
County, Yulin Prefecture, northern Shaanxi Province (Shaanbei) in
north-central China.9 He is married and has two unmarried children.
Like the rest of his co-villagers, he is officially a farmer and has rural
household registration. But because so many people come to consult
him, he has become a professional spirit medium and does very little
farm work nowadays, leaving it to his wife and neighbors. Three
7. http://www.369a.com/qiye/mopanshi.htm.
8. Both vignettes are narrated in the “ethnographic present” of the moments of my
field observation in 1997 and 1998 in Shaanbei. My main fieldwork area was at
), where the regionally famous
the Dragon King Valley (Longwanggou
Black Dragon King Temple is located. For a study on the revival and operations
of the temple and other issues relating to “doing” popular religion in contemporary rural China, see Chau 2006.
9. There are two types of spirit mediums in Shaanbei: shenguan
are more
are more common in the south (see
common in the north and wushen
Chau 2003 for details).
168 Adam Yuet Chau
deities are his spirit familiars: the Azure Cloud Immortal (Qingyundaxian
), the Red Cloud Immortal (Hongyundaxian
),
and the Fire Immortal (Huoyanzhenjun
). During each spirit
consultation session one of the three deities would come down and
possess the spirit medium. Mr. Zhu’s father, who is in his early seventies, was the first one in the family who became a spirit medium
(when he was a young man)10, and when he became older he
passed the trade to his son and now lets the son handle most of the
consultation sessions. The father also used to practice as an herbal
doctor. The medium usually works in his own home, an adobe-brick
house with three cave-shaped rooms (yaodong
) and a sizable
front courtyard enclosed by a brick wall. Two of the rooms are living
quarters for the family of three generations (two elderly parents, Mr.
Zhu and his wife, and their two children, a school-going teenage son
and an older daughter who has just graduated from junior high school
and is staying at home helping with farming and household chores).
Most of the medium’s séance is conducted on the raised earthen
bed (kang ), the center of daily domestic life in all northern Chinese
homes. Each time when the medium invokes the spirits with a long
chant while beating rhythmically a drum made of goat skin and
wrought iron in front of the painted deity scroll hanging on the wall,
one of the three deities will come down to possess him. A series of
big yawns and horse snorting sounds indicates that the deity is soon
to arrive. The moment he is possessed, his head and whole body
shake uncontrollably, and he makes more horse snorting sounds.11
10. One of his aunts died without bearing any children, and a few years after her
death she cultivated herself into becoming an immortal (the Red Cloud
Immortal) and asked her nephew to act as a spirit medium for her. After much
resistance he eventually agreed. The Fire Immortal is said to be the boyfriend
of the Red Cloud Immortal. The Azure Cloud Immortal used to live in a large
temple in Shenmu City, the county capital. During the Cultural Revolution his
temple was destroyed so he fled the city and came to the village as a refugee.
Old Zhu (the father) took him on as an additional spirit familiar. The temple in
Shenmu City has since been rebuilt but it has no medium for the deity.
11. Spirit mediums are known colloquially in Shaanbei as “horse lads” (matong
). Temple murals and spirit medium altar scrolls typically depict deities riding
horses in the clouds.
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
169
But he quickly calms down and sits down on his small chair on the
kang, and in a sing-song tune announces to the audience his (i.e., the
deity’s) identity and begins his consultation sessions with the visiting
clients (in this particular session the deity is the Azure Cloud Immortal). During the entire séance, which might last between half an hour
or four to five hours depending on how many clients there are and
how complicated the problems are, the deity speaks through the
medium in the same sing-song tune, known as the “tune of the divine
official” (shenguandiao
), while occasionally making horse
snorting noises and drinking small cups of hard liquor (the medium
never drinks when not possessed). During the entire session there
are always a few onlookers who are clients waiting for their turn and
co-villagers and children “watching the fun” (kanhonghuo
).
After dealing with a few cases concerning a spirit medium succession problem, a persisting leg pain that regular doctors failed to
cure, and a missing person, two small children are brought to the side
of the kang by their respective parents. While the children look on
quietly, the parents tell the deity about the children’s problems (crying incessantly at night, not having an appetite for a prolonged period of time, etc.). The deity diagnoses the problem as resulting from
soul loss, i.e., the children’s souls having been captured by some evil
spirits. The solution is some exorcistic procedures. With a brush the
medium writes two talismans in red ink on yellow paper and instructs
the parents to make the children wear them on their bodies for certain number of days. Then two flat, simple dough figurines about the
length of ten inches are brought to him. The medium draws some talisman-looking strokes on different parts of the dough figurines while
mumbling some chants. He sits up, comes down from the kang with
his drum and stick, comes out to the courtyard with the clients,
begins another session of drumming and chanting while instructing
the children to go in and out in an intricate pattern through a five-foot
tall, pavilion-looking wooden structure, which was erected earlier
during the day for precisely such exorcism purposes.12 A large hay
chopper (zhadao
) is placed nearby, and the dough figurines,
12. This ritual is called “passing the obstacles” (guoguan
).
170 Adam Yuet Chau
together with a small bundle of hay (probably symbolizing the evil
spirits?) and a white cock, are placed on the wooden seat/trough of
the chopper. With one swift and firm downward movement on the
handle, the heads of the figurines and the cock (and presumably the
evil spirits) are chopped off together with the hay bundle. The medium throws the headless cock to the center of the courtyard and it flies
and runs around for a minute or two, splashing blood all around,
before lying dead in one corner. Meanwhile, the medium smears one
middle finger with the cock’s blood and dots the foreheads of the two
children (presumably to endow them with new lives, this procedure
being very similar to that of “opening the light” of statues and spirit
tablets). The smaller of the two children begins crying, to the amusement of all the onlookers. The medium returns to the altar on the
kang, sits down, drops low his head, and a moment later he collapses into the sacks of grain next to the altar, looking dazed and exhausted, the Azure Cloud Immortal apparently having left his body.13
Vignette Two: A Yinyang Master
The mother of Lu Gang of the village of Huaqu near Zhenchuan
has just died. As head of the household, Lu Gang is responsible for
staging the most important kind of household event productions in
his life: a funeral for a deceased parent. In rural Shaanbei all major
household event productions such as weddings and funerals are
staged in the homes of the host households (zhujia
). A funeral
in today’s Shaanbei typically takes two days and involves mobilizing
dozens of helpers, preparing a large amount of banquet food, and
hosting more than a hundred mourners (descendants and relatives
who are not members of the host household) and guests (co-villagers
and friends of the deceased and his/her family), not to mention the
need to hire a funeral specialist (a yinyang master) and going through
all the intricate rituals demanded upon the mourners (see Chau 2005).
