by Livia Kohn
However, each spirit-writing movement had its specific beliefs, organizations, and developments. For example, Taiwanese and Cantonese spirit-writing cults differ in their beliefs, liturgies, and activities, with the former being heavily Confucian in flavor. Often beliefs
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involve the worship of the Three Benevolent Masters ( san enzhu), that is, Guansheng dijun (Guandi), Fuyou dijun (Lü Dongbin), and Siming zhenjun (Ruler of Fates). Or again, they might venerate the Five Benevolent Masters ( wu enzhu), the above three plus Yue wumu wang (King Mu) and Xuantian shangdi (Dark Warrior). Among them, Guandi is preeminent.
Another difference among the groups is that Taiwanese spirit-writing cults are strongly influenced by sectarian traditions worship-
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ing the Eternal Mother, variably called Wusheng laomu (Unborn Venerable Mother) or Yaochi jinmu (Golden Mother of the Jasper Pond).
By contrast, Cantonese spirit-writing cults are more Daoist in character: the word “daotan” literally means “Daoist shrine,” many cults worship Lüzu as the main deity, and some identify themselves as descendants of the Quanzhen school. Unlike Taiwanese cults, they show little influence of Mother worship, although in Guangdong and Hong Kong there are some groups that engage in it, such as the Xiantian dao or the Tongshan she, which both also have considerable power in the Hong Kong Daoist community.
In addition, there is a subtle difference with respect to activity. On the whole, Taiwanese spirit-writing cults tend to emphasize the publication of morality books and the holding of public lectures, while Cantonese spirit-writing cults have given priority to medical services. It is possible that these differences arose from differences in the cultural and historical background of the two areas (Shiga 1998). This is why I give special attention to the religious and socio-economic background in Guangdong, such as the condition of the Daoist community and the spread of Lü Dongbin worship.
Furthermore, I would like to present an argument against the theory that daotan in Hong Kong are direct descendants of the Quanzhen tradition. According to this theory, the Longmen subsect of the Quanzhen school had spread to Guangdong province by the end of the seventeenth century, as is apparent in the fact that the Daoist temples established or rebuilt on Mount Luofu at that time all belonged to the Longmen subsect. Daoists training on Mount Luofu spread to Guangdong, especially to the Pearl River Delta, and established Daoist temples there. During this process of expansion, some changes occurred in the original Quanzhen tradition, including the decline of monasticism, the amalgamation of Quanzhen patriarchs and popular religious deities, a greater emphasis on rituals, and the introduction of spirit-writing. These changes were a response to popular religious demands. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Quanzhen sect was introduced into Hong Kong by Daoists trained at the official Quanzhen monasteries, while in the Pearl River Delta, “Lüzu centers,”
spirit-writing cults devoted to Lüzu, arose one after another. Even though these Lüzu centers did not belong to the Quanzhen school, their founders had rich Daoist knowledge, learning from the activities of Quanzhen monks. The centers were, therefore, not directly part of the Quanzhen tradition but strongly influenced by it (see Tsui 1991).
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Contrary to this view, as I plan to show, the rise and development of the daotan movement has many aspects left unexplained by this theory. In fact, even the Daoist temples in Hong Kong that identified themselves as part of the Quanzhen school were originally the Lüzu centers or spirit-writing cults in the guise of Quanzhen liturgy. In addition, the spirit-writing movement was not led by Daoist priests as professional religious practitioners but by laymen with Daoist knowledge and financial ability.
To clarify these points, the following describes the development of the daotan movement, focusing on these questions. What was the religious and socio-economic background of the daotan movement?
Which social strata and what occupational groups participated actively in it? What was the driving force behind it? How had they come to form a “Daoist identity”? The relevant time span is the period from the rise of the movement in the latter half of the nineteenth century to 1949, when most of the cults in Guangdong were forced to close and move to Hong Kong because of the new religious policy enforced by the communist government.
