Cover Page. The handle holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation.

Cover Page The handle http://hdl.handle.net/1887/49321 holds various files of this Leiden University dissertation. Author: Frost, S.Q. Title: The altar of primordial treasure : ritual, theater, and community life in the mountains of China's Guizhou Province Issue Date: 2017-06-06

Introduction It has been said that the Chinese people are the least religious among the civilized races, and that Chinese philosophy has been the most free from religious influences. Both of these observations are not true in the light of history. 1 Hu Shih Despite the above warning by Chinese philosopher Hu Shi (1891 1962) in 1931, the myth that China during the imperial period was a secular state, governed by Confucian rationalism, has proved to be an enduring one. Today many educated Chinese people, particularly those influenced by Marxist social science, claim that China has no religion. French Jesuits, living at the Chinese imperial court during the 17th century, first introduced the fallacy of a secular Chinese state to Western observers. This provided Jesuit rationale for individual Chinese being converted to Christianity and still being excused for practicing sacrificial rites to venerate their ancestors. Jesuits living in China knew ancestor worship was indispensable to Chinese life. English statesman John Barrow wrote in 1804: The missionaries in their writings have endeavored to impress the world with an idea that the Chinese, and particularly the Confucionists, are atheists; that they disbelieve in a future state of existence; and that they are the victims of a senseless superstition. Nothing can be more unjust than such an accusation. 2 It may seem surprising to begin a monograph on religion and ritual in a remote area of southwest China with an historical commentary on the religious practices of Chinese elites during the imperial period. In fact, the cosmology, ritual practices and culture of the Chinese elites and those of common people were remarkably similar. Throughout most of the imperial period Chinese emperors and officials patronized all of China s religious traditions. The emperor himself, as Son of Heaven, was considered a living deity, his dynasty ruling through the Mandate of Heaven. He was a key actor in annual sacrifices to the deities at eight different altars around the imperial capital. K.C. Chang, in his study Art, Myth and Ritual, emphasized the key importance of all three of these elements as the path to political power since the beginning of Chinese civilization. 3 Art, myth and ritual also organize and structure life and community in the southwestern Chinese countryside. In this particular case a collection of small villages directly north of the city of Fuquan, Guizhou Province. 1 Zhou, ed., English Writings of Hu Shih, 114. 2 Barrow, Travels in China, pp. 461 462. 3 Chang, Art, Myth, and Ritual, 1983. 1

This study investigates ritual programs, religious symbolism, material culture and masked theater in the area of three Guizhou villages, collectively referred to as Huangtushao. It examines the organization of the ritual troupe that has been officiating religious life for many centuries and how their practice organizes and strengthens local society and reflects the beliefs and values of the community. A picture of a distinct local culture emerges, but historical accounts documenting religious practice and extant contemporary studies of religion, ritual and theater elsewhere in China demonstrate that ritual and culture in Huangtushao are, in fact, a microcosm reflecting the same characteristics and thematic components as popular religious practice across much of the Chinese state. Yang Theater 阳戏 is a variety of vernacular theater enacted during communal celebrations, largely occurring in the weeks around the Lunar New Year, when people have a brief respite from agricultural labor. The location for these performances is the residence of a family who sponsors the troupe to perform a ritual of thanksgiving to the deities and ancestors. The troupe sets up a stage before the front of the home to entertain the assembled guests with theater. Yang Theater is also performed twice during the summer months at communal temple festivals commemorating the birthdays of Lord Guan and Li Erlang. The performances function as an offering to the deities, whose spirits are present at the ceremony. The performance of theater is also believed to bring protection and blessings to the assembled onlookers. While this project began exclusively as an investigation of Yang Theater and its associated material culture, by necessity it developed into an exploration of ritual, religion, and belief, and how they organize local society. Theater is an important historical tradition, but cannot be separated from larger questions regarding ritual, society, local politics, and the local economy. After 1949 the communist authorities began to repress religion at the local level. These efforts reached a fever pitch in 1966 with the advent of the Cultural Revolution. Yang Theater was identified as a poisonous feudal weed and one of the four olds. Those who did not disavow their practice could be tortured or executed. Many antique masks, paintings, and ritual paraphernalia were destroyed. The period of reform and opening beginning in 1979 with the rule of Deng Xiaoping brought a small renaissance to the performance of Yang Theater. Ritual theater in general began to receive the attention of Chinese scholars during the 1980s and was identified by the government as a form of intangible cultural heritage. This played a large role in reviving Yang Theater s fortunes. It is not without irony that today an atheist government promotes the performance of an overtly religious artistic form. Most contemporary performances are at the behest of local governments. They are an attempt by politicians to lure tourist dollars and increase local development by promoting a unique regional culture. While villagers traditionally performed Yang Theater to obtain the blessings and favor of the deities, today it is also a vehicle for locals to curry favor with the local government and to have the opportunity to travel beyond the village. Performances during cultural celebrations tie these local communities to the Chinese state, and they receive official government recognition. Economic reforms, new types of entertainment and opportunities to make significant money working outside one s ancestral home, rather than spending a lifetime as a subsistence farmer, have 2