This would be the second such funeral Lu Gang hosts, as he hosted
his father’s funeral a few years before.
13. Like most mediums in Shaanbei, he can’t recall what has happened during his
possession.
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
171
The yinyang master hired for this occasion, Mr. Zhou, is around
fifty years old and lives in a village not far from the bustling town of
Zhenchuan in Yulin County, Yulin Prefecture of Shaanbei. He is one
of the best known yinyang masters in Zhenchuan township and is a
top choice ritual specialist when any household in the area plans to
build a house, dig a grave (i.e., the yang dwelling and yin dwelling),
determine marriage compatibility, or set the date and time for key
moments such as funeral, burial, wedding, and house construction
(see Bruun 2003). Mr. Zhou’s ritual tools include a fengshui compass
(luopan
) and some handwritten manuals. Unlike the spirit medium described above, who usually works in his own home, Mr. Zhou
usually works outside of his own home and mostly outdoors (especially siting graves and homes and supervising funeral and burial rituals). Mr. Zhou’s son is in his early twenties and has been groomed
to be his father’s successor. Little Zhou has been his father’s assistant
for many years, helping with the preparation of ritual implements.
He makes very beautiful “soul-calling canopy” (yinhunfan
),
essential for the funeral and burial.
Mr. Zhou determines that the third day after Lu Gang’s mother’s
death is auspicious for beginning the funeral. During the funeral the
dozens of helpers, under the supervision of a director (zongling),
make sure everything runs smoothly, including setting up the spirit
shed for the deceased, cooking and washing, and catering to the
guests (see Chau 2004). The members of the host household are chief
participants of the mourning rituals (including ritually thanking all the
guests paying respect to the deceased), making them too preoccupied
to handle any of the practical aspects of the hosting. A band of folk
musicians is hired to play during the entire funeral.
The job of one of the helpers is to take care of the yinyang master and prepare all the necessary ritual implements (his position is
called kanyinyang, literally “looking after the yinyang master”). Even
though the overall procedures of the funeral are under the direction
of the zongling, the yinyang master is present during most of the
funeral to provide advice and ritual supervision. His service is needed at the evening procession to feed the soul of the deceased and
the hungry ghosts, at the moment of departure of the coffin for the
172 Adam Yuet Chau
gravesite the next morning, at the gravesite (he aligns the coffin
inside the grave “dwelling” according to fengshui
principles,
performs in-grave and grave-side rituals, propitiates the disturbed
earth god), and after coming back from the burial (he exorcises
harmful influences from the host’s and neighbors’ homes). After all of
these he sits down with the head of the host household and instructs
him about the rounds of post-burial rituals (“doing the sevenths”). By
this time most of the guests have finished banqueting and have left.
According to custom the folk musicians and the yinyang master are
feasted last, and then thanked and seen off with gifts (cartons of cigarettes, bottles of liquor) and the fees.14
Small is Beautiful: Working Solo and/or Forming
Small Troupes
The majority of householder religious service providers can and
do provide services alone. This is especially true for spirit mediums,
yinyang masters (as evidenced by the two above-mentioned
vignettes in Shaanbei), magical healers (e.g., xiangtou
), and
fortune-tellers (see Bruun 2003 for more case studies on yinyang
masters and Lang and Ragvald 1993 on fortune-tellers who work in
individual stalls around the famous Wong Tai Sin Temple in Hong
Kong).15
14. In 1997 and 1998 when I conducted my year-long fieldwork near Zhenchuan
Town (Yulin County, Yulin Prefecture), the standard fee for a yinyang master’s
funeral service was between 150 and 300 yuan, not a bad income considering
that the average daily wage of an unskilled laborer (e.g., a crew member of a
labor gang working on building roads) at that time was between 20 and 30
yuan.
15. In southern religious traditions (e.g., Fujian), the spirit medium is often trained
and controlled by the vernacular Daoist priests, the shigong
or fashi
,
and has to work with the latter on ritual occasions (see Davis 2001; Schipper
1985; Wilkerson 1994). This is not the case in many other parts of China. For
example, in Shannbei and other northern China locales, the spirit medium is
not trained by, or is subordinate to any Daoist priest and usually works alone
(see Chau 2003; Fan 2003; Kang 2002). However, as Li Wei-tsu (1948) hasshown, spirit mediums in northern China sometimes form elaborate networks of
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
173
Even though some Daoist priests might sometimes perform small
rituals solo (e.g., small exorcistic rites), much more often they perform
in small troupes of a few members. This is because most Daoist liturgies demand multiple personnel in separate roles: chanting, reciting,
ritual dancing, playing accompaniment liturgical music, etc. In the
Zhengyi tradition in southern China the typical combination of ritual
roles includes gaogong
(high priest, “priest of high merit”), dujiang
(cantor), fujiang
(assistant cantor), shixiang
(incense attendant), and yinban
(troupe guide) (see Dean 2000;
Lagerwey 1987).16 In other words, structurally speaking, there must
have been a strong incentive for a non-monastic Daoist priest to train
a few acolytes so as to make up a minimalist (standard) troupe to
cater for most ritual requests. And this of course is exactly what happened historically. Most non-monastic Daoist priests (huoju Daoists
and those residing in small temples as resident clerics) trained their
own sons and/or nephews to be members of the troupe (and potential inheritors of the trade); this way the coordination would be minimal and the ritual income would be kept more or less within the family. Liturgically as well, these householder priests must have over time
perfected a ritual repertoire that was suitable for independent operators like themselves.
