Opera Nut

Today I was driving home from a Mahayana Buddhist temple I attend. The entire part of town has lots of orientals. I saw a big Chinese temple in the distance, and decided to turn off the main drag and head for it. This was only about 3 miles from the one I had been at.

I thought it was a regular temple. Outside it said "Teo Chew Temple" and the equivalent in Vietnamese. Just inside the front door is a glass booth and people who take donations and sell incense and candles for offerings. A young man who spoke some english came out and told me about the place. It is a big 3 story tall hall with icons of various gods and goddesses along the walls. Each station has a large gold colored statue, an incense burner, red candles with wishes written on them, and a place to kneel.

In front of the two goddesses, there is a canister that is about a foot high and barrel shaped. It has long sticks in it, like a popsicle stick but longer and thinner. Each has a number on it and chinese characters. I think they are used for fortune telling. A lady kneeled in front of one of them and shook the canister in front of her, sort of horizontally, until one fell out in front of her and she picked it up and looked at it.

Out in front there is a kwan yin fountain. I was given a sheet of paper called "Chinese Gods" by C Marks Hinton, Jr. which explains some of them, there are 14 total in the building. The young man said they had a Medicine Buddha and pointed him out to me.

Their naems are Shang ti (Superior Emperor), the unknowable cause of the first universe;
Tsai Chen, God of Wealth;
Kuan Ti, God of War;
Kuan Yin, Goddess of Compassion (this one I know about);
T'ao Hua Hsien Nui, Peach Blossom Girl;
Tin Hau, Queen of Heaven;
Pak Tai, Emperor of the North;
The Jade Emperor, Son of Heaven.

Can some one tell me about this "one-stop shopping" worship station?? I didn't know they had such here in Houston. Is this related to Shinto or not? Hybrid stuff?

philechat

They are regular Chinese gods, not related to Shinto as much as what has influenced the Chinese throughout history. They consider themselves "Taoists" though their beliefs are different from the original Taoism of Lao-Tze. The gods in China traditionally incorperated Buddhist and Hindu ideas (Kuan-Yin was one of the Mahayana Buddhist Boshevittas) and specific cosmology are assigned to different gods.

Shang-ti has an epithet "Ming-Ming", namely unknown or from the other realm--most people do not worship him as they do for Tsai Chen and Kuan-Yin. Kuan-Yin is probably male in the original Hindu worship, but became a patron goddess of compassion/salvation in Chinese culture.

The Jade Emperor probably had similar role as Zeus in ancient Greece--he is not the creator of the universe, but he rules the other gods in heaven. His wife is Tin Hau, also called "Wang-Mu Niang-Niang" meaning "Queenly Mother".

Kuan-Ti was an ancient (probably mythical) Chinese warrior in the time of Three Kingdom. He, as described in The Romance of Three Kingdoms, was the "ribbon brother" of Liu Pei the emperor of Shu kingdom and Chang-Fei the black-faced warrior.

Tsai Shen is simply a god of good luck and wealth, the patron of businessmen (like Hermes).

I forgot the connotation of the other two gods, though there are several more interesting gods in Chinese mythology:

Zhu-Sheng Niang-Niang--the goddess of childbirth. She is closely related to Chang-e, who became a goddess of the moon after swallowing the immortality pills of her husband Ho-Yi.

No-Tcha--He (though androgynous like Dionysus) was believed to wreak havoc in the Oceanic Palace because the Sea Dragon King (another god) asked for human sacrifice. He committed suicide because the Sea Dragon King killed his father, and was reborn in a lotus blossom. Perhaps the god most representative of the whole dying-and-rising savior archetype.

Ma-zu--also named Lin Mo-Niang. She was originally a human who tried to save her brother and father from a shipwreak. Stories had that she saved her father but not her brother as a disembodied spirit, when she fell unconscious on a bed. She spent the rest of her life at sea looking for her brother.

Yan Wang-Ye--the god of underworld. Supposedly holds a book of judgement that records good and bad deeds in a person's life. The souls after death then become reborn as another person after his punishment was due. The underworld is also believed to have 18 levels, with level 18th signifying everlasting punishment.

Cheng Huang-Ye--the patron gods of towns and cities.

Tu-di--or earth god. Sometimes he is accompanied with a jealous wife, whom the Chinese did not worship.

Ti-Zhang Wang--another Boshevitta

Bao-Gong--the so-called most righteous judge in history, known for ingenious schemes for investigating crimes.

Nu-Wa--The goddess with snake bottom. She was known as the creator of humans and the fixer of broken sky. There was a flood myth associated with the goddess.

Hai Long Wang--Sea Dragon King basically. The ancient Chinese believed there were four Dragon Kings associated with the four orientations of earth. They are in control of rainfalls and sometimes prophecy with respect to agriculture.

