Guan Di, Hero and Guardian

Guan Di Shrine, Manhattan

Prasenjit Duara’s 1988 article “Superscribing Symbols: The Myth of Guandi, Chinese God of War,” published in The Journal of Asian Studies, provides an overview of the different myths told about the Guan Di over the course of more than a thousand years, as well as a theory to explain how the differences in these myths co-exist:

Myths are simultaneously continuous and discontinuous. I explore this relationship by examining the myth of Guandi through a concept that I call the “superscription of symbols.” […]

Is Guandi the protector of the Buddhist faith or a Chinese god of war? Whether we speak of them as conceptions of the spirit world or as embodiment of this-wordly interests, the two visions seem to have very little in common. (778-9)

Guan Yu was a historical figure in the late Han dynasty:

Guan Yu’s biography appears in the Sanguozhi (History of the three kingdoms), written by Chen Shou about sixty years after Guan Yu’s death (Chen 1973, 36:939-42). Chen Shou […] writes of Guan Yu’s friendship and devotion to Liu Bei of the royal house of the later Han.

Together with the butcher Zhang Fei, the two friends took the famous “Oath of the Peach Orchard” binding them to protect one another until death. Still later Guan Yu became a general and a governor of a province. Even though he was tempted by the enemy of his lord, Cao Cao, with a marquisate, Guan Yu remained faithful to his oath. In 220 A.D. He was captured by the enemy and put to death. (780)

His spirit appeared as an apparition to a Buddhist monk in the 6th Century CE:

One of the earliest miracle stories about Guan Yu is derived from a temple stele of 820 A.D. Erected when the Yuquan temple in Dangyang County in modern Hubei was reconstructed. Here, in the vicinity of Yuquan mountain, Guan Yu was decapitated during the long battle he fought against the enemies of his lord, Liu Bei.

One still night, when the Buddhist monk Zhi Yi (A.D. 538-97) was deep in meditation under a great tree on the mountain, the silence was suddenly filled by a booming voice: “Return me my head.” When the monk looked up he saw the ghostly apparition of a figure whom he recognized as Guan Yu, the spirit of the mountain.

An exchange followed between the two in which the monk reminded Guan Yu of the severed heads of Guan Yu’s own victims. Deeply impressed by the logic of karmic retribution, the spirit of Guan Yu sought instruction in the Buddhist faith from the monk, built a monastery for him, and began to guard the mountain. Later the mountain people built a temple to Guan Yu where they offered sacrifices at the beginning of each new season. (779)

This temple was built in 713 CE, and was affiliated with the nearby Buddhist monastery:

The earliest temple dedicated to Guan Yu is the Yuquan temple in Dangyang County in Hubei, where he is said to have been killed. This temple was established in 713 A.D. And was attached to the Buddhist monastery on Yuquan mountain. Over the next two hundred years […] his role as the Chinese protector of Buddhist temples (in place of the Indian devas) spread rapidly throughout the empire (Inoue 1941, no. 1:48).

Thus did Buddhism also become sinicized […] One may pause to consider the true direction of the acculturation process: did the Buddhists convert Guan Yu, or did he in fact make them a little more authentically Chinese? (781)

This question is an important one to consider, especially in light of subsequent “superscriptions” to the story of Guan Yu.

Buddhist Guan Di statue, City of 10,000 Buddhas.

For example, the Daoists quickly responded by claiming Guan Yu as one of their own:

It did not take long for Daoist temples also to adopt him as their protector god […] In Xiezhou in Shanxi, where Guan Yu was born, there is a famous lake called Salt Lake. In the Song a Daoist temple was established to Guan Yu at Salt Lake. According to the founding myth, a temple to the legendary Yellow Emperor had originally been built by the lake. However, soon afterward a demon who turned out to be Chi You, leader of the Miao tribes defeated by the Yellow Emperor, began to menace the area.

The Daoist Master Zhang was instructed by the imperial court to find a way to put an end to this desecration of imperial honor. The Master invoked the assistance of Guan Yu, who dispatched shadow (yin) soldiers to fight and vanquish Chi You. The temple was founded in order to thank Guan Yu and commemorate the event.