The above-mentioned structural incentive or impulse must have
spurred the creation of the numerous private Daoist altars/businesses
ritual lineage based on master-disciple relationships (I thank Vincent Goossaert
and one of the reviewers for pointing me to this important source). The spirit
mediums described by Jack Potter (in the New Territories of Hong Kong; Potter
1974), Emily Martin Ahern (in northern Taiwan; Ahern 1973:228-44), and Tiksang Liu (1995, 2005) are also not supervised by any ritual masters or Daoist
priests. In fact, the way in which the spirit medium and the ritual master work
together so closely might be unique to the southeastern cultural area. We are
sorely in need of historical and ethnographic investigations of spirit mediumism
in other parts of China to be able to draw better comparative and general conclusions.
16. According to Stephen Jones’ research (personal communication), in northern
Chinese Daoist liturgical tradition there is no such strict division of ritual labor
according to roles. An average Daoist priest has to learn all the relevant ritual
skills and musical instruments (see Jones 2006 and n.d.).
174 Adam Yuet Chau
(nam-mo daoguan
) in traditional Canton (see Lai 2002) and
probably many other places as well (for example in Taiwan, as evidenced by the prevalence of household Daoist ritual “altars,” tan ).
In traditional Canton (mostly urban areas), many of the Daoists
(mostly Zhengyi) had shop fronts like any other professional business (e. g., doctors, herbal pharmacists), with plaques or other forms
of shop signs advertising their services (e.g., “X (surname) Dao Hall”
or “X House of Dao”?) (X daoguan, guan as in tushuguan) (information in this paragraph all from Lai 2002). According to the survey
of the Guangzhou (Canton) Bureau of Religions (zongjiaoju
)
under the Republican government (quoted in Lai 2002:10), the
Canton Daoist private businesses were divided into two broad categories. The first category was the Zhengyi halls (Zhengyi daoguan
) and they specialized in scripture chanting and sin absolving (dazhai
). Each engagement normally needed four to six
people. A client would come to one of the halls to request the service, and the owner-operator of this hall would call on his colleagues
(hangjia
) in the city to do the job together (see below for
“ritual jamming”). (Presumably he would prefer to go out with his
acolytes to do the job and only call for help in the event that he did
not have enough acolytes to form a standard troupe for the occasion.) The second category of Daoist private businesses was the socalled blessing-petitioning halls (qifu daoguan
) and they
specialized in funeral services (“doing the ‘nam-mo’”). Each session
of this kind of services only needed one person. According to Lai’s
, i.e.,
research, those who specialized in “white events” (baishi
funerals) would not be invited to do “red events” (hongshi
, i.e.,
weddings, moving into a new house, temple dedication, bushel worship, exorcism, etc.) and vice versa (Lai 2000:10-11; see also Watson
1988 on nam-mo funeral specialists in the New Territories of Hong
Kong). One assumes that those rituals requiring more Daoist priests
often ran for a few days (and hence were much more expensive)
whereas the ones requiring one priest usually were just one-day
affairs (hence much cheaper).
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
175
Ritual Jamming (or, the Principle of Ad Hoc
Aggregation)
Even though a non-monastic Daoist priest might have enough
acolytes around to form a minimalist/standard Daoist troupe, on many
occasions he has to perform with other priests with whom he might
not have a regular professional relationship. However, because of the
historical standardization of liturgical (and musical) repertoire within
specific locales (see Liu 1974b: 101-02) for example all the Daoists
trained in the Suzhou area would know the standard set of liturgies
and their accompanying music specific to the Suzhou area
and the
specialization of different householder priests in different roles within the liturgy (especially the differentiation of roles between the high
priest, gaogong, and the more junior assistants), the ad hoc group of
priests can perform together with minimal glitch, requiring very little
prior co-ordination or rehearsal. Because the apparent smoothness of
such ad hoc performances might resemble that found in jamming
sessions by jazz or other types of musicians, we might want to call
this phenomenon ritual jamming. I will quote at some length a passage on Suzhou Daoists (mostly Zhengyi) during late imperial and
Republican eras to illustrate how ritual jamming worked among
Daoists (Ding n.d.).
Among the Daoists, those who lived in Daoist temples (daoguan)
) or
were called Dao-abode Daoists (daofang daoshi
). Those who did not
monastic Daoists (chujia daoshi
live in Daoist temples were called at-home Daoists (zaijia daoshi
), colloquially called “hurrying to answer calls” (benfuy) or “answer calls” (fuying
), also known as
ing
). If they had
hearth-dwelling Daoists (huoju daoshi
wives and children they would be called “Daoists with compan). The “answer calls”
ions” (huoju, huo with a person radical
mostly lived around the Furenfang Street. In the 26th year of the
Republic [i.e., 1937] the Daoist Association (Daojiao gonghui
) decreed that non-Daoists and Daoists who didn’t have disciples would not be allowed to conduct rituals (fashi). Hearthdwelling Daoists normally stayed at home and kept in contact
176 Adam Yuet Chau
with the heads (zhuchi
) of local Daoist temples. When there
was a ritual occasion the temple head would issue invitations to
these hearth-dwelling Daoists. The temples would provide the ritual implements while the “answer calls” had to bring their own
Daoist caps and robes.
Blowing, plucking, beating, writing, and chanting (chui , tan ,
da
, xie
, nian
) are the basic ritual skills for Zhengyi
Daoists. During the Republican era, there was such a saying in the
Daoist circle of Suzhou: “It is easy to produce a degree holder but
difficult to produce a (smart and capable) Daoist priest” (chu yige
, chu yige daoshi nan
).
xiucai yi
Those who could chant were called “ritual masters” (fashi); those
who could blow, pluck, and beat were called “music accompani); the rest were called “Dao members”
ments” (yinhe
(daozhong). Only a ritual master could preside over a ritual.
