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Réguler les pluralités religieuses : mondes indiens et chinois comparés

Ritual Terroir

The Generation of Site-Specific Vitality
Le « terroir rituel ». La production locale d’une vitalité d’origine
El "terruño ritual". La producción local de vitalidad original
Il "territorio rituale". La produzione locale di una vitalità d'origine
Adam Yuet Chau
p. 25-54

Résumés

Le terme français « terroir » est entré dans la langue anglaise en s’appliquant à peu près aux mêmes références viticoles et culinaires. Malgré ses proches cousins anglais terrain et territory, « terroir » signifie bien davantage que le seul rapport à une « terre ». C’est un « assemblage » original et dynamique, composé de tous les éléments qui contribuent aux qualités uniques d’un produit (vin, foie gras ou champignons) : climat, météorologie, topographie, sol, précipitations, drainage, ensoleillement, sinistres, environnement (flore et faune), interventions humaines telles l’irrigation, l’usage d’engrais, le désherbage, l’introduction de cultivars et autres bio-éléments, la fermentation et autres procédures de bonification, la fabrication et la manutention, etc. Construction intentionnelle et moderne, le « terroir » s’inscrit en réaction contre une production de masse jugée « sans âme », contre des aliments et des boissons sans traçabilité d’origine parce qu’ils sont produits à l’échelle globale, à l’aide d’engrais chimiques ou d’aliments industriels, puis mélangés et conditionnés. Je propose d’étudier la fabrique de sites religieux à forte intensité à travers le prisme du « terroir rituel », à partir d’exemples de pratiques religieuses chinoises tirées de mon propre travail de terrain. Tout comme la nourriture et les boissons, certaines pratiques religieuses sont très faciles à transposer d’un lieu à l’autre et, en dépit de leur capacité à s’adapter à des conditions locales, leur prospérité mondiale (qu’il s’agisse du bouddhisme zen, du christianisme évangélique, du bouddhisme tibétain, de l’islam postcolonial et post-guerre froide) repose précisément sur la déconnexion entre ces pratiques et leur site ou leur terroir d’origine. À l’inverse, certaines pratiques religieuses s’enracinent de manière décisive dans l’espace de sites religieux spécifiques dont elles tirent leur puissance spirituelle. J’analyse ici le cas exemplaire de la Vallée du Roi Dragon (Longwanggou), au centre-nord de la Chine, pour illustrer ce travail du terroir rituel. Comme tous les cultes locaux, la réputation et l’efficacité du Roi Dragon dépendent d’un ensemble de caractéristiques, tout à la fois géographiques et humaines, spécifiques à ce site.

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Terroir, Local Cults and Ritual Terroir

  • 1 I am grateful to the organisers (especially Vincent Goossaert) and fellow participants in the inte (...)
  • 2 Because the word terroir has entered the English language, I will not italicise it.

1In this article I explore the dynamic interaction between place/site and ritual practice using a case study from China.1 I propose the concept of "ritual terroir" 2 to characterise this dynamic interaction and suggest the concept’s broad applicability, especially in China and India, where the size of the two countries guarantees geographical and cultural differentiation as well as site specificities.

  • 3 See Chau, 2006 on the concept of "event production".
  • 4 For a tree-planting activity at a temple site, see Chau, 2018 and Chau, forthcoming.

