Northeast China folk religion
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Northeast China folk religion[note 1] is the variety of Chinese folk religion of northeast China, characterised by distinctive cults original to Hebei and Shandong, transplanted and adapted by the Han Chinese settlers of Liaoning, Jilin and Heilongjiang (the three provinces comprising Northeast China) since the Qing dynasty.[2] It is characterised by terminology, deities and practices that are different from those of central and southern Chinese folk religion. Many of these patterns derive from the interaction of Han religion with Manchu shamanism.[3]
Prominence is given to the worship of
History
The formation of northeast China's folk religion and shamanism can be traced back to the
The popular worship of animal gods began to resurface in the 1980s, and soon also the chumaxian practice was revived.[11] In the 2010s there have been attempts to protect chumaxian under the policy of "intangible cultural heritage".[12]
Japanese scholarship and Shinto similarities
The study of northeast China's folk religion owes much to the scholarly enterprise that the Japanese conducted on the subject during the period of Manchukuo (1932–1945) that they established after they occupied Manchuria.[13] Unlike Japanese-occupied Korea and occupied Taiwan, Manchuria was conceived as an autonomous nation, not to be assimilated into Japan, but rather to be modeled after the latter's social and religious structure keeping an independent identity.[14]
Ōmachi Tokuzo (1909-1970), a pupil of Yanagita Kunio (the founder of academic ethnography in Japan), conducted field research on local religion in Manchuria through the war years.
Another scholar, Tokunaga Takeshi, sought to demonstrate the spiritual unity of Japan, Manchuria and China by highlighting the similarities between ancient religious structures of the three nations:[20]
Japanese ancient shrines are of the kannabi (popularly known as Mt. Fuji-style) shape. There are many of these in Manchuria, as well ... [The artifacts] develop from the same agrarian culture and philosophy as Japanese Shinto (kannagara no michi) ... Modern [Chinese] matron temples have these elements, as well. Therefore, since the temples were built later, it is thought that matron worship was grafted onto this earlier pattern of belief.[21]
Other scholars studied the similarities between local and Japanese shamanisms.[20] The Manchukuo generally promoted a racially centered spiritual revival, that is an ethnic religion for each of the races inhabiting Manchuria.[22] For example, under the suggestions of Ogasawara Shozo that the Mongols "need(ed) a new religion, specifically a new god" they promoted the worship of Genghis Khan that continues today in northern China. The Shinto shrine of Kalgan (now Zhangjiakou, Hebei) incorporated Genghis Khan worship and was opened to local Mongols.[23]
Characteristics
Deities
Besides common Chinese deities such as
The Five Great Immortals (五大仙 Wǔdàxiān) are deities who reproduce
; 4) Báixiān (白仙 "White Immortal") is the Hedgehog God; and 5) Hēixiān (黑仙 "Black Immortal") who can be the Wūyāxiān (乌鸦仙 "Crow Immortal") or the Huīxiān (灰仙 "Rat Immortal").While the Fox God and the Weasel God always remain the two prominent members of the cult of the zoomorphic deities, the other positions vary in some regions including the Tiger, the Wolf, the Hare and the Turtle Gods.[30] Other areas host the worship of the Leopard, the Mole, the Toad and the Rabbit Gods.[3] In certain counties of Hebei they are reduced to four (四大仙 Sìdàxiān) including the Fox, the Weasel, the Hedgehog and the Snake Gods.[30]
Common Chinese deities are associated to the cult of the zoomorphic gods. For instance, Huáng Dàxiān (黄大仙 "Great Yellow Immortal") is popular in north and northeast China, he is totally different from Wong Tai Sin and has no relation to Taoism as in southeastern China,[31] the deity is rather identified as the Weasel God.
Local terminology distinguishes the animal gods as the middle way between the shàngfáng shénxiān (上房神仙 "everlasting gods") gods of the greater cosmos important in Taoism, that are only worshipped and do not take possession of shamans; and the yīnxiān (陰仙 "underworld gods"), deceased beings who became gods through self-cultivation (ancestors and progenitors).[32] In northeastern Taoism, besides the Fox Gods, the pantheon is headed by a goddess, the "Black Mother" (黑媽媽 Hēi māmā).
Shamanism
Northeastern shamans consider themselves to be "disciples" (dìzǐ 弟子) of the gods rather than mere channels of communication between the gods and the human world.[6] Another name used to refer to these ritual masters is xiāngtóu (香頭 "incense heads").[33] Their practice is generally called chumaxian (出马仙), which means "the gods who take action" or more literally "riding for the immortals", a definition which implies that the gods and their disciples act as an organic whole, and in their action, form and content they express themselves together.[9]
There are two types of possession that the northeastern shamans experience in terms of consciousness: quánméng (全蒙 "complete unconsciousness", in which the disciple is not aware of what happens and what the god says) and bànméng (半蒙 "semi-unconsciousness", in which the disciple is aware of what happens during the possession).[34]
They also practise a communication with ancestors through an ecstatic experience called guòyīn (过阴 "passing to the underworld").[35] This is part of the practices of both chumaxian and related communal rites of broader Chinese local religion.[35]
Northeastern
Northeastern Chinese shamans are predominantly women, like the shamans of Northeast Asian shamanism, while Southern Chinese mediums are almost exclusively men.