Ordinary Daoist temples (daoguan) admitted children as
acolytes, and the latter would “apprentice for three years and
, bang sannian
help out for three years” (xue sannian
). Those who finished their apprenticeship had two
prospects. One prospect was to remain with the master and take
care of the temple, conduct (ritual) business, and inherit the master’s temple after the master’s death. The other prospect was to go
out and find one’s own livelihood, living in society in a dispersed
) and waiting for business at the regular “tea
manner (sanju
) both inside and outside of the city
gatherings” (chahui
every morning. The tea gatherings for Daoists were first at the
Chunhe Tower at the Chang Gate and later at the Plum Garden.
There were also tea gatherings right in front of the temple
) at the Pinfang, Chunyuan, and Maoyuan
(Xuanmiaoguan
tea rooms. Ordinary Daoists all envied those Daoists in big temples for their considerable incomes, and those “answer calls” who
were without temples would sigh in self-pity. There was a saying:
“answering calls for one thousand times, answering calls for ten
thousand times; it is still not as good (of an income) as someone
, wan fuying
with a lousy/broken bowl bell” (qian fuying
, buji yizhi po wanqing
). Thus there was
not much solidarity among the [fuying] Daoists.
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
177
This account of the Suzhou Daoists actually presents three different categories of Daoist priests:
1) Those who are affiliated with large Daoist temples such as the
Xuanmiaoguan (who can be called “large temple clerics);
2) Those who are resident clerics of small temples most likely
owned by the local community (who can be called “small temple clerics”; see Goossaert this volume); and
3) Those huoju Daoists without any temple affiliations.
Even though it is not made clear in this account, one can infer
that under the third huoju Daoist category there are actually two subcategories:
3a) Huoju Daoists who have a regular clientele base around his
area of residence (urban or rural), and
3b) Huoju Daoists who do not have a regular clientele base or
who are badly underemployed (who might be called lumpen
huoju priests).
It must have been members in the latter group (i.e., 3b) who
were congregating in the tea houses near large temples such as
Xuanmiaoguan17 and/or keeping contact with resident head clerics
of other temples to wait for the occasional job assignments. It must
not have been very dignifying for the numerous “answer calls” (fuying) to gather every morning in front of a large temple or at the designated tea houses to wait for the next “call,” which might or might
not come, or to fight with the others to secure a minor role in a
funeral or exorcism ritual (in a manner reminiscent of day laborers’
gathering at street corners waiting for contractor bosses to pick out
and truck the lucky ones to the next job), which is why “there was
not much solidarity among the [fuying] Daoists.” The prestige of the
established temples made them into key nodal points where a ritual
job was contracted with a client and then select positions would be
17. I thank one of the reviewers for pointing out that the Xuanmiaoguan is a
Zhengyi monastery.
178 Adam Yuet Chau
assigned or sub-contracted out to the householder “answer calls.”
Perhaps this arrangement was the most logical and efficient way to
link up an unpredictable clientele (one cannot predict a death or any
other kinds of ritual need) with the available pool of ritual expertise
and personnel. One has to remember that this was before the age of
telephones, beepers, and mobile phones.
Because of the low status and lack of job security of these
priests, we might want to call them “lumpen huoju priests.” But this
status might be temporary. Some of these lumpen priests might later
be admitted into a large temple and become a “big temple cleric” with
an “iron rice bowl,” or be hired to become a resident cleric of a local
temple thus achieving a secure livelihood and even the opportunity
to train disciples (i.e., becoming a “small temple cleric”). Or he could
get married and find a locale (most likely rural) in need of a priest
and become a bona fide householder priest.
In the case of the huoju Daoists who had established a regular
clientele around his area of residence (i.e., 3a), they did not need to
compete with their colleagues for piece-meal job assignments. In the
Jiangnan area folk music bands and huoju Daoists even used to have
business monopoly areas. A particular band or Daoist priest would
have exclusive right to perform for households within the monopoly
area and were not allowed to perform for households outside of the
area. The local term for such monopoly areas was “household maps”
(mentu
, an abbreviation of menhu ditu
).18
One may represent the different types of Daoist priests and their
degrees of prestige and job security in the following schematic graph:
1.
big
temple
clerics
2.
small
temple
clerics
3a.
established
huoju
priests
3b.
lumpen
huoju
priests
increasing prestige and job security ------------------- decreasing prestige and job security
18. Apparently the term also refers to the certificate these bands and Daoist priests
held to prove their monopoly rights as well as to the Daoists who held such
monopoly. See http://www.bslib.org.cn/cjkms/baoshan/whys8.htm and
http://www.ctcwri.idv.tw/IndexD2/D2-08/001-050/08021/01.html.
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
179
Even though the above description is on Suzhou, it probably
applies as well to most other locales where there was a mixture of
established Daoist temples and dispersed householder priests. The
source does not say whether in traditional Canton there were also
some householder priests who, just like the “answer calls” in Suzhou,
gathered and waited for jobs at large Daoist temples, of which there
were of course some in Canton. Or perhaps the more heightened
entrepreneurial spirit in Canton had prompted most householder
priests to open their own businesses rather than assuming a more
passive role like the Suzhou “answer calls.” We certainly need a lot
more empirical materials on the situation of Daoist ritual service provision for all parts of China before we can arrive at any firm understanding of similarities and differences across regions and locales.
But we do have some detailed ethnographic descriptions of
Daoist ritual service provision in 20th century Taiwan. Michael Saso
has provided the following description of Daoist ritual jamming at a
jiao (chiao
), or “rite of cosmic renewal,” in northern Taiwan
where he observed the ceremonies in 1970 (Saso 1989:48-49)19:
After a Taoist with his entourage has been hired, the high priest,
in this case Chuang-ch’en [note: Saso’s key informant], must sublease the various performances to his disciples and friends. Taoists
collaborate with each other in a sense of traditional camaraderie.
