5 - What Makes a Chinese God? or, What Makes a God Chinese?

Summary

Over the course of a thousand years roughly equivalent to the first millennium AD, the Sinitic culture of the Yellow River basin came into contact with the south, the culturally and ethnically divergent lands of the Yangzi River basin and beyond. By the Song Dynasty, which straddles the end of the first and the early second millennia, much of the south had become a full partner in the definition of a new emerging culture. Although this new culture drew heavily on the Sinitic heritage of the Central Lands, it was not simply an extension of the Sinitic world. On the contrary, the new culture that emerged through the course of this millennium, the culture we today call “Chinese”, was a hybrid entity, drawing as much on the non-Sinitic models of the south as on the Sinitic heritage of the north.

In this chapter, I intend to show how cultures merged in southern Fujian province to create a hybrid culture. Although there are many avenues through which I could make this case — family structures, economic activities, and cropping come readily to mind — in this chapter, I will focus on religious expression. Across much of China cults devoted to local deities have long been among the most important expressions of culture and local identity. However, whereas deities whose roots lay in the northern culture such as the Queen Mother of the West, Guan Yu, or Zhenwu Xuandi were often identified conceptually either in connection with direction or specific function, those of the south were more often identified as protector deities of designated locales. Although some deities with origins in the south gained broad followings, most cults remained strictly local, sometimes never spreading beyond a single shrine. In the following discussion, I will examine a range of cults that took shape in southern Fujian during the period between the later Tang and Song dynasties in southern Fujian province in an attempt to address two parallel questions: What makes a Chinese god? or What makes a god Chinese?

Cults of the Sinitic Immigration

As the Sinitic immigrants entered the alien lands of southern Fujian through the middle of the first millennium, they encountered the indigenous people. This encounter sometimes led to conflict, and other times unfolded more smoothly. Both outcomes, however, found expression in local cults that survive to the present.