Ho-Yi--husband of Chang-e. He was believed to shoot down 9 of the 10 suns that originally took charge of earth.

And more and more countless Chinese gods...

lpetrich

This may be called Chinese folk religion; not also that many Far Easterners are non-exclusive about religion -- worshipping one deity does not exclude the worshipping of another.

So if you want some analogies for the pre-Abrahamic "Western world", that is a good place to look.

Harumi

Pilechat,

That list brought back a whole bunch of memories. Most of them are actually quite nice actually. Our family visits a temple like this at least once every year, usually when we go back to Taiwan. Are you Asian by any chance?

Opera Nut,

It is a purely Chinese folk religion. I don't believe Shinto has anything to do with it. It's been mixed with Buddhism quite a bit. In fact, the Gods and Goddesses could almost be considered to be saints, since the majority were at one point human, no? The reason why many became gods and goddesses was either because 1) they did a good deed, such as self sacrifice or caring and protecting others, or 2) they studied Buddhist scriptures.

Ma-Tzu, before she saved her father and tried to rescue her brother in the storm, studied the scriptures fervently before she became a goddess. Kwan-Ying as well.

As it is, I see it as pretty harmless. The people are pretty tolerant of the beliefs, and even my grandmother, who is very religious, believes that as long as one is good, they will be reborn into the next life with a good family. The gods don't demand worship, they only demand "good behavior" as is defined under Buddhist scriptures (well, at least that's what my family believes). Besides, it's pretty cute, and a little cool.

All the fun polytheist religions have practically disappeared, and well, at least the gods and goddesses aren't exactly unreasonable.

Answerer

Simply put guys, all the chinese gods were once humans and are not eternal.

Harumi

But isn't that cool though? We all have the potential to become gods or goddesses.

Now what portion to you want to rule over?

philechat

I think I am the same as you, to be precise. The gods are harmless; most people in Taiwan don't care what religion the others belong to (if we ignore the handful of exclusive Xians, who were some sort of laughing-stock for others anyways ), and are fairly tolerant in this matter. I have yet to hear anything akin to what the Xian fundies in the US are espousing.

Harumi

Ah, the gods of old...

I'm going back again this year, and although I had refused to go to the temple last year, I think I might go back this time. It's hot to be sure, but it's beautiful, in a dirty, smokey kinda way, and the atmosphere is peaceful.

I thought when I became an atheist that it meant I needed to reject all religions. But that isn't necessarily true is it? I'm a spiritual person by nature, and I suppose I could talk to the gods again...as symbols of what they represent of course, as ways to help myself become a better person. If they're real, hey, I score. If they aren't, well, no problem. It's not like they'd be offended anyways. They don't send people to hell for lack of disbelief.

As for the Christians...most of them are Catholic aren't they? I've seen a church or two, and my gan-ma is a Catholic, as are my two gan-didi. The Christianity the Taiwanese espouse is a lot milder than the fundies around here. It makes for a better environment, no?

philechat

I think many Taiwanese religious rituals are spectacular. Since most people do not treat religion too seriously many rituals had the festive feel of perhaps the ancient Pagans, compared to the cut-and-dry sermonizing and singing of the Christians. You should know people who shoot firecrackers all over town, people climbing poles, and a good number of staged dramas in Taiwanese religious rituals, don't you? There were even half-naked women sometimes. Plus every town had its own gods and own flavor...

All is to your preference. Will you not visit churches when you travel to Italy? Think about it.

Only Christians do the "I will never visit temples of another religion" crap. There is nothing that would harm us (as some Xians would belief if they went to non-Christian temples) when we visit their temples and churches, so why refrain? It is not like you would be stuck for life over there.

The Taiwanese catholics aren't that bad, except for their sometimes shady involvement with the KMT party. Many I think would not reject interfaith marriages, unlike the Xian variety we find in the US. Christians are a minority in Taiwan so I guess they have not too much choices either. The protestants can sometimes be fundy, though, as I recalled, and some of them would be out there attempting to destroy arguments for evolution or pluralism. These people, plus the missionaries, are often the laughing stocks of other Taiwanese people.

Harumi

Of course. Ever since I was a little girl, I've always listened to tapes of children's stories about the Chinese Gods. One of the ones that stuck very firmly in my mind was the story of the Thunder God.

You know, the one that explains why lightening comes before thunder?

Well, what really made me remember it was because right afterwards, the storyteller said (in the tape) that that was not the real reason, and proceeded to explain the speeds of light and sound waves.

Let people be irrational once in a while. We aren't ants, we're emotional beings, and as long as it doesn't hurt anyone, why not let them do what they want?