Bathing and Basking Festival

Eopgyeongdae is a mirror that reflects the good and bad deeds of the deceased. Buddhism believes that the deceased should stand in front of this mirror and confess all the bad deeds they have done during their lives. The kinds and amounts of bad deeds reflected in the mirror decide which hell the deceased must go to. Consisting of a mirror and a stand, the eopgyeongdae is usually placed in a temple hall related to the underworld such as the Hall of the Dark Realm, Ksitigarbha Hall or the Hall of Ten Kings. This eopgyeongdae consists of a stand in the shape of a lion and a mirror encircled by inscriptions of flames. The round design encircled by flames symbolizes the mirror.

Cap Go Meh, known as Zhang Yet Ban (正月半) to the local Hakka of Singkawang, is closely associated with the street cleansing ritual (sei lu 洗路) performed the day before. The network between temples and tatung represents an important social affiliation in the Singkawang community. Sin Ming San (神明生 or temple celebration) is the occasion for temples and tatung to rekindle their ties and strengthen their rapport. Rather than competing on prowess, the tatungs show mutual respect. This book hopes to present Cap Go Meh of Singkawang as not just a one-off mass ritual performance. It is a tradition embedded in the belief systems of the Hakka Chinese and Dayak of Singkawang. “十五暝”又稱“正月半”，對山口洋的客家鄉親而言，與前一天所舉行的“洗路”儀式密切相連。廟宇與“落童”間的網絡更體現了山口洋社群間最重要的社會關係。“神明生”（或廟慶）重新連結起廟宇與“落童”，是強化兩者關係的重要場合。“乩童”之間互敬的氛圍遠勝於“拼場”。本書不僅僅將山口洋的“十五暝”視為一場民俗盛典，更希望呈現出山口洋客家人與當地達雅人信仰體系的悠長交織。

Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies, 2014

For centuries the performance of rituals has been one of the most common, complex, remunerative, and controversial activities in Chinese Buddhism. This article lays out the contours of the contemporary Chinese Buddhist “ritual field,” focusing on rituals called “Dharma assemblies” (fahui) in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Based on a selection of announcements and ritual schedules posted in monasteries during 2009-2013, I show which rituals are performed and how they are marketed. I also show when and how frequently certain rituals linked to the annual cycle of festivals are performed, and analyze and suggest categorization schemas for the rituals. Finally, I discuss the relationships between ritual activities on the one hand and commercial activity, monastic revenue, and seminary studies on the other. Annotated translations of six announcements and ritual schedules, followed by transcriptions of the source Chinese texts for these translations, are included in the appendixes.

Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore 民俗曲藝, 2019

Rural areas around Changshu city in Jiangsu preserve strong religious traditions of worship of numerous local tutelary deities which can be traced back to the imperial period. This worship takes the form of festivals at village temples, often coinciding with communal spring celebrations. Baojuan, prosimetric vernacular texts recited by the local professional performers for lay audiences, constitute a common practice of worship of local deities in Changshu. This storytelling is locally known as "telling scriptures" (jiangjing) and makes a specific cultural tradition of the Changshu area. Baojuan narrating stories of local tutelary deities are often performed at temple festivals, thus making a significant contribution to the variety of ritual and entertainment during these communal events.

History of Religions 51.1, 2011

The article examines the large public festivals in late imperial Hangzhou, notably the processions of major gods such as Marshal Wen and the Emperor of the Eastern Peak, and their place in local religious culture. It argues that, while the Buddhist pilgrimage attracted large numbers of people from outside the city, the Hangzhou local religious landscape was more deeply framed by Daoist rituals. It then explores the successive policies towards the festivals by the late Qing and Republican regimes, and looks at how they transformed the festivals, aimed some specific types of religious practices rather than others, and thus reshaped the local religious landscape over the course of one century.

Modern Chinese Religion II: 1850 - 2015, edited by Vincent Goossaert, Jan Kiely and John Lagerwey (Brill, 2015): 371-400.

This chapter is also publicly available on Google Books. https://books.google.com.au/books?id=mv7dCgAAQBAJ&lpg=PA578-IA6&dq=Modern%20Chinese%20Religion%20II%2C%20371&pg=PA371#v=onepage&q&f=false

International Journal of Advanced Research (IJAR), 2019

International Journal of Advanced Research (IJAR)

Among all the rituals that a yin-yang leads or presides over, funeral rituals are the most important. Funeral rites are central for families as well as for the ritual life of the entire village. The death of a person is always a sad reminder to the living that the yin world is "only a paper's thickness away from the yang world" (Z. B. Meng, personal communication, August 2006). In contrast, a healing ritual can be optional and might even be replaced by seeing a doctor; a memorial 1 ritual also can be optional, or can sometimes be presided over by the head of the household or by a fellow villager. A funeral ritual, however, must always be done by a yin-yang. The bedrock of this funeral tradition, the worldview underpinning its meaning and importance, is the cosmology of the villagers. At its core is the view that there is another world, an after-life world, or, in the terms that identify the ritual leader, a "yin world" that co-exists with the yang world. A person's journey from the yang world to the yin world is not as simple as one might thinkit is not akin to moving from point A to point B in the yang world. It warrants and 1 In the Xi-Hai-Gu region, memorial rituals are generally divided into two kinds: the informal and the formal. The informal rituals are those that are held every seven days after a relative dies for up to seven weeks, which is called the Jinqi (盡七, or the last seven); then the next memorial ritual is held on the 100th day, which is call Bairi zhi (百 日紙 the hundred day's paper money burning). After that, there are anniversary memorials for three years, respectively called Yi-nian zhi, Er-nian zhi and San-nian zhi (一年紙, 二年紙 and 三年紙 first, second or third year paper money burning). The third year is always the biggest celebration and many families will hire a yin-yang or several yin-yangs to hold a memorial ritual specifically aimed at saving the soul of the deceased and escorting the soul into the Western Pure Land, which is a Buddhist concept.