With the approach of July, there is a temporary rush to do obeisance for those who do not normally bother to worship, as the furnace of the exam season heralds boom-time for a number of deities concerned with examinations.
This is especially so for the Kao Kung statue, one of the 24 icons under Tainan's Cheng Huang, scholarly and refined, book satchel in hand, with a sea of copies of examination entrance certificates pasted in front of him.
Embracing the wrong faith? Because there have been so many people asking for success at the two Cheng Huang temples in the ancient city of Tainan, the temples have simply designed a red-paper chart on which are written the names of candidates, types of exam, times, places, candidate numbers, seat positions and so on. When this has been filled in by the candidates it is given to the Cheng Huang for perusal so that he can provide protection.
Looking through this chart at the types of exams listed, apart from the most often seen high-school and university joint-entrance exams, there are also many MA and PhD candidates sitting research institute exams. There is also the TOEFL exam for study abroad, civil-service exam, calculation exam and Chinese medicine exam, and even the selection test for middle-school principals, exams for army officials and driving tests. Such a variety is not only surprising but is proof of just what an exam-orientated society we are.
"Actually, they are all praying the wrong way," says Ho Pei-fu, associate professor of history at National Cheng Kung University. His interpretation is that the words "kao kung" have been misconstrued to mean something like "success in the exams." In fact, there was a "kao kung" department in the Han dynasty which evaluated civil servants and was something like today's Ministry of Personnel. When the civil service examination system was created in the Sui dynasty, it was actually adjusted to allow officials from the "kao kung" to hold the exams but, at the time of Emperor Hsuan Tsung of the Tang dynasty, it was returned to its original office and ceased to have connections with any examinations. Because of this, students should really be beseeching the Examinations Department, because it is responsible for educational executive work and is the department that manages the examination service.
Having heard the truth from Ho Pei-fu, some students have already changed to sticking up lucky lists appealing to the Examinations Department. Most candidates are more sceptical and simply hedge their bets by putting up two lists.
Faced with a society with an ever more confusing number of examinations and requests from devotees, the Cheng Huang temples in Tainan have taken to hanging red wooden plaques reading "examination officer" on their shrines--on one side for exams for high-schools and below, and on the other for university and professional exams. The 24 icons work together as an alliance to provide a service for candidates.
Provincial chairman of the underworld: Requesting success in the exams actually shows a lack of understanding of Cheng Huang's position. In the system of folk religion, Cheng Huang is the generic term for a local administrator and judicial office similar to a provincial chairman or mayor in the mundane world. "Cheng Huang is totally a reflection of the executive in the human world," points out Ho Pei-fu. The system is arranged according to hierarchy and size of jurisdiction, stretching from the boss, Tung Yueh, through city and county down to local neighborhood and household officials. When Taoist priests are practicing their craft they will often send up reports according to this hierarchy, and official "memos" (talismans) are also varied accordingly.
The Cheng Huangs look after definite jurisdictions and mirror the local officials of the human world by administering the underworld. After death, people are first examined by the Cheng Huang, then submit his conclusion to the senior minister, Yen Wang. The Cheng Huang is thus not only a provincial head in the underworld but also a judge there.
You can stand court, but can you take the temple? Walking towards the Cheng Huang temple in the evening you are not confronted by the usual resplendence of most temples. Instead you are startled by a plaque hanging over the gate reading "you are here," hinting that everybody will eventually come for their day of reckoning.
Stepping inside the gate, the studded clubs, cangues, axes and other instruments of punishment on each side are frightening in the evening atmosphere, and the faces of a group of generals are even more awe-inspiring. The civil officials judge the good and the bad--the military carry out the punishment; ox-headed and horse-faced demon messengers from purgatory detain the criminal and the gold and silver generals put him or her in a cangue; the white messenger of death turns his eyes up fiercely and sticks out his tongue, while the black messenger carries the arrest warrant. You cannot help but tremble in such a sinister atmosphere. Then there is the large abacus that is said to automatically work itself in the night as it calculates the deeds of a person's life. "This terrifying and intimidating courtroom-like interior design could supplement the shortcomings of the executive authorities in a naive age of folk beliefs," says Ho Pei-fu.