Daoism in Pre-Modern Guangdong
The condition of Daoist temples and practitioners in pre-modern Guangdong is not well documented, and the key source is the Guangdong nianjian (Guangdong Yearbook) of 1942. According to this, there are four major Daoist temples on Mount Luofu: Chongxu guan, Huanglong guan, Baihe guan, and Sulao guan, housing several hundred Daoists. In the Qing dynasty, anyone belonging to one of them had to pay twenty taels every year; after he had lived there for three years, he was allowed to remain for the rest of his life, but he was still required to donate money for oil and incense ( xiangyou qian). Wealthy men were allowed to build cottages and could live by themselves on the mountain ( Guangdong nianjian 6.166–167).
Another early source is the Changchun daojiao yuanliu (Origins and Development of the Daoism Lineage of [Qiu] Changchun) by Chen Minggui of the Qing. It states that under the Qing, most Daoist temples in Guangdong belonged to the Quanzhen school, as disciples tracing their descent from the Quanzhen master Ceng Yiguan had spread all over the area. Ceng Yiguan, a tenth-generation disciple of the Quanzhen master Li Qingqiu, came from Shandong to Mount Luofu in the late seventeenth century. During the reign of Kangxi, he became the
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abbot of the Chongxu guan and other Daoist temples ( Changchun daojiao yuanliu 7.38).
How were the Daoist temples on Mount Luofu managed? Was a strict monastic system maintained, and were all members required to renounce the world? No direct records remain today, but extraneous evidence suggests that the system was rather loose and that the temples were like high-grade hermitages for the upper classes. The English traveler A. M. Henry who went hiking on Mount Luofu in the late nineteenth century, for example, notes that the Sulao guan was the wealthiest temple there because it was “largely patronised by rich merchants from Hong Kong and elsewhere, who come to spend a few months or weeks in what they call religious retirement, living on vegetable diet” (Henry 1886, 320–322). Another Westerner, the English vice consul, made an excursion to Mount Luofu in 1892 and visited the Sulao guan. He was welcomed by two men speaking English. Both of them had stayed in the United States for many years as a cook and a merchant. After they retired, they came to the Sulao guan to quietly pass the remainder of their lives (Bourne 1895). The Sulao guan as an upper-class hermitage is succeeded by spirit-writing cults with the name of xianguan, which literally means “lodge of the immortals,” such as the Yunquan xianguan, which arose in the first stage of the daotan movement.
Aside from Mount Luofu, the various local areas of each prefecture also had Daoist temples, whose organization usually followed the model of those on the mountain and which belonged to the same sect. Daoist priests residing there were usually called daoshi; they lived on mountains and practiced physical and spiritual cultivation, earning their living by performing rituals for people ( Guangdong nianjian 6.167).
Daoists from Mount Luofu established or rebuilt most of the local temples in Guangdong. In these temples Lüzu was always worshiped, and in some temples spirit-writing séances were also performed.
Let us consider Daoist temples in the city of Guangzhou as an example. Here we have several institutions, for example the Sanyuan gong (Temple of the Three Primes), located at the foot of Mount Yuexiu, in the northern part of the city. Its long history can be traced to the Yuegang yuan, established by Bao Jing in the fourth century. At the end of the Ming dynasty, it fell into ruin, but during the reign of Shunzhi (1644–1661), it was repaired. In 1706 it was restored further by the Daoist Du Yangdong, who had been an abbot of the Cho
ngxu guan ( Guangdong tongzhi vol. 229; Gujilue 14, Siguan 1; Luofu zhinan;
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23). The Sanyuan gong was one of the official monasteries of the Quanzhen school (Yoshioka 1989, 181).