brought irreversible changes to village life and Huangtushao s historic tradition has diminished greatly as a result. This study is part documentary and part salvage anthropology. I have endeavored to employ art and material culture as useful tools to illustrate the underlying belief structure and world-view of Yang Theater prior to the period of tremendous change after 1949. The symbolic language manifested in art and through theatrical performance illustrates relationships between men, deities and ancestral spirits. Heaven, earth, and the world of the dead are imagined hierarchically in a way informed by the historic institutions of the Chinese state. The importance of art in visually ordering the Chinese state and society is illustrated by the landmark exhibition Ming: 50 Years that Changed China held in summer 2014 at the British Museum. A chapter within the accompanying exhibition catalog examines early Ming Dynasty (1368 1644) religious life through a collection of objects. 4 Ming conceptions of the cosmological order are manifest in statuary and religious paintings. They reflect the complexity of Ming religious life... with incense smoke mingling from disparate sites of worship. Not everyone residing in the Ming capitals had access to every altar or embraced multiple beliefs, but they could have worshipped a different god or spirit every day of the year had they wished. 5 These objects are witness to widespread official patronage of deities today considered within the categorizations Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian. It will become evident in this study that these singular categories are of little value in understanding the spirit world in Huangtushao, where myriad deities are incorporated into a flexible, evolving pantheon whenever ritual is enacted. Some have attempted to frame the field of Chinese religion as a dichotomy between the orthodox and heterodox. Katz notes: there has been a tendency in the field of Taoist studies to overstate the differences between organized Taoist religion and local cults. 6 Meulenbeld, in his recent study of Daoism and the Ming novel notes that theories that make categorical distinctions between popular religion and institutionalized religion may suffer from an ideological bias. 7 A top down approach examining popular religion obfuscates the fact that ritual practices and underlying rationales of the elites and commoners were quite similar, namely requesting peace and protection of the domestic residence and the territory of the locale, a successful harvest, sufficient financial resources, a harmonious relationship with ancestral spirits content in the afterlife and watching over their descendents, healthy progeny (particularly sons who would continue the lineage and care for parents in old age) and the avoidance of catastrophic illness and plague. The very notion of orthodoxy in Chinese religion should be carefully examined and reconsidered. Historical accounts and the discoveries being made on the ground over the past two decades suggest any orthodoxy in the field of Chinese religion is a fallacy. Lagerwey, in his monumental study of Daoist ritual in Taiwan, written more than twenty years ago notes: The altars constructed in northern Taiwan today differ from those in southern Taiwan, and the 4 Clunas et al., Ming: 50 Years that Changed China, pp. 205 253. 5 Ibid., 248. 6 Katz, Demon Hordes and Burning Boats, 6. 7 Meulenbeld, Demonic Warfare, 17. 3