Many of Chuang’s peers were ordained Taoists and received their
training under Chuang’s father and grandfather, who were famous
Taoist masters. Chuang ranged from Taipei in the north of the
island to as far south as Kaohsiung to find helpers. In all, fourteen
Taoists were hired to perform the various ceremonies [of this particular jiao].
Saso continued on to describe the three different aspects of the
jiao and how the different Daoists were deployed. Behind the
locked doors of the local temple, the high priest Chuang himself performed the classical rites (keyi) with the help of four other Daoists
19. See also Li (2000) for a study of cooperation among Daoist priests in Taiwan.
180 Adam Yuet Chau
(the typical gaogong, dujiang, fujiang, shixiang, and yinban combination). Four musicians were hired as well, though in this case they
were not part of the Daoist entourage. [The apparent lowliness of the
musicians compared to the Daoist priests is indicated by how little
they were paid for their service: each was paid less than 1/40 of the
high priest’s fee.] The second aspect consisted of the reading of the
canons of merit and repentance inside the temple, endlessly day and
night, by one or another of the disciples [i.e., among the above-mentioned four assistants]. One-third of the stipend went to Chuang,
while the other two-thirds were shared equally among the four assistants (and two of the four were actually Chuang’s sons).20 The third
aspect of the jiao was the dramatized, exorcistic “minor rites” that
the remaining nine Daoists performed in private homes. “[They]
spent all three days of the festival visiting every family in the village,
blessing the homes, and offering food to the gods in the huge T’an
[tan] structures set up around town.” They were paid individually by
the families and not by the temple committee or the chief Daoist.21
Only when they occasionally relieve those priests inside the temple
would they be remunerated by the temple committee, by the same
wage scale just mentioned.22
The high priest Chuang and his acolytes studied by Saso probably formed a minimalist/standard Daoist troupe. But clearly they
relied on the help of fellow Daoists to handle bigger rituals such as a
20. Saso (1989:48-49) indicated that for the five-day jiao service at the Mazu
Temple in Chung-Kang ward of Chu Nan City in Miaoli County in December
1970, the Daoist high priest Chuang-ch’en was paid the equivalent of US$750
(NT$30,000). However, only one-third (i.e. US$250) of this amount went to
Chuang-Ch’en himself, while the four assistants helping him with the keyi (liturgy) work inside the temple divided equally the rest (i.e., US$500). The musicians each got the equivalent of US$4 (NT$160) for each of the five days of
service. It seemed that the payment would come from the temple organizing
committee rather than from Chuang-Ch’en’s fee.
21. It is not clear how much the households paid the Daoists for doing the exterior
minor rites.
22. I am not sure why it would be the temple committee but not the chief Daoist
priest Chuang-Ch’en who paid these priests for relieving him and his four assistants inside the temple. On this point Saso might have mis-reported.
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
181
jiao. Ritual jamming as a phenomenon is predicated on the residential and professional dispersal of the householder priests. Yet the priests
also have to live close enough to one another to make it feasible for
them to form an ad hoc Daoist troupe (known nowadays in Taiwan
among scholars and folklorists as daoshituan
) with often
quite short notice (especially for funeral and exorcism requests). The
wide geographic span of Chuang-Ch’en’s potential pool of fellow
helpers might have been rare, but given the increasing ease of travel
in modern Taiwan it was certainly feasible.
The necessity of co-operation and ad hoc aggregation among
Daoist priests for larger rituals is also shown clearly in Liu Chi-wan’s
studies of two large-scale jiao events in Taiwan in the late 1960s (Liu
1974a, 1974b). For example, for the three-day jiao in Shulin Town in
Taipei County in 1969, one chief Daoist priest was hired, who subcontracted the work to fifteen other Daoists (Liu 1974a: 55-57). What
is most interesting is that four more Daoists joined the group in “guest
appearance” (kechuan
). The twenty priests were divided into
two groups of ten that took turns to conduct the rituals, and within
each group five were in charge of the liturgical work and the other
five were in charge of musical accompaniment. Unlike the Saso case
described above, no priests were specifically assigned to do the exterior minor rites; instead, different teams of three priests from the
whole group were sent out for the task. It is also important to note
that during the three days of jiao, the twenty priests never “jammed”
all together; instead, different combinations of priests did different
segments of the long liturgical program. For the first day, the combinations were: 1, 3, 7, 3, 3, 5, 3, 3, 3, 4, 5. For the second day, the
combinations were: 3, 3, 5, 3, 5, 2, 1. For the third day, the combinations were: 3, 9, 2, 8, 5, 3, 3, 1, 1. The modular nature of the liturgical program makes it amenable to such flexible combination of liturgical personnel.
Once in a while there might be occasions where a very large ritual event production would require the simultaneous service of
dozens and sometimes even over a hundred Daoist priests. In Hong
Kong, the Daoist community has had a long tradition of conducting
large-scale “ritual congregations” (fahui
, or “dharma assemblies”)
182 Adam Yuet Chau
to petition for blessing and to expel evil influences since the colonial
times (all information in this paragraph derived from Yao 2003). For
example, in 1997 the Hong Kong Daoist Alliance (Xianggang daojiao
lianhehui
) organized a “Ritual Congregation to
Celebrate the Return of Hong Kong’s Sovereignty to China and to Peti).
tion for Blessings” (qingzhu huigui qifu fahui
The fahui lasted seven days and seven nights, and the Three Pure
rites (Sanqing keyi
), the core of the entire fahui, were
simultaneously recited by 250 Daoists, setting a record for the territory in terms of the scale of the event production (Yao 2003:23). In the
spring of 2003, during the height of the SARS epidemic in Hong
Kong, the Hong Kong Daoist Alliance combined forces with 16 different Daoist temples and altars to stage a “calamity-dispelling, misfortune-absolving, and blessing-petitioning ritual congregation”
(xiaozai jie’e qifu fahui
) (ibid.: 21) on behalf of
the entire Hong Kong population. Again the fahui lasted seven days
and seven nights, and 80,000 talismans to dispel plagues and ensure
safety were distributed to people. The venue of this large fahui was
on a soccer field in front of the famous Chegong Temple
(Chegongmiao
) in Shatin, the New Territories. One prominent Daoist temple was in charge of the main altar each of the seven
days, and a large number of scriptures were recited and chanted. The
extent of involvement of householder priests in this large ritual jamming session is not clear. The 26 Daoist temples and altars (some
were of the Quanzhen Order) involved were of course not householder types themselves, even though it is reasonable to believe that
most if not all of the 26 establishments recruited some householder
helpers to maximize their presence and ritual power. But the more
important point is that it must be really rare to find a practicing
Daoist priest who has never “jammed” with other priests.