At the foot of Mount Yuexiu was another Daoist temple called Yingyuan gong (Temple of Accordance with the Primes), which was also one of the official monasteries of the Quanzhen school (Yoshioka 1989, 181). It was established by Ke Yanggui, a disciple of Ceng Yiguan ( Changchun daojiao yuanliu 7.38). John Henry Gray, a missionary who lived in Canton in the late nineteenth century, visited it and found dozens of priests in residence there. They worshiped at three major shrines, one dedicated to the Three Pure Ones (Sanqing), one to the Dipper Mother (Doumu), and one to Lü Chunyang, that is, Lü Dongbin. In the latter, Gray says, stood a bowl with holy water, used by the faithful to cure ailments (1875, 382).
In addition, nineteenth-century Canton had at least four Daoist temples centered on the worship of Lüzu. There was first the Chunyang guan (Temple to Chunyang), located on Mount Shuzhu in the southern suburb across the Pearl River. It was founded in 1824 by a Daoist named Li Mingche. Then there was the Xiuyuan jingshe (Pure Lodge for Cultivating the Prime), located in Huangsha in a western suburb.
It was originally a shrine of Lüzu built in 1854. Receiving income from two fish ponds, it was managed by Daoists invited from the Chongxu guan ( Nanhai xianzhi [1872], vol. 5, Jianzhi lue 2.51). A governor general, Rui Lin, was one of the patrons because his deformed son recovered after drinking a medical tea prescribed in a séance performed there ( Nanhai xianzhi [1910], vol. 26, Zalu 51). The wife of John Henry Gray observed one such séance in 1872 in a Lüzu temple. She writes: We saw the monk and the petitioner kneeling before the altar. The monk was kneeling in front of the devotee. Our attention now became absorbed in another monk, who had before him on a table a large wooden board covered with sand. He was standing by the altar. A second monk was by his side, with pen and paper, to write down the message supposed to be delivered by the god whose image stood on the altar. A third monk joined the other two, whose duty, we learned, was to explain the message when written.
. . . The chief performer now took his instrument, which was a piece of stick about a foot in length, into his hand, or rather he balanced it on his two forefingers. It resembles a long pen-handle, and is made of white wood. From the centre below projects a small piece of wood, which writes on the sanded board. It altogether reminded me of the planchettes so much in fashion a few years ago in England.
In a few minutes the wooden instrument began to move, as was sup-
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posed, without the help of the monk who held it. It moved up and down on the board, tracing large characters on it; and when the board was marked all over, that part of the message was transcribed on paper by the monk, the sand was shaken, and the board placed again on the table ready for the continuation of the writing. This happened three times, the petitioner looking on all the while with rapt attention. The fourth time the lightly-balanced wooden instrument refused to move, and the monk said the god had retired. (I. Gray 1880, 109)
The above description makes it clear that the spirit-writing procedures used in the Xiuyuan jingshe were very similar to those employed in Daoist cults in Hong Kong today.
The third temple was the Chunyang guan located near the Bridge of Huanzhu in the southern suburb across the Pearl River. It also had a spirit-writing séance for ordinary believers, which was observed by John Henry Gray (H. Gray 1875, 85–86). The fourth temple of Lü Chunyang was located at the foot of Mount Baiyun in the northern suburb—close to this famous abode of immortals (Kerr 1904). There were, therefore, more than a few Daoist temples worshiping Lüzu in nineteenth-century Guangzhou, and most of them had spirit-writing séances or provided talisman water with medical effectiveness for ordinary people. These Daoist temples were established prior to the daotan movement, and it is likely that they supplied a model for the latter.
In addition to these major religious institutions, there were also rather secularized temples called “Daoist lodges” ( daoguan), found both in urban areas and in the countryside. People called their priests Nah mouh louh, indicating a religious practitioner specialized in chanting scriptures, exorcising ghosts, and averting disasters.3 Such priests were highly popular, and as a result the “lodges” spread widely among the common people. Typically today, a Nah mouh louh handles rites of marriage, death, birth, growth, transition, and construction, as well as the selection of the appropriate days and the healing of diseases. Established Daoists, such as those on Mount Luofu, however, consider these priests deceitful and bothersome and reject their activities as het-erodox ( Guangdong nianjian 6.167).