Places of worship and shaman halls
In northeast China terminology for religious places and groups may follow the
Folk religious sects
Since
The Yiguandao (一貫道 "Consistent Way") had a strong presence in the area,[45] but were especially the Guiyidao (皈依道 "Way of the Return to the One") and the Shanrendao (善人道 "Way of the Virtuous Man", which social body was known as the Universal Church of the Way and its Virtue) to have millions of followers in Manchuria alone.[46] Shanrendao remains widespread even after the Maoist period and the Cultural Revolution, and headquarters of the Church of the Way and its Virtue have been re-established in Beijing in the 2010s. In more recent decades northeast China has also seen the rise of the Falun Gong, which was founded in the 1990s in Jilin.
During the period of Manchukuo also many
See also
- Chinese ancestral worship
- Chinese Buddhism
- Chinese folk religion
- Chinese salvationist religions
- Manchu shamanism
- Chinese spiritual world concepts
- Shen (Chinese religion)
- Shinto
- Taoism
Notes
- ^ The general description in Chinese language is 東北民間宗教 Dōngběi mínjiān zōngjiào or 東北民間信仰 Dōngběi mínjiān xìnyǎng.
- ^ Shamans are variously called:
References
Citations
- ^ Elliott (2001), p. 239.
- ^ Deng (2014), p. 19.
- ^ a b c d Liu (2007).
- ^ a b Deng (2014), p. 1.
- ^ Deng (2014), p. 17.
- ^ a b c Deng (2014), p. 2.
- ^ Deng (2014), p. 45.
- ^ Deng (2014), pp. 45–46.
- ^ a b Deng (2014), p. 3.
- ^ Deng (2014), pp. 46–49.
- ^ Deng (2014), pp. 50–51.
- ^ Deng (2014), p. 52.
- ^ DuBois (2006), p. 53.
- ^ DuBois (2006), pp. 56–57.
- ^ DuBois (2006), p. 59.
- ^ DuBois (2006), p. 61.
- ^ DuBois (2006), pp. 62–63.
- ^ DuBois (2006), pp. 63–64.
- ^ DuBois (2006), p. 64.
- ^ a b DuBois (2006), p. 65.
- ^ Okumura, Yoshinobu (1940), Manshu nyannyan ko [Study of Niangniang Temples in Manchuria], Shinkyo (Changchun), pp. 242–245
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link). - ^ DuBois (2006), p. 68.
- ^ DuBois (2006), p. 69.
- ^ Kang (2006), p. 49.
- ^ a b Deng (2014), p. 22.
- ^ Deng (2014), p. 21.
- ^ Kang (2006), pp. 199–200.
- ^ Deng (2014), p. 75.
- ^ Kang (2006), pp. 45–50.
- ^ a b Kang (2006), p. 48.
- ^ Wang (2013).
- ^ Deng (2014), p. 29.
- ^ Li (2011).
- ^ Deng (2014), p. 32.
- ^ a b Deng (2014), p. 8.
- ^ a b c Deng (2014), p. 13.
- ^ Kang (2006).
- ^ Huntington (2013).
- ^ Deng (2014), pp. 13–18.
- ^ a b Deng (2014), p. 23.
- ^ Deng (2014), p. 14.
- ^ Deng (2014), p. 20.
- ^ Deng (2014), p. 27.
- ^ DuBois (2006), p. 70.
- ^ a b DuBois (2006), p. 72.
- ^ Ownby (2008). § 23: "... the Daodehui eight million in Manchukuo alone (a quarter of the total population) in 1936-1937."
- ISBN 978-0824832261. p. 164.
Sources
- Deng, Claire Qiuju (2014). Action-Taking Gods: Animal Spirit Shamanism in Liaoning, China (Master in East Asian Studies). Montreal: McGill University, Department of East Asian Studies. Archived from the original on 16 January 2018.
- DuBois, Thomas David (2005). The Sacred Village: Social Change and Religious Life in Rural North China (PDF). University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 0824828372.
- DuBois, Thomas David (2006). "Local Religion and the Imperial Imaginary: The Development of Japanese Ethnography in Occupied Manchuria". American Historical Review. 111 (1). Oxford University Press: 52–74. .
- Elliott, Mark C. (2001). The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China. Religious Studies in Contemporary China Collection. Vol. 1. Stanford University Press. ISBN 0804746842.
- Huntington, Rania (2003). Alien Kind: Foxes and Late Imperial Chinese Narrative. Harvard University Asia Center. ISBN 0674010949.
- Kang, Xiaofei (2006). The Cult of the Fox: Power, Gender, and Popular Religion in Late Imperial and Modern China. Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231508220.
- Li, Weizu (2011), 四大門 [The Four Great Gates], Peking University Press.
- Liu, Zhengai (2007). 东北地区地仙信仰的人类学研究 [Anthropological Study of Dixian Belief in Northeast China]. Journal of Guangxi University for Nationalities (Philosophy and Social Science Edition). 29: 15–20.
- Ownby, David (October–December 2008). "Sect and Secularism in Reading the Modern Chinese Religious Experience". Bulletin Bibliographique, Archives de sciences sociales des religions (144). EHESS éditions. .
- Wang, Xue (2013). 东北农村地区黄仙信仰的人类学研究 [Anthropological Study of Huangxian Belief in Northeast China] (Thesis). Jilin University.