Taoist canon contains a large variety of altar designs. 8 He further observes that northern Taoist practitioners openly disparage the rituals of their southern counterparts. 9 In observing his chief informant, Master Chen s ritual for sealing the altar he writes, the ritual segment appears to be a somewhat corrupted conflation of what we find in the earlier texts. 10 Rituals are not static entities; rather they reflect a constantly evolving narrative integration and synthesis. 11 This examination of religious life in Huangtushao, Guizhou supports the fact that the symbolic elements of Chinese ritual and its liturgical framework are remarkably homogeneous, while expressing great flexibility in minor details, depending on its practitioners. Or, as Lagerwey writes in China: A Religious State: China is like a giant puzzle, where each piece is a commentary on all the others. 12 Ruizendaal, introducing his study of marionette theatre in Quanzhou, Fujian, resolves the false dichotomy between orthodoxy and heterodoxy thus: both elite and people functioned under the same umbrella, called Chinese culture with its divergent cultural expressions and tension between national orthodoxy and local and individual desires. 13 Ruizendaal also mentions the surprise encountered by local researchers who find the academic divisions of Chinese religion are often challenged by what we find in the field. 14 Both urban and rural populations worshipped the same major deities and their lives were governed by the same cycle of festivals and observances. Hu Shih also rejected singular categories as a means for understanding the nature of Chinese religious beliefs, preferring to term it the Sinitic religion. 15 Daoism and Buddhism, as well as far more ancient beliefs, like shamanism, ancestor worship, divination and geomancy all inform this religious system. Returning to the exhibition of Ming art at the British Museum, a set of mid-fifteenth century altar paintings, commissioned by the imperial court for a Buddhist monastery on China s northern frontier, incorporates Buddhist, Daoist (including spirits of mountains, waterways and the earth, as well as natural forces, which are much older than Laozi) and Confucian (ancestral) deities. The author indicates that the pantheon visualized on this set of scrolls echoed the deities enshrined on altars of the state. 16 These paintings were produced for use during a week-long ritual cycle officiated by Buddhist priests, intended to pacify the souls (hungry ghosts) who had died in battle. The service was an effort to protect the locality of the temple as part of a tradition of ritual performance heavily patronized by the imperial court. 17 Meulenbeld, in his study of the relationship 8 Lagerwey, Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History, 25. 9 Ibid., 171. 10 Ibid., 95. 11 Dean, Lord of the Three in One, pp. 23 24. 12 Lagerwey, China: A Religious State, 152. 13 Ruizendaal, Marionette Theater in Quanzhou, 5. 14 Ibid., 260. 15 Zhou, English Writings of Hu Shih, 115. 16 Clunas et al., Ming: 50 Years that Changed China, 249. 17 Ibid., 249. 4

between Daoism, territorial networks and the Ming novel notes that the first Ming emperor sought assistance from both Daoist and Buddhist authorities in a quest to control unruly spirits haunting the empire. 18 The Ming adopted Zhenwu, a powerful deity representing the northern cardinal direction, as their own patron saint, just as the proceeding Yuan rulers had. They also canonized Lord Guan, a deity found in both Daoist and Buddhist temples across the Chinese world. Ming emperors also actively patronized Tibetan Buddhist monks and these monks conducted rituals in the imperial court. A tendency towards availing oneself of all the spiritual forces at one s disposal is a historical characteristic of Chinese religion at every level of society. Religious life in Huangtushao is an expression of the popular religion of China, informed by the pragmatic inclusion of all three great religious traditions and myriad local deities. Far from being an outlier, with a uniquely preserved primitive culture, religion in Huangtushao is intimately related to, and informed by, antecedents in religious practices across the Chinese empire, prior to the iconoclasm of the twentieth century. It bears many hallmarks of contemporary religious practices in Taiwan, where the population was spared the destructive ravages of Maoism, and elsewhere in southern China where there has been a rebirth of religious life in recent decades. Nineteenth-century foreign observers of Chinese religious life made detailed accounts of ritual practices they witnessed. Joseph Edkins noted Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism existed alongside one another and that the people believed in the efficacy of all three. 19 Terry Kleeman, researching the origins of the Wenchang cult in Zitong, Sichuan, studied accounts of Chinese field researchers who observed: locals are confused about the religious affiliation of the god, identifying him as the disciple of the Daoist Jade Emperor, as a Buddhist patriarch, or a Confucian official. 20 Doctrinal affiliation was of little or no concern to ordinary worshippers and they did not compartmentalize the spirit world in such a way. Dean s study of the Lord of the Three in One cult also confirms this tendency in Fujian, where as many as sixty figures, including Confucian and Three in One sages and an assortment of local gods, came to be worshipped in one temple. 21 In another study of popular cults in southeast China, Dean notes: where doctrine is made public, it is generally to emphasize morality, not to differentiate teachings. 22 Before the communist revolution, in the walled city of Fuquan, the metropolitan area closest to the subjects of this study, many temples existed both inside and outside the city walls and the surrounding countryside. Erlang, Lord Guan, the Fire God, The Lord of the Eastern Peak, Guanyin and the City God are just some of the deities whose worshippers erected temples on their behalf (Fig. 0.1). 23 This inclusive pantheon in Huangtushao is not a random cobbling together of disparate religious traditions by uneducated peasants. Rather it is an expression of a 18 Meulenbeld, Demonic Warfare, 136. 19 Edkins, Religion of China: A Brief Account, 56. 20 Kleeman, Sources for Religious Practice in Zitong: The Local Side of a National Cult, 352. 21 Dean, Lord of the Three in One, pp. 22 23. 22 Dean, Taoist Ritual and Popular Cults, 175. 23 Yang, Fuquan Xianzhi, 70, for a map of Fuquan city in 1904, reproduced as figure 0.1. 5