It is said that during the Ching dynasty and the Japanese occupation local officials who came across difficult cases would stay overnight in the Cheng Huang temple and ask the spirits for enlightenment. There were also officials who, when they arrested a stubborn suspect, would take them to swear an oath in front of the Cheng Huang. With the spirit and human worlds joining hands to solve the case, unable to withstand this threat, the criminal could only confess.
The Hupei saying, "The guilty person can go into court, but cannot stand the temple," is actually a reference to the Cheng Huang temple. No wonder then that the older generation will not allow children to enter Cheng Huang temples, worried that they will be terrified.
Originally it was just "objects": The Cheng Huang system reflects the human bureaucracy, yet the earliest Cheng Huang was not human but the subject of a kind of fetishistic worship directed at town walls (cheng) and moats (huang). Juan Chang-jui, head of the anthropological study group at the Taipei Municipal Museum, explains that fetish objects are manmade things. We worship many spirits of objects, such as immovable town walls, moats, bridges and roads, as well as movable objects such as beds, doors and kitchen stoves.
Originally just directed at the "objects" of town walls and moats, in the period of the Three Kingdoms, some 1700 years ago, the religion entered the temple and came to depend on icons. Famous literary figures of the Tang and Sung dynasties, such as Chang Chiu-ling, Han Yu, Tu Mu and Li Shang-ying, all wrote works about worshipping Cheng Huang, testifying to the wide spread of the cult. In the Ming dynasty, the Tai Tsu emperor gave different status to the king, duke, earl and marquis Cheng Huang, and the size of their temples was fixed according to the courts of their corresponding earthly officials. Under the bureaucratic system, the Cheng Huang became a copy of the human system of officials.
With increasing anthropomorphization, the Cheng Huang had to have a wife. The earliest appearance of this wife is in the Sung dynasty and today the rear chamber of most Cheng Huang temples has an icon representing her. Because the inner rooms of some temples are too small and the subordinate spirits too many, the Cheng Huang's wife is sometimes moved out to the main hall next to the the Cheng Huang himself. Keelung's Cheng Huang temple even has a Cheng Huang "prince" that is worshipped alongside the Cheng Huang and his wife.
Leadership struggle? Because the Cheng Huang were laid down by the state and followed the changes of executive districts, once a county was established a Cheng Huang temple would be built there. "If you examine at what times and with what status the Cheng Huang temples were established, you can reveal the process of Taiwan's development," says Hsieh Chia-jung, a teacher at Yuanli middle school in Tainan county who has undertaken research into the Cheng Huang. Such was the case with Tainan prefecture which, in the Ming dynasty, had a prefectural Cheng Huang Temple; Tso-ying in Fengshan county and the then Cholo county's Chiayi city established Cheng Huang temples in the early Ching dynasty; while Pinan's Taitung, mainly an aboriginal area not on the scale of a city, did not see the appearance of a Cheng Huang temple.
The expansion of the official Cheng Huang was suspended during the Japanese occupation with a total of nineteen temples. However, people soon began to establish illegal private Cheng Huang altars at which to worship, leading to an incessant increase in the number of temples, so that today Taiwan has more than 60. With the island at present being divided into 21 counties and cities, it is hard to know how these areas are allotted to the gods. Might this lead to a "leadership struggle?"
Dark officials and back-room business? How is Cheng Huang appointed? The authorities certainly do not make appointments. On the contrary, people offer farfetched explanations and hold their own "general elections." Their methods include selecting good local officials, who were supposed to be outstanding administrators when alive and can continue with their responsibilities after death. It is said that Tsao Chin, who built the Tsao Kung Canal in the Ching dynasty, took responsibility as Hsinchu's Cheng Huang after he died.
People with talent and virtue can also take on the job. Thus is the case with Fengshan's Cho Tsao-chang, who became first Cheng Huang of Kaohsiung county's Tsukuan rural township; Lai Ho, a famous literary figure during the Japanese occupation, was elected to succeed him. There is also a folk story in Taiwan that says if water spirits can suffer in the water for three years without grabbing people, then they can also become Cheng Huang. No matter whether human or spirit, so long as you are virtuous you have a chance of becoming a Cheng Huang.
It is because of this that each area's Cheng Huang has a different birthday: The birthday of Penghu's Cheng Huang falls on the sixth day of the fifth lunar month, and Hsiahai's ceremony is on the thirteenth. Hsinchu's Cheng Huang birthday is not until the fifteenth of the seventh month.
Virtuous people can become Cheng Huang after death; hard-working Cheng Huangs can be promoted. Hsinchu's Cheng Huang was a county Cheng Huang during the eighteenth century but when Hsin-chu was incorporated into the jurisdiction of Taipei prefecture in the late nineteenth century he became a prefectural Cheng Huang. Following this it is said that he appeared and repelled an enemy force for which he was knighted and became today's "metropolitan Cheng Huang." Then there is the Prefectural Cheng Huang in Taipei's Wuchang Street which, following retrocession, changed itself to the Cheng Huang for Taiwan province and took Retrocession Day as its festival day so as to keep up with the times.
Appointment and promotion are matters of legend and history, but finding out the truth from the temple authorities about the responsibilities and periods of tenure of the spirit world is still a heaven-kept secret. It would seem that the appointment of the Cheng Huang is still a backroom affair!
Headless chicken campaigning: Although the Cheng Huang are judges in the netherworld, in the past their positions still seem to have been higher than their human counterparts. The Ching dynasty thus stipulated that before a prefect could take up his post he would have to first report to the local Cheng Huang temple. In the eighteenth century, at the time of the Kang Hsi Emperor, when Yu Chao-yueh became prefect of Taiwan, he went to the Cheng Huang temple to take three oaths against avarice, timidity and favoritism! In the early nineteenth century, during the Ching dynasty, the provincial prefect Yang Kuei-sen also took such an oath.
Such scenes are very familiar but lack today's startling sight of chicken blood being spilled all over the place. Whenever an election comes around today, candidates determined to show they will "definitely not buy any votes" come to the Cheng Huang temple to behead a chicken and swear that if they are lying they will share the poor bird's fate.
It is hard to know what the Cheng Huang over the altar thinks about all this as he looks at the increasingly gory oath taking and the ever more complex management of human affairs.
There's no harm in looking and not praying! Look at the series of Chinese couplets inside the Cheng Huang temple! "If you are wicked, then it is no good praying and burning incense; if your heart is righteous, then there's no harm in looking at me and not praying"; "If you are going to put on a big show making requests to me, then quickly turn back and do not hurt anybody."
In comparison with those among today's worshippers who are not concerned with matters of integrity but just seek favors from the gods and an exchange relationship, the righteousness of the Cheng Huang cannot be flattered. This might mean less income from incense money and less devotees, but these gods who reward goodness and punish evil might serve as models that judges of the realms of darkness and light would do well to emulate.
[Picture Caption]
"You have arrived." As you step into the Cheng Huang temple, signs remind you that everyone will come for their day of judgement. (photo by Cheng Yuan-ching)
Worshipping? The exams draw close and students frantically supply the Kao Kung icon with their candidate numbers in the hope it will bring them success. (photo by Cheng Yuan-ching)
A general carries a studded club as he goes on his investigation tour to arrest wrongdoers and expel evil.
The birthday of Hsiahai Temple's Cheng Huang in Taipei. "Cheng Huang" is the name of an official position rather than a god, so each has a different birthday.
A dragon-shaped instrument of chastisement. If aristocrats break the law they will not get much sympathy from the Cheng Huang.
"The guilty person can go into court but can he stand the temple?" It is said that the great abacus works itself at night to calculate the merit of a person's life. (photo by Cheng Yuan-ching)
Worshipping? The exams draw close and students frantically supply the Kao Kung icon with their candidate numbers in the hope it will bring them success. （photo by Cheng Yuan-ching）
A general carries a studded club as he goes on his investigation tour to arrest wrongdoers and expel evil.
The birthday of Hsiahai Temple's Cheng Huang in Taipei. "Cheng Huang" is the name of an official position rather than a god, so each has a different birthday.
A dragon-shaped instrument of chastisement. If aristocrats break the law they will not get much sympathy from the Cheng Huang.
"The guilty person can go into court but can he stand the temple?" It is said that the great abacus works itself at night to calculate the merit of a person's life. （photo by Cheng Yuan-ching）
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