The founding myth of the Guan Yu temple at Salt Lake has all the ingredients of a Daoist legitimating myth: it draws on a potentially significant element of the story of Guan Yu—his birthplace—and combines it with the sacred geography and ancient history of China; with this as background, it identifies the imperial court as the patron of the Daoists who have successfully invoked the spirit of Guan Yu to restore the imperial honor. (781)

Later, Guan Yu gained both popular worship and imperial patronage (in 1615, he received the imperial title di). Duara devotes an entire section to “The Guandi Myth and the Imperial State,” but I’m going to skip that (for now) to focus on Guandi’s popularity among the populace:

It is well known that the spread of the worship of Guan Yu as a folk deity beyond the confines of sectarian religion was communicated in the vernacular novels and plays of the Song-Yuan transition. […]

Huang Huajie links Guan Yu’s growing popularity in the Ming (1368-1644) and the Qing (1644-1911) to the great socioeconomic changes of the era, which of course also enabled the popular media to spread. As the rural economy became increasingly commercialized, self-sufficient kin-based communities tended to disintegrate. In their place, settlements came to be composed of unrelated kin groups, merchants for whom sojourning had become a way of life, and marginal peoples without a community, such as vagrants and bandits.

None of these new groups was able to use bonds of kinship or community to hold the settlements together. As a symbol of loyalty and guardianship, the image of Guan Yu inspired an ethic of trust and camaraderie to hold together “a society of strangers.” (781-2)

Among both merchants and villagers, Guan Di was worshiped as a Wealth God. Like Zhao Gong Ming (whose worship seems to be linked to Guan Di’s), he was considered a military wealth god rather than a civilian one (789).

Guan Di Temple, Reunion Island (Indian Ocean).

Among the bandits and secret societies, Guan Di’s association with oaths became paramount:

For the rootless bandits and rebels of secret societies, the oath of loyalty that Guan Yu upheld gained an unparalleled salience. All rites and ceremonies among the Triads, for instance, including those performed at the initiation of recruits and the punishment of traitors, took place before the altars of Guan Yu and the founders of the secret society. (782)

I discussed the complicated alliance and falling out between the Triads and the Christian-influenced Taiping Rebels in a previous post. Huang Huajie notes the Triads and other secret societies also fought against the Taipings on behalf of the hated Qing Dynasty, and theorizes on how this unlikely alliance came about:

Rural elites, led by the gentry, which mobilized the resistance and ultimately defeated the Taipings, were able to draw antistate secret society members into their local armies. Although monetary inducements were doubtless important in attracting the secret societies, Huang Huajie (1968:230) believes that the appeal to the image of Guandi was more significant. […]

For them, the oath symbolized loyalty to brotherhood, not to the state that had been their enemy. Yet under circumstances when it could be demonstrated that Chinese civilization itself was under attack by the foreign-inspired Taipings, the identification of Guandi with the nation and Chinese civilization, shaped to a great extent by the imperial state and the elites, could be mobilized in defense of the imperial order. After all, had Guandi not defended the house of Han from the rebellious Yellow Turbans? (789-90)

Speaking of Guan Di’s role in the suppression of the Daoist Yellow Turban revolt, I initially was hesitant about worshiping Guan Di for exactly that reason. However, I realized that the ability to be worshiped by diametrically opposed sectors of society and hold space for these contradictions–as long as his worshipers conduct themselves with honor and loyalty–is intrinsic to Guan Di’s widespread popularity.

This realization of mine fits in well with Duara’s thesis of the “superscription of symbols.” Duara recognizes that across all of these differing conceptions of Guan Di, two things remain constant:

[…] If a myth represents radically discontinuous meanings, if its symbols are pursued by particular groups only for their own particular purposes, how can it continue to impart legitimacy so widely across the culture?

On closer examination the two visions of the same figure have at least two common features: the apotheosization of a hero and his role as guardian.

This commonality is hardly accidental or insignificant. It is what gives the myth its legitimating power and gives historical groups a sense of identity as they undergo changes. (779)

Idolatry

The Sembawang God of Wealth Temple in Northern Singapore is said to have the largest statue of Cai Shen in the world standing on its roof. The statue is 28 feet high and weighs 4 metric tons (8818.4 pounds). Preparations for the temple began in May of 1998 and construction began in June of 2004 (and has already been completed).

Now, impressive statues are not the most important aspect of religion. They are kinda cool to know about, though.

Zhao Gongming, A Wealth God

Zhao Gong Ming Statue, 1482

ADDENDUM: The Chinese Gods of Wealth website is insistent that the most common Chinese God of Wealth, the one who holds the appelation of “Cai Shen,” is Cai Bo Xing Jun (财帛星君), who was a magistrate of the Northern Wei Dynasty named Li Gui Zu (李诡祖). That website identifies Zhao Gong Ming as one of the five wealth gods corresponding to the cardinal directions, with Zhao Gong Ming occupying the Central direction.

The website says that while the 5th day of the 1st lunar month is a day to pray to all wealth gods, the 15th of the 3rd lunar month is the specific celebration date for Zhao Gong Ming. Zhao Gong Ming is also considered the “Military God of Wealth,” as opposed to several deities who are Civil Gods of Wealth (including Cai Bo Xing Jun, Bi Gan, and Fan Li).

I just San Francisco’s Chinatown, and I did indeed see separate statues for Cai Shen and Zhao Gongming, so I think that the Encyclopædia Brittanica is mistaken.

Original Post: One of a number of Chinese gods known to bestow wealth is Cai Shen (財神 – literally, “wealth god”). As discussed with Tu Di Gong, this title appears to be a position in the celestial hierarchy that can be filled by different individuals. The Encyclopædia Brittanica entry on Cai Shen lists two possible occupants of the position, and tells a very interesting story about the first:

The Ming-dynasty novel Fengshen Yanyi relates that when a hermit, Zhao Gongming, employed magic to support the collapsing Shang dynasty (12th century bce), Jiang Ziya, a supporter of the subsequent Zhou-dynasty clan, made a straw effigy of Zhao and, after 20 days of incantations, shot an arrow made of peach-tree wood through the heart of the image. At that moment Zhao became ill and died.

Later, during a visit to the temple of Yuan Shi, Jiang was rebuked for causing the death of a virtuous man. He carried the corpse, as ordered, into the temple, apologized for his misdeed, extolled Zhao’s virtues, and in the name of that god canonized Zhao as Caishen, god of wealth, and proclaimed him president of the Ministry of Wealth. (Some accounts reverse the dynastic loyalties of Zhao and Jiang.)

Another account identifies Caishen as Bi Gan, put to death by order of Zhou Xin, the last Shang emperor, who was enraged that a relative should criticize his dissolute life. Zhou is said to have exclaimed that he now had a chance to verify the rumour that every sage has seven openings in his heart.

There are a few things to consider aside from the fascinating example of Chinese malevolent sorcery/curses (it’s quite a process!). For one, both stories would place the origin of the wealth god(s) at the end of the Shang dynasty, over 3000 years ago.

For another, the dynastic loyalties are ultimately not that important. I don’t know what accounts reverse their loyalties, Jiang Ziya is the main character in Fengshen Yanyi and is clearly against the Shang Dynasty and in favor of the Zhou. However, the story of Zhao Gong Ming suggests that even if one is on the wrong side of the “Mandate of Heaven,” one deserves respect for one’s virtue and integrity.

What has always struck me about this story, though, is that Zhao Gong Ming is described as a “hermit.” That seems to be almost the opposite of a god of worldly wealth, and yet that’s what he ends up becoming

Then again, as the novel describes literally scene after scene of magical warfare, it seems like one had to be a practitioner of sorcery to be a character worth mentioning in the story, and recluses in the mountains would be the typical possessors of those skills.

Furthermore, a total of 365 gods are appointed from the slain at the end of the novel, so at that point there were probably bound to be some matches that didn’t make the most apparent sense.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where the statue shown above resides, discusses the origin of Zhao Gong Ming: “The figure probably represents the Heavenly Marshal Zhao (Zhao Gong Ming), a popular local god of wealth who was absorbed into the Daoist pantheon.” Notice that they translate “Gong Ming” as a title: I’m not sure if this is the only way to understand the name, but I will look into it.

Another thing the MMA’s short description brought up was the thought that probably all gods began as local gods, even if they arose in the context of a centralized empire and their cultus rapidly spread throughout that empire. It may be a little redundant to draw attention to this fact, if that is indeed the case, but it hadn’t really crossed my mind previously.

Wan Pin Pin’s 1987 dissertation on Investiture of the Gods says that the novel may have been written in the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368) rather than the Ming and by a different author than traditionally assumed (2-3). Be that as it may, the part of the dissertation that concerns me right now is the appendix, where Wan provides a chapter-by-chapter summary.

First, it must be noted that in the opening chapter of the novel, the king blasphemes Nu Wa while in her temple, she divines that his dynasty was already predestined to fall in 28 years, and she sends a fox demon and two other demons to “seduce him and confuse his mind, but not harm the people” (437).

Chapter 46 is where Zhao Gong Ming makes his entrance, as he is recruited to the cause of the Shang Dynasty. On his way to the battlefield, “Zhao subdued a black tiger and rode it” (480). Many contemporary statues of Zhao Gong Ming depict him riding a tiger:

Zhao Gong Ming seated on tiger

Chapter 47’s summary describes Zhao Gong Ming using a “magic whip” as well as a magic “Sea Pacifying Pearl” (480); according to a different but less reliable source, his weapon is a “lightning staff” and he possesses 24 of the pearls, which force “all foes present to their knees in blindness.” At one point, he loses both the whip (staff) and the pearl(s) as a result of running afoul of “two Taoists playing chess [or Go, weiqi in Chinese]” (481).

He then has to borrow the “Dragon Scissors” from his sisters, which “were transformed from two dragons and had the power to cut any immortal body into pieces” (481) That’s when Jiang Ziya, with the aid of another hermit named Lu Ya, uses magic to kill Zhao Gong Ming:

A Taoist Lu Ya came to visit, saying that he came to subdue Zhao Gong ming. He told Ziya to build an altar and bond a straw man with Zhao’s name written on it. He wrote charms on a book and set one lamp on the head of the straw man and one at the end of his feet. Ziya chanted the spell and exercised the magic accordingly. After three days or so, Zhao became restless and uneasy. […] After Ziya had exercised his magic for twenty days, Lu Ya came to see him. Lu brought with him a small peach wood bow and three peach-wood arrows; he told Ziya to use it at noon on the twenty-first day. When the time came, Ziya first shot at the left eye of the straw man, then the right eye, and finally at the heart. In Wen’s camp Zhao died at noon, with blood flowing from his two eyes and heart. (481)

Zhao Gong Ming’s sisters, whom he borrowed the Dragon Scissors from, are described as “fairies” and they set out to avenge his death, but prove unsuccessful as Laozi himself intervenes (482).

In Chapter 99, Jiang Ziya and the new Zhou Dynasty have won the war, and Yuan Shi decrees that 365 gods would be “canonized” from the “souls and spirits” of the slain, divided into “eight departments,” each one “in charge of one aspect of the human world” (516). Wan’s summary doesn’t mention Zhao Gong Ming by name, but presumably the novel does at this point. This scene is also where the title of the novel comes from.

Yuan Shi, or Yuan Shi Tian Zun, is one of the “Three Pure Ones” or supreme deities of Daoism. Deng Ming-Dao, in The Lunar Tao, translates his name as “Heavenly Lord of the Primal Origin” and describes how “he set the stars and planets into motion and was the main god until he retired and the Jade Emperor […] became the celestial ruler” (12). Deng Ming-Dao also says that Yuan Shi is ” a personification of […] the abstract notion of an impersonal and mysterious beginning to all things” (12).

The Lunar Tao also contains a photograph of the Changchun Temple in Wuhan, where Guan Gong, Zhao Gong Ming and Bi Gan stand side-by-side on an altar to the Gods of Wealth (9), thus proving that the Encyclopædia Brittanica is correct to identify both Zhao Gong Ming and Bi Gan as gods of wealth, but hasty in implying that one or the other must be “Cai Shen.” Deng Ming-Dao states plainly, “there are several different gods of wealth” (9).

He also reminds us:

The God of Wealth doesn’t merely dole out riches. While people make offerings to him in their homes, and businesspeople keep him in their stores, everyone still has to work. Great wealth is earned.

To be wealthy, we have to work hard and we have to be smart. The God of Wealth may accept the offerings on the altar, inhale the incense, and thrill to the firecrackers, but the real offering he requires is hard work. (9)

Hard work can apply to many different paths, from a reclusive hermit practicing sorcery in the mountains, to a warrior defending what they believe in, to a homesteader creating true wealth by working with the land.