A quiet girl:
Matsu, also called Sacred Mother in Heaven, is of the Taoist pantheon. Thus there are only Matsu temples and halls, but no Matsu monasteries or nunneries. Still, legend has it that Matsu's mother was impregnated by a concoction from the Buddhist goddess Kuan Yin, or that Matsu was actually Kuan Yin appearing in human form.
Though Matsu may be associated, like other gods, with "Sacred" and "Heaven," Matsu originally was part of the mundane world of men. The Meichou Matsu is done up in the same dress and makeup as that worn by young girls a thousand years ago.
In the first year of the Chien Lung reign of the Sung dynasty (960 AD), the Lin family of Putien in Fukien Province had a girl. Because she did not utter a cry or scream in the months after she was born, she was called "the quiet little miss." It is said that she could swim free of cares in the sea in weather both fair and foul. Thus people said she was a female dragon, or a transmogrified goddess of the sea.
When sixteen, standing by the side of a well, the "quiet little miss" had her divine inspiration, and from then on had supernatural powers. She could ride the ocean waves on a straw mat and turn rice stalks into fir trees to save traders in peril at sea. At 29 (988 AD), on the festival of the 9th day of the 9th month, she said goodbye to her family, climbed a peak outside Meichou and from there rode the wind, ascending into heaven. The villagers immediately set up a memorial to worship her, and called her the "virtuous spiritual-medium maiden."
Because Matsu never married, many tales of romance have been attached to her legend. The strange beasts Chien-li-yen and Shun-feng-er ended up becoming Matsu's servants after failing to coerce her into marriage, becoming the generals opening the road before her. And the fact that it always seems to rain on the morning of Matsu's birthday procession is because Lord Paosheng, having failed in his pursuit of Matsu, is intentionally trying to wash away her rouge.
Legends and myths about Matsu's family could fill a volume. What's interesting is there are few records from the era in which she was born, nothing but a few simple descriptive lines. But by the end of the Ming dynasty, almost 700 years later, even her ancestors from the Tang dynasty, seven generations previous to hers, were coming out of the woodwork. There were also many records of the routine things of her life, such as her upbringing and education. Lee Feng-mao, a researcher at the Institute of Chinese Literature and Philosophy at the Academia Sinica, describes this type of development as "starting with nothing and filling in the information later."