The Guangdong nianjian also describes other Daoist organizations, so-called “charitable societies” ( shanshe), which have a looser connection with religion, encourage their members to practice goodness, and work for the salvation of all. They worship Laozi, Lüzu, Guandi, and the Monkey God and tend to be middle-class or rich merchants (6.167). This description, though not detailed, shows that the popular discourse on the hierarchy and role division of Daoist temples, or-
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ganizations, and practitioners was already shaped in the Republican period. In fact, the differences among them cannot have been so clear.
However, as spirit-writing cults claimed to be Daoist, they were necessarily involved in this discourse. As a result, daotan had to take a stance that tried to approach the lifestyle of Daoist literati on Mount Luofu while also claiming differences between themselves and the Nah mouh louh to avoid being identified with the low-ranking priests.
Manifestations of Lüzu in Different Social Groups
Lüzu or Lü Dongbin is a figure of multiple characteristics and attributes. As Baldrian-Hussein has pointed out, in tales of the Northern Song, he appears as a Daoist, a calligrapher, a poet, an alchemist, a healer, a soothsayer, a drug peddler, and an ink seller, relating to all these diverse groups of people. Even in the early Song, Lü Dongbin was already an object of widespread cults among them (Baldrian-Hussein 1986, 134, 139). The Pearl River Delta under the Qing reveals a similar situation in that Lü Dongbin was worshiped among various social groups, most notably medicine merchants and children.
Guangzhou and Foshan, the core cities of the Pearl River Delta, were both famous for their pharmaceuticals, being trading centers where herbal medicine from all over the country were gathered and distributed. Drug merchants and peddlers constantly came and went, mainly by boat over the riverways and canals. The two cities were also famous for pharmaceutical manufacturing, and in Foshan medicine production was a chief industry, ranking equal with that of pottery, iron, silk, and cotton (Luo 1994, 213–214). According to the Foshan zhongyi xiangzhi (Gazetteer of Foshan District) of the year 1923, there were many pharmacies, including about twenty shops that primarily made pills, powders, and salves (6.13). In addition, there were about forty shops that provided boiled medical teas made from herbs as prescribed by doctors often employed by the shop, and ten or more shops that sold unprocessed medical materials. Some of the shops were founded as early as the late Ming (6.24).
Pharmacies often advertised their products as being based on the mystical prescriptions of immortals. Similarly, medicine peddlers, when they sold goods at marketplaces, often advertised the efficacy of their medicines with mysterious tales of having met an immortal or Daoist, in the mountains or in a dream, and having received a book of prescriptions from him. Medicine merchants, therefore, felt special veneration for immortals and Daoist priests, while consumers
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viewed pharmacies and drug peddlers with both awe and suspicion.
The close relationship between pharmacies and immortals or Daoists appears all over China but seems to have been particularly strong in the Pearl River Delta, where drug traders came and went, medici
ne production flourished, and sacred mountains with immortals’ legends were nearby.
One example is a shop called Chen-Li Ji, an old pharmacy established in the Ming dynasty. According to its founding legend, an un-specified immortal, who might be Lü Dongbin, helped create the original shop and later acted variously to preserve and support it (see Yu 1929, 94–96). A similar story, told in the morality book Yinzhiwen tushuo (Illustrated Explanation of the Text of Secret Blessings; dated 1899), notes that one day Chen Tiquan, the shop’s founder, climbed Mount Xiqiao to pick herbs to make a medical tea for his sick mother. He prayed on the mountain for forty-nine nights. One morning he met an old man picking herbs, who understood his situation and gave him a drug and a book. Chen made his mother take the drug, and then she recovered. The old man’s book contained prescriptions for pills or powders, and Chen realized that the old man must have been an immortal. He followed the prescriptions for his drugs, all of which were very effective, and opened a pharmacy ( Yinzhiwen tushuo, 417–418).