The Household Idiom, or, the Advantages of Being
Atomized
Traditionally, there have always been many more religious service providers who are household based than institutionally based.
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
183
The most common institutionally based religious specialists included
Buddhist monks, Quanzhen Daoist priests, and Confucian academicians (if they served as Confucian ritualists). On the other hand,
household-based religious specialists included spirit mediums,
yinyang masters, Zhengyi Daoist priests, ritual masters (lisheng
),
magical healers (see Dorfman 1996), ceremony directors, sectarian
ritualists (see DuBois 2005; Jones 2004), ancestral worship ritualists
(e.g., the Confucian clan ritual officiants analyzed in Jing 1996),
householder Buddhist “monks,” votive offering (zhizha
) makers (e.g., makers of wangye
boats), incense and candle makers,
storytellers, opera singers, cooks, ritual dramatists, fortune-tellers,
divination poem decipherers, temple caretakers, professional corpse
handlers (in Cantonese areas; see Watson 1988), professional funeral
wailers, corpse beauticians, statue makers, mural painters, etc (see
Hayes 1985).23 It is true that at certain points in Chinese history the
Buddhist sangha and the Daoist Quanzhen Order were very sizable,
but such hyper-institutional expressions were never long-lived, as
they were always subject to the whims of Chinese emperors (often
the key patron and protector), shifting state policies, and persistent
critiques of the Confucian literati-official elite.
Because grassroots householder religious service providers were
never registered, it is extremely difficult to arrive at any estimate of
the overall size of this broad category of people for any historical
period in late imperial China or today (see Goossaert 2000). It is
tempting to speculate that at any point in history, for any one religious cleric officially affiliated with a monastery or temple (even
counting the small temple resident clerics described by Goossaert in
this volume), there must have been ten or more householder religious
service providers dispersed among the people. These are the unsung
heroes (or villains depending on one’s perspective) in Chinese religious history. Because they rarely compose any texts
many of
23. One may object to calling opera singers, story-tellers, folk musicians, and mural
painters “religious specialists,” though they might warrant such an appellation
because traditionally the themes of their art were very much related to popular
religion.
184 Adam Yuet Chau
them are indeed illiterate or barely literate
or contribute to any religious discourse that will be recorded for posterity, their stories and
significance are easy to be forgotten, overlooked, or erased. However,
in the local scheme of things, their presence and service are crucial
to the mental, physical, “spiritual,” and social health of local individuals, households, and communities. But why do so many religious
service providers adopt the household idiom (as a business model)?
What are the advantages of the household idiom for them?24
The structural advantages of the household idiom are many: ease
of internal management (including transmission); ease of engagement
with a largely household-based clientele; flexibility in forming larger
ad hoc groups of ritualists if necessary; and low profile hence protection against state and elite suppressions (I will treat this last advantage
in the conclusion).
The household (jia , hu )25, according to Hill Gates, is the
key product of, as well as player in, the twin modes of production
(tributary and petty capitalist) whose tango-like articulation has characterized China’s political economic landscape in the past one thousand years (see Gates 1996). Given the strictures and incentives provided by the Chinese state (the key player in the tributary mode of
production), “Chinese people had no choice but to organize themselves as jia. . . . [It] was the legitimate social instrument with which
to wrest a living from a hard world” (Gates 1996:103). Not happy
with being merely tax-paying, corvée-bearing direct producers, most
Chinese households also engage in petty capitalist activities in the
market (commercial as well as labor) to advance comparative advantages and to better fulfill ideologically salient cultural goals (e.g., making enough money to find wives for all of one’s sons). Frequent cooperations with other households notwithstanding, Chinese households are fundamentally individualistic (what Victor Nee calls “peasant household individualism”; see Nee 1985; see also Croll 1986/87).
Therefore householder religious service providers can be seen as just
24. Most of them probably never “chose” the household idiom because it was simply the only idiom available to them.
25. I am disregarding here the debate that attempts to distinguish hu from jia.
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
185
one type of petty capitalists (see Gates 2000), and their specialization
and niche marketing no different from strategies adopted by householder craftsmen and shopkeepers.
The householder religious service provider acts as an owneroperator of his family business, using the home as base and following
petty capitalist principles in all matters of importance (see Creed
2000). He uses his family members and close kin as helpers and treats
his son (or sons) as a target of expertise transmission and eventual
succession (agnatic nephews are often suitable too). He benefits from
the considerable trust obtained within this familial atmosphere and the
power of a patriarch. He also enjoys the freedom, autonomy, and flexibility of an owner-operator. It is said that the Chinese like to be their
own boss (see Hsiung 1996), because then one will not get bossed
around by others.
To the extent that religious specialist households are models of
efficiency in their financial and labor management techniques, they
might resemble the quintessential Chinese peasant household. But
there is one essential difference: whereas the peasant household is
divided equally among all the sons upon the death or retirement of
the father, ritual expertise is usually only transmitted to one descendant (usually son) in each generation, to ensure that there will not be
local competition for business among siblings. In the case of hereditary Zhengyi huoju priests, because one often passes one Longhushan
ordination title from generation to generation, it further restricts the
transmission possibilities.26 When the ritual market is clearly expanding, more than one descendant may apprentice to become specialists,
but even then they are often trained with different skills and in different ritual roles.
26. And of course theoretically they are not supposed to pass ordination titles in
such a way, but is it not more economical to do so compared to paying a hefty
fee each generation to get a new, personal ordination at Longhushan (and in this
case the authority of inter-generational transmission of the aged ordination document and ritual manuals might very well trump the authority of a freshly minted document and manuals)? In fact, the Qingwei Lingbao (Zhengyi) clerics by
rule could only have a single disciple (Goossaert 2003:720). One assumes that
this rule might have been loosely applied in the case of Zhengyi huoju priests.
186 Adam Yuet Chau
Another advantage of the household idiom for religious service
providers is the fit in terms of scale between the specialist and his or
her clientele, which is overwhelmingly household-based. Despite the
fact that the personal as well as the communal are important dimensions of Chinese religiosity, the household remains the most salient
site in which most Chinese “do” religion (see Chau 2003). In other
words, the household is the most basic unit of ritual engagement
(recall the spirit medium and yinyang master vignettes from Shaanbei).
Dispersed into the ocean of Chinese households and adopting the
household idiom themselves, these grassroots religious service providers fit snuggly in the midst of their clients. The clients feel most
comfortable approaching them as they have built up neighborly relationships over time (sometimes over generations) (this is especially
true in the case of spirit mediums, yinyang masters, and huoju
Daoists). Even though most Chinese are not averse to visiting large
temples and praying to very powerful deities (e.g., Buddha, Guanyin,
Jade Emperor), engaging with and hiring clerics stationed in these
large temples is another matter. Because these temples and monasteries had extensive land endowment and substantial rent and donation income (or in today’s China the clerics are salaried), the clerics
felt little inclined to provide regular ritual service to the “small people.” Hence their attitude to the common people tended to be condescending, aloof, if not callous and rude. (The salaried clerics of
major temples and monasteries in the PRC tend to have similar attitudes.) The householder ritualists, on the other hand, are usually models of good personal and business relations, for their livelihood depends on good guanxi
(social relations).
Yet another advantage of the household idiom is the ease with
which householder ritualists (e.g., huoju Daoist priests, ritual musicians) can form ad hoc larger groups to perform larger rituals when
the demand arises. This simple yet effective technique of ad hoc
aggregation or ritual jamming allows maximum flexibility in the provisioning of ritual service and avoids the cost of slack time and intragroup financial tension permanent troupes would have to face (see
Yang 2005:127, note 17). Similar to the manner in which Taiwanese
satellite factory system operates (see Hsiung 1996), the householder
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
187
ritualists together with those ritualists affiliated with temples and
monasteries form a “satellite ritualist system” to provision ritual service to a clientele of varying scales (from individuals to families to village communities to an entire population such as SARS-stricken
Hong Kong).
The advantages of formal affiliation with a large and translocal
religious organization were not lost to most householder religious
service providers. But with the prestige and security of belonging to
a famous temple or monastery inevitably comes the pain of organizational and religious discipline. For the Zhengyi huoju Daoists, they
preferred getting accredited by the Daoist authorities and be left alone.
(One may see the Longhushan Daoist ordination system as a religious
franchise, except that the individual practitioners had a lot more freedom compared to a real franchised merchant.) A huoju Daoist priest
may belong to a Daoist lineage and this may be very important to his
identity, but it would not be relevant for his capacity to serve his
clients. Similarly, spirit mediums in some parts of China might form
“families” based on master-disciple relationships, but except for some
collective rituals and group duties such as doing pilgrimages each
spirit medium worked by him- or herself (see Li 1948).
Conclusions: The Political Advantages of the
Household Idiom and the Future of the Household
Idiom
Yet the most crucial advantage of the household idiom is that it
allows the householder religious specialists to assume a very low
profile to operate under the radar screen of the authorities. Larger
religious institutions often draw too much attention to themselves,
and often their spectacular success will eventually lead to their perhaps equally spectacular downfall (as the Chinese phrase has it:
shuda zhaofeng
, or, “a tree, if too big, will surely draw
storms and destruction to itself”). Householder religious service
providers are, thanks to the household idiom, pre-adapted to suppression (be it from the state authorities, Confucian elites, or rival
religious specialists such as the big temple clerics and sectarians).
188 Adam Yuet Chau
Dispersed among the people, a householder ritualist takes advantage
of his familiarity with his home turf and makes friends with local state
agents such as the local police (who are most likely his neighbors and
clients) to avoid harsh treatment during oppressive times. Though recognized by the state as an average householder just as his neighbors,
he avoids getting taxed for the money he makes in the ritual market,
partly because the state refuses to recognize his trade as legitimate
(as taxation connotes recognition and approval) and partly because
the tax officials probably have no idea that he exists or their families
are themselves his loyal clients. And when times are really bad (e.g.,
at the height of Maoist anti-superstition campaigns), he can simply
put aside his special trade and pick up farming again.27 For the
householder religious specialists, there can be no such thing as huansu
(forceful return to non-religious/non-clerical life by state policies targeting religious clerics; literally “returning to the ordinary
[world]) because their very existence is already so ordinary and not
very religious to begin with. When forcefully “returned to the ordinary world,” most monks, nuns, and Daoist priests would have lost
their means of ritual production such as scriptures, sutras, musical
instruments, deity scrolls and murals, ritual implements, and the very
ritual space itself (often confiscated by the authorities or destroyed).
On the other hand, the householder ritualists must have over the
centuries perfected the art of storing and hiding their ritual paraphernalia to prevent theft and confiscation attempts; and because their ritual space is flexible and protean the state cannot take it away from
them. Many of the householder ritualists’ prized possessions were
destroyed during the “Smashing the Four Olds” campaign during the
Cultural Revolution (see Dean 1993:43-45), yet much have survived
as well, thanks partly to the resilience and tactics of the countless
27. The Yan’an period of the Communist Revolution (between 1935 and 1949) witnessed the close encounter between the Communists and householder ritualists
(especially the spirit mediums) which resulted in the famed anti-spirit medium
campaign (fanwushen yundong
). Thousands of spirit mediums
were re-educated and turned into “productive” members of society. Such a
close encounter between political power and grassroots folk religion was
unprecedented in Chinese history.
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
189
different kinds of householder religious service providers. In the
post-Mao era, many householder ritualists replenished any lost ritual
manuals by borrowing and copying from others (this despite the traditional tendency to keep family manuals as well-guarded secrets). It
is interesting to note that in the past decade or so the Daoist
Association, working with the Religious Affairs Bureau, has attempted to register huoju priests (Lai 2003; Dean n.d.). To what extent this
effort has been successful is unclear. One can guess that many if not
most huoju Daoist priests would not choose to register for fear of official control and interference.
The tight control exerted by the party-state on institutionalized
religions such as Buddhism and Daoism in today’s China despite their
legality shows the extreme vulnerability of the corporatist idiom. In a
curious reversal of fortunes, during the reform era, it is the members
of the official Daoist temples who are complaining about the lack of
financial income, because they are under a lot of restrictions that prohibit them from conducting rituals outside of the temples (and there
are fewer clients who would commission rituals to be conducted at
the temples rather than at their own homes or villages). On the other
hand, the dispersed householder priests in suburban and rural areas
are enjoying a brisk business as never before. The officially-affiliated
priests (i.e. the big temple clerics) even make use of intermediaries
to find ritual work outside of their temples to make money (Yang
2005), quite the opposite of their fortunes as described in the abovementioned quote on Republican-era Suzhou Daoists.
The household idiom might even be useful for a better understanding of the phenomenon of the so-called “house churches” in
contemporary China. These underground small churches operate illegally outside of the officially recognized Protestant establishments. In
many ways these house church ministers resemble our householder
religious service providers, the important difference being that
Christians are typically congregational.
The revival of household-based political economy and the cash
nexus during the post-Mao reform era has provided the material and
socio-structural basis for the revival of Chinese petty capitalism (Gates
1996; also Yang 2005) and its concomitant household-based petty
190 Adam Yuet Chau
religiosity. This has provided the fertile ground for the flourishing of
householder religious service providers in a manner that mirrors a
similar religious upsurge in Taiwan, where numerous house or apartment temples operated by spirit mediums or other types of religious
entrepreneurs dot the urban landscape alongside the major temples
(see Chao 2002; Katz n.d.; Li 2003; Moskowitz 2001; Paper 1996a;
Sutton 2003). The vitality of the household idiom for religious service
providers will probably persist for as long as the household remains
the key structural component of the Chinese political economic and
social order.
Acknowledgments
I thank Paul Katz for having suggested that I write something
on religious specialists. Two papers I came across recently served as
major sources of inspiration for this article; Ken Dean’s paper on
some aspects of huoju Daoist priests (presented at a conference on
the politics of religion in China at Stanford University in May 2004)
and Vincent Goossaert’s paper on late imperial religious specialists
(presented at a conference on rethinking categories in the studies of
Chinese religions at the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research,
Harvard University, in May, 2005). I also benefited from chatting
with Tik-sang Liu and David Gellner on religious specialists, and
with Robert Weller on ritual jamming. A draft of this article was presented at the China Research Seminar in November 2005 at the
Institute for Chinese Studies, University of Oxford, for which I thank
Robert Chard for the arrangement and members of the audience for
their useful questions and comments. Vincent Goossaert, Stephen
Jones, and the two reviewers for Min-su ch’ü-i gave generously of
their comments, criticisms, and suggestions. I am afraid I have not
been able to attend to all of their suggestions because of lack of time
and my very limited understanding of a complex phenomenon. My
use of sources is also quite eclectic and opportunistic and I have no
doubt missed many otherwise important and useful works. I alone
am to blame for any shortcomings and misinterpretations.
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
Glossary
baishi
baojuan
benfuying
bulao erhuo zhe
chahui
Chegongmiao
chengbao zhuanyehu
chu yige xiucai yi, chu yige daoshi nan
chui, tan, da, xie, nian , , , ,
chujia daoshi
daofang daoshi
daoguan
daoguan
daojiao gonghui
daoshituan
daozhong
dazhai
dubo zhuanyehu
dujiang
fahui
fanwushen yundong
fashi
fashi
fengjian mixin chenzha fanqi
fengshui
fujiang
fuying
gaogong
getihu
gonghai
guanxi
hangjia
hongshi
,
191
192 Adam Yuet Chau
Hongyundaxian
hu
huansu
huoju
huoju
huoju daoshi
Huoyanzhenjun
jia
jiao
kang
kanhonghuo
kechuan
keji shifanhu
keyi
lisheng
luopan
maifen zhuanyehu
maixie zhuanyehu
majiang zhuanyehu
matong
menhu ditu
mentu
mixin
mixin zhiye fenzi
mixin zhiyezhe
mixin zhuanyehu
nam-mo daoguan
qian fuying, wan fuying, buji yizhi po wanqing
Qingyundaxian
qingzhu huigui qifu fahui
Quanzhen
sangshi zhuanyehu
sanju
Shaanbei
shenguan
,
,
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
shenguandiao
shigong
shixiang
shuda zhaofeng
suanming zhuanyehu
tan
taozhai zhuanyehu
wushen
xiangbobo
Xianggang daojiao lianhehui
xiangzhen qiye
xiaozai jie’e qifu fahui
xiaonong sixiang
xiaozichanjieji
Xuanmiaoguan
xue sannian, bang sannian
wangye
wenhua zhuanyehu
wushen
yangge
yangji zhuanyehu
yaodong
yinban
yinhe
yinhunfan
yinyang
yiren baobanzhi
“Yumei xiaofei mianmianguan”
yunshu zhuanyehu
zaijia daoshi
zhadao
Zhengyi
Zhengyi daoguan
zhizha
zhongyang zhuanyehu
zhuanyehu
,
193
194 Adam Yuet Chau
zhuchi
zhujia
zongjiao huodong changsuo
zongjiaoju
zongling
“Superstition Specialist Households”? The Household Idiom in Chinese Religious Practices
195
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