Fuquan in 1904 (Guangxu Reign Year 33) 1 To Niuchang 2 To Disong 3 North Gate 4 Temple of the Fire God 5 Pavillion of the North Dipper 6 Garrison Office 7 Temple of the Eastern Peak 8 Temple of Lord Guan (Martial Temple) 9 Temple of the God of Wealth 10 Water Gate 11 Office of Guerilla Warfare 12 West Gate 13 Temple of the Dragon King 14 Nunnery of the Ancient Buddha 15 City God Temple 16 Li Ancestral Hall 17 To Lishan 18 Provincial Office 19 Mount Fuquan 20 Temple of the Southern Peak 21 Confucius Temple (Civil Temple) 22 East Gate 13 Sichuan Trade Guild 24 Temple of the Dark Spirit 25 Erlang Temple 26 Academy of Learning 27 Liu Ancestral Hall 28 Temple to Protect the Country 29 South Gate 30 To Machangping 31 Guanyin Nunnery Figure 0.1 A map of the walled city of Fuquan at the end of the Qing Dynasty. Reproduced from Fuquan Xianzhi. 6

dynamic cosmology informed by larger structures, a historical tradition and tendencies that are essentially Chinese. Both Confucianism and Buddhism have sometimes been presented as philosophies, informing a scholarly ruling class above the influence of petty religion. During the last 100 years these views found fertile ground amongst scholars within China, working within a Marxist worldview and regarding China s development as a march of progress from the primitive and superstitious condition towards an atheist society representing the pinnacle of human achievement. Intellectuals in the ROC also allowed an urban versus rural bias to color their perceptions of religious life in the countryside. The contemporary official view of religion within the PRC tolerates Buddhism, Confucianism and Daoism in purified, state-sanctioned forms, while denigrating local practices that fall outside government purview. During the imperial period, a minority of scholar-officials repudiated what they viewed as superstition. What they were in fact critiquing were institutions that were (and in some cases, still are) intrinsic to Chinese life. These opinions did not reflect the beliefs of the majority of Chinese people. In commenting on the practice of sacrificing to ancestral spirits Yang states that the supernatural dimension was by no means completely dismissed from the thoughts of a large section of the traditional Confucianists. 24 Those with government positions understood the power of religion, as both potential ally and competing threat, locally and nationally. One reoccurring example of demeaning popular religious activity was to condemn religious festivals as wasteful, bloody sacrifices. Yet, these sacrifices are never wasted in vain. After being presented to the gods, sacrificial goods constitute the bounty for the feasting and drinking that are, for participants, an integral part of all Chinese ceremonies. Feasting is the single most important act in uniting local society. It stands to reason that poor, foodscarce communities on the margins of the Chinese state elevated the sacrifice of precious livestock during rituals to a religious act, particularly since in many cases it is only on these ceremonial occasions that participants have the opportunity to enjoy an abundance of meat and other foods. Yang writes: The offering of food and drink to the dead and later sharing of them by the entire family had serious social implications. Food was the supreme factor in the sustenance of life and, man s struggle for it had always involved the social group. 25 Justus Doolittle documented a sacrificial ceremony enacted in Fuzhou in 1858 at the local Confucius Temple that included large presentations of sacrificial livestock, water buffalo, sheep and other foods. Doolittle s account describes slaughtered animals being placed on altars on the temple grounds, and feasting, even at the site of the state sage Confucius. 26 Doolittle also noted that at the end of the ceremony and communal feasting, the remaining abundance of sacrificial offerings were divided and given to the various officials who had taken part in the ceremony. This sort of exchange network and division of offerings, fostered within the context 24 Yang, Religion in Chinese Society, 49 25 Ibid., 40 26 Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, pp. 282 286. 7

of communal ritual, is also an indispensable part of strengthening society in rural Guizhou and elsewhere in southwest China. History shows that many temples and rituals were actually sponsored by civil and military officials. Officials worshipped various deities in their public and private life and played active supporting roles in temples and ceremonies. A local example of this phenomenon is found within Fuquan s walled city. A large temple, Mount Fuquan, sits on a hilltop in the southeastern part of the city. Nominally Daoist, but including pavilions to worship Guanyin and Lord Guan (who are ostensibly Buddhist), the site s construction began in 1368, with a four-story pagoda built by the local Ming army commander, Zhang Xin. In the Ming Dynasty capital of Beijing many court eunuchs sponsored the building of monasteries on behalf of the imperial family. 27 In the final years of the nineteenth century de Groot, a pioneering Dutch ethnologist and scholar of Chinese religion, who later taught at Leiden University, was the first westerner to undertake an extensive ethnographical study of China s religion in the field. Meulenbeld notes that de Groot s chief informants were not farmers or paupers, but men of letters. De Groot noted that his informants described an animated universe and a human world full of spirits, specters and magic. 28 Doolittle writes: the temples dedicated to the literary and military sages must be visited (by officials) regularly early in the morning of the first and fifteenth of each Chinese month... in order to burn incense and candles before their images or their tablets. 29 Ritual power was closely related to political power and religion was an integral part of official life. This remains the case today in Huangtushao where the individuals who officiate rituals in the villages are also connected to the local government and many are also members of the local Communist Party organization. I would like to return to the set of Ming Dynasty altar paintings featured in the British Museum exhibition to examine how their content reflects a particular view of the material and spiritual world relevant to this study. Much of the subject matter of these paintings features scenes from Chinese daily life; scholars, soldiers, workers, farmers, ritual specialists and exorcists, acrobats, performers, beggars, and children. The scenes include warfare, banditry, entertainment, ritual, and exemplars of filial piety. Each of the paintings has two registers. In the upper register the dead inhabit the clouds and look down upon the lower register at their counterparts in the world of the living. The various souls illustrated continue to live and exist in a world of the dead, narrowly separated from that of the living. The unseen world of spirits is always within proximity of the living. The inclusion of the broad swath of Chinese society in these ritual paintings, as markers of social mores and societal hierarchy, points to two further germane aspects of the Chinese world prior to the iconoclasm of twentieth century political movements. First, ritual, society, government, and the economy are elements of a singular order, rather than independent entities. Secondly, for institutions in the terrestrial world, there are counterparts in the celestial world and the world of the dead. The notion of a division between sacred and secular did 27 Clunas et al., Ming: 50 Years that Changed China, 246. 28 Ibid., pp. 5 6. 29 Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, 286. 8

not exist. To again reference Joseph Edkins, writing in the mid-nineteenth century: the emperor has the power of appointing souls of the dead to posts of authority in the invisible world, just as he does in the visible. 30 Ter Haar writes: the act of rulership extended to the supernatural world, through the performance of proper rituals. 31 Justus Doolittle describes a local year-end ceremony for retiring official seals (used to notarize every official document) during the nineteenth century. Each government office is illuminated as brilliantly as is possible with lanterns, torches and candles on this occasion. Incense and candles are burned on the table on which the seal is placed while the mandarin is worshipping it. 32 Candles and incense are two of the chief offerings presented by worshippers to the deities during every ritual occasion. The official seals are sacred by virtue of the fact that the Mandate of Heaven directly connects the emperor to the celestial world. These historical examples demonstrate that the Chinese state itself is a sacred institution. A model of imperial legitimation, beginning with the emperor as Son of Heaven, ruling a moral state, was so powerful and entrenched in the way all people thought of the order of Chinese civilization, that it became the organizing model for most institutions across the Chinese state. 33 Ritual took the shape of court ceremony. In Guizhou, the paramount altar deities are in fact a royal couple, Emperor and Empress, ancestors of mankind, who rule all those within the terrestrial realm. The sacred space established during domestic rituals is the audience hall of their palace. For the people of Huangtushao, Heaven, Earth, and the Underworld are each organized by distinctive bureaucracies. The Son of Heaven is the ruler on Earth. The Jade Emperor rules in Heaven, and the Emperor of the Eastern Peak rules the world of the dead. Under their watch are officials inhabiting idealized, but not necessarily clearly defined, bureaucracies that resemble one another and follow the same protocols as the governing institutions of men on earth. These deities need to be officially petitioned by ritual specialists in order to act on their worshippers behalf. This bureaucratic order is reflected within the courtly language of ritual documents and manifested in the paintings and sculptures that constitute the art of the sacred space where altar paintings often illustrate spirit bureaucracies (Fig. 0.2). Woodblock prints from Ming novels show warriors battling one another on earth while their celestial counterparts, whom the earthly warriors have aligned themselves with through a covenant, simultaneously provide help from above. 34 The actions of the human world and the spirit world are intertwined. A key element for bringing the unseen world of spirits to life is theater. All communal religious festivals include the impersonation of the deities to make their powers manifest locally and sweep away evil influences. Nuo is an umbrella term used by Chinese researchers to classify forms of ritual theater that employ masks. 35 The original meaning of the word nuo is to drive 30 Edkins, Religion in China, 56. 31 Ibid., 307. 32 Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese, 417. 33 ter Haar, Ritual & Mythology of the Chinese Triads, 306. 34 Meulenbeld, Demonic Warfare, 193. 35 Li, Popular Religion in Modern China, pp.170 179. Li presents a comprehensive overview of the rediscovery of nuo theater in the post-mao era. 9

Figure 0.2 Late Qing altar painting from Daozhen, Guizhou. The painting s top register shows the Emperor of the Eastern Peak, the Buddha and Guanyin gazing down from Heaven. The Emperor of the Eastern Peak is the highest authority in the world of the dead. Buddhism offers escape from the tortures of hell and rebirth in the western paradise. Below is the judgment court of hell where underworld officials present the cases of those who have recently died. At the entrance to the court stand Horse Head and Cow Head, guardians of the gates of hell. From outside the walls of the court building condemned souls are lead in to receive their sentences. 10

away evils and pestilence. The character nuo 傩 is a compound of the semantic marker meaning person and the component difficulty. 36 However, using nuo as a classification term for theater in Huangutshao is problematic. Villagers in the area of this study simply refer to doing ritual or redeeming vows to the deities. 37 The use of the word nuo is non-existent within their liturgy and ritual texts. Chinese researchers, particularly Qu Liuyi, have presented the religion practiced in much of Guizhou Province as a direct descendent of ritual practices beginning with the ancient Shang (approximately 1600 1046 BCE) and Zhou Dynasties (1046 256 BCE). 38 Tuo Xiuming, in his introduction to a two-volume study of ritual theater among the Tujia in Dejiang, Guizhou writes: Nuo Theater developed from the blending of nuo and nuo dance to become a type of synthesis between religion and art to please deities and men. It is a simple and unadorned, primitive and unique type of theater. People have forgotten it [Nuo Theater] is a vehicle for our country s ancient nuo culture... it has been continually preserved until now by folk inheritors and become my country s... living fossil. 39 This sort of condescending paternalism is common in Chinese descriptions of minority culture, but neglects the fact that the major deities being worshipped by the people of Dejiang and other areas of southwest China, are largely identical to those venerated by China s urban populations. The characters appearing in their theatrical performances are also familiar to most Chinese people. It will also become apparent in the examination of theater at a temple festival for Lord Guan that local theater is alive and adapts to reflect new realities, thus the term fossil is insufficient to describe it. Yang Theater has adapted to new realities and locals even tailor performances to reflect what they believe local officials wish to see. One example is the inclusion of female performers at government exhibitions, adaptability hardly characteristic of a fossil. A common misconception about ritual theater in Guizhou is that it only exists in minority regions. It is true that ritual theater today often is found in China s minority regions, namely because these locations were more isolated and later to develop than areas inhabited by the Han, but to think of ritual theater in Guizhou as a minority cultural tradition is erroneous. In her recent study of ritual in Dejiang, Guizhou Lan Li writes: I followed closely two different nuo performing teams, one claiming to be Tujia and the other claiming to be Han, and subsequently found them to be identical in organizational structure, ritual symbolism and their execution of performances. 40 The Qing Dynasty illustrated ethnography of Guizhou, Bai Miao Tu, contains illustrations featuring villagers and performers holding masks and martial props. 41 The accompanying text indicates that the populations inhabiting the area east of Guiyang were composed Han and non-han peoples 36 傩 37 做法事 or 还愿 respectively. 38 See Qu s preface to Dejiang County Propaganda Comittee, ed., Nuoyun, pp. 1 21. 39 Ibid., 22. 40 Li, Popular Religion in Modern China, pp. 138 139. 41 Yang, ed., Bai Miao Tu, pp. 190 195. 11

who had intermarried. Theater and performance were part of larger ritual structures that united community through donations of food and monetary offerings. The villagers obtained blessings of good fortune through their participation and contributions. A timely historical example of the intimate connection between religion and theater across China is found in a recent Belgian publication of rare historic photographs. Among the Celestials: China in Early Photographs shows a 1930s theater troupe in Shanghai. 42 The actors stand before a faux backdrop of a temple featuring an altar, incense burner, paintings and statuary. Two performers are wearing masks while others wield martial weapons to slay a strange demon with a giant head, afflicting a scholar-official. This is not a snapshot of a society on the fringe of an empire, practicing an ancient, primitive tradition, but rather the expression of ubiquitous motifs of Chinese religion, in this case playing out in China s most cosmopolitan city during the first half of the twentieth century. Geographic isolation has preserved religious forms in Guizhou that have disappeared from other places within China, but ritual and theatrical performance continue to be key, constituent elements of the Chinese religious experience everywhere temple festivals and rituals survive. Chapter 1 of this study examines the geographic and historical background of a cluster of three villages in Fuquan, Guizhou Province. This location is home to a ritual troupe officiating the religious life of the community. The troupe s stock-in-trade is the performance of domestic exorcism rituals and masked theatre as a component of more elaborate multi-day ritual cycles for paying sponsors. Chapter 1 identifies and describes the main troupe leaders and how the troupe has established spiritual legitimacy, authority, and an identity within the community. It also examines the ritual culture of Huangtushao within the context of national traditions. Chapter 2 introduces the lineage of ritual masters. An examination of an ordination ceremony reveals the structure and symbolism of the group s organization. The ritual troupe legitimates itself through a sacred lineage, beginning with sect founder Lord Zhao. The troupe s ritual power stems from their specialist knowledge and a blood covenant the ritual masters have made with the pantheon of deities they worship, and their command of troops of spirit soldiers who pacify the area where rituals occur. Chapter 3 explains the morphology of a sacred space for worshipping and sacrificing to the deities. This morphology reflects a hierarchical conception of the universe of men, spirits and celestial deities. Within the sacred space a court ritual, containing both exorcistic, martial elements and civil elements, is enacted. The ritual field contains symbolic elements and actions that are common to documented ritual traditions across China. Chapter 4 examines a communal festival held at the local Lord Guan temple in summer of 2012. The ritual troupe performed masked theater on a temporary stage before the temple as a birthday offering to Lord Guan, followed by a communal feast for the troupe and participants 42 Bertholet & van der Aalsvoort, Among the Celestials: China in Early Photographs, pp. 191 192. 12

from surrounding villages. This chapter examines the ritual and the activities that took place, to illuminate the ways in which ritual provides agency in organizing local society. Chapter 5 documents an extant set of Qing Dynasty masks owned by the Huangtushao troupe. The creation of these masks along with their role and significance in ritual performance are considered and placed within the larger historical tradition of Chinese mask making. An examination of the content of ritual performances through written librettos shows how theatrical performance reflects beliefs, values and mores and makes the deities real for performers and their audience. In the 1990s several books illustrating Chinese ritual masks were published within China. 43 They provide valuable documentation of surviving antique Chinese masks, the majority of which were destroyed during China s Cultural Revolution. Unfortunately these books do not contain detailed ethnographic descriptions of how the masks were used and their associated mythology. In Taiwan, the volumes of ethnographic studies on local Chinese theater published under the Minsu Chuyi banner provided valuable accounts of local ritual practices across China, but were somewhat hindered by poor quality black-and-white images of performances and ritual objects. These volumes were also only published in Chinese, making their contents unavailable to most western readers. This study attempts to provide a fuller picture of local ritual culture by supplementing detailed ethnographic descriptions with high-quality visual imagery. This is significant in that visual imagery is an integral dimension of ritual life. Religious practice is considered from a local perspective, as manifested in the traditions of Huangtushao, Guizhou, while framing this tradition within larger regional and historical religious structures. In examining ritual culture through liturgy, sacred spaces, symbolism, beliefs, art, and performance, a richer picture emerges of religious life in this area of southwest China and how these traditions can be clearly understood within the wider context of Chinese religion. 43 Gu, Nuoxi Mianju Yishu. Wang, Guizhou Nuo Mianju Yishu. Xue, The Art of Ritual Chinese Masks, and Zheng, Zhongguo Shaoshu Minzu Mianju. 13