|
Since everything has spiritual beliefs, in traditional Han Chinese society, people divide spirits into “good spirit” and “evil spirit” based on their own interests. The former, like gods and ancestors, uses their spiritual power to provide harmonious space for human society, for which humans conduct repayment, such as sacrifice. The latter refers to all kinds of demons and ghosts; humans, on the one hand, negatively taboo and sacrifice to them with fear; on the other hand, construct a solid defense system with various talismans for their own sake and actively organize various rituals of exorcism and illness abjection in order to ensure the cleanness of their living space by using the assistance of good spirits.
Lieyu, commonly known as little Kinmen, is a small island outside Jiulong River estuary located at the southeast coast of Fujian, which attracts immigrants from Central community due to its frontier location and abundant fish and salt. After several centuries of migration and development, the immigrants coming from Central Plains settled and formed villages on the island under the interaction of the ties of kin and geography no matter they came here due to political, economic or military reasons. These villages formed by Han Chinese immigrants also inherited Han’s belief in gods, respect to universe, spirit worship, ancestor sacrifice and other religious cultures. Temples became the religious center of each village, and the residents regarded the temple god as “Jingzhu” who became the patron saint of the villages, conducting fortifications, such as “Li Fu”, “An Wu Ying”, worship of “North Wind God” and resettlement of “White Chicken” for evil spirits abjection; agricultural community held festivals of worshiping Heaven, and the commanding gods held a variety of rituals of exorcism and evils abjection like “begging for money and meatballs” as well as invited heavenly gods to defense together; these protective measures of negative hardware and active rituals of exorcism and evils abjection constituted a strong defense system with layers of defense within the settlements on the island and established harmonious universal space between man and heaven.
Taking Lieyu as field base, this study explored the relational structure of spatial coexistence of “god, man, ghost” in the folk beliefs of Han Chinese society, constructed the concept of spirits in traditional beliefs from the aspects of gods beliefs, taboos, holiness, religious rituals in folk beliefs, and understood the correlation between the intangible sacrifice spatial extent and the tangible areas of social life in contemporary Han Chinese society by participation in rituals.
|