2At the heart of my article is the construction of local cults. China has its fair share of translocal, nation-wide and universalist religious traditions which contribute to forming China’s religious diversity (though all of these have inevitably been subject to locale-specific transformations and elaborations). Yet the far greater force in forming and moulding this religious diversity comes from very localised deity cults. These cults have been built around a dizzyingly wide variety of deities (including deity-like spirits such as hungry ghosts), thanks to the prodigiously capacious mechanisms available for making deities (including self-deification) (Goossaert, 2017). Each deity cult is built upon a rich locale-specific constellation of elements: topographical features (hills, ravines, caves, springs, groves, rocks, cliffs, streams and rivers, ponds, settlements, grave sites, directional orientations, urban neighbourhoods, etc.); built structures (temple grounds, temple halls, temple-association rooms, pavilions, towers, opera stages, etc.); material culture (altars, murals, steles, dedicatory plaques, processional paraphernalia, ritual implements, incense sticks, etc.); flora and fauna (both wild and domesticated, indigenous and from outside the area) and their derived/associated food culture; deity legends (origin stories, hagiographical narratives, miracle tales, personalities and temperaments, etc.) and other discursive resources (including divination-poem sets and stele inscriptions); calendrical and special event productions3 (temple festivals celebrating the deities' "birthdays," Chinese New Year festivities, dedicatory ceremonies for new statues and new halls, temple-sponsored academic and other "secular" activities4, etc.); communities of worshippers organising the cult activities and spreading the names of their cult deities (consisting of local villagers, urban neighbourhood residents, worshippers from more distant locales who come to the temple activities on pilgrimage and worshippers of related deity cults who are on good terms with those of the home deity cults, etc.); institutional legitimation devices (official titles granted during dynastic times, official registration statuses, etc.); petty capitalist enterprises and self-employed operators surrounding the cult (folk opera troupes, spirit mediums, fortune-tellers, incense makers, sellers of incense and spirit money, food and sundry stall operators, inn keepers, pimps and prostitutes, transport operators, etc.); etc. In other words, it’s a messy, almost organic ensemble of inter-related and interlocking elements, now mobilised, now dormant, but always grounded in the very locale from which they have sprung. How shall we call this exciting mess, this generation of site-specific vitality? I propose to call it "ritual terroir".

3The French term "terroir" has entered the English language carrying more or less the same viticultural and culinary references. Despite its close English-language lexicographic cousin "terrain" and "territory," terroir is a lot more than things having to do with the earth or boundaries (Parker, 2015; Schuilenburg, 2011; Wilson, 1999). It is a particular and dynamic "compositional assemblage" (Chau, 2012) of all elements that contribute to the unique qualities of a product (be it wine, foie gras or mushroom): climate, weather, topography, soil, precipitation, drainage, exposure to sunlight (duration, direction, intensity, etc.), disasters, cultivar, ecology (including flora and fauna), human intervention (e.g. irrigation, fertilisers, weeding, introduction of cultivar and other bio-elements, fermentation and other procedures, craftsmanship and handling), etc. The deliberate construction and privileging of terroir in today’s thoroughly translocalised and globalised world is a reaction against "soulless" mass production, against food and drink with no traceable origin because they have been industrially produced (with the help of globally-produced chemical fertilisers and feed), mixed and packaged. But we do need to be reminded that terroir always existed before this modern-day fetishisation, though it existed in its "natural" and unself-conscious state, enabled by poor transportation and communication technologies. Before the large-scale movement of foodstuffs across the surface of the earth, most people in the world ate and drank "terroir" by definition.

  • 5 On the globalisation of Islam, see, e.g., Roy 2004; on the globalisation of Buddhism, including Ti (...)

4I propose to look at the production of power-laden religious sites through the lens of "ritual terroir." Just like food and drink, some religious practices are extremely translocalisable and even as they are always adapted to specific local conditions as they spread across the globe (e.g. Zen Buddhism, evangelical Christianity, Tibetan Buddhism, post-colonial and post-Cold-War Islam5), many thrive precisely because of a delinking between the practices, charismatic leaders and ideas and any particular site or terroir. On the other hand, other religious practices are resolutely spatially grounded in the production of specific religious sites and draw power and vitality from these sites.

5The production of site-specific vitality as a religious practice underlies a fundamental commitment to religious pluralism because sites by definition are immovable, therefore as long as there are different sites there will always be pluralistic practices, indeed aiming at the celebration and accentuation of differences between sites. Such inherent differences would inevitably spur competition among different sites (e.g. between mountains that claim to be the most sacred or between temples that claim to have the most efficacious deities or the most "red-hot" temple festivals). But in the overall religious landscape in China such competitiveness among religious sites (hence ritual terroirs) has been one of the most important mechanisms for stimulating a vibrant religious and ritual life. Such competitiveness has also encouraged worshipers to explore and take advantage of locally-available and locally-specific resources in building up the reputation of their deities and religious sites, including topographical features around the temples as well as regional ritual culture (e.g. particular kinds of drumming techniques and "battle formations" for the temple drum troupes or particular styles of spirit mediumship).

6Despite their irreducible specificities, religious sites are of course sometimes vulnerable to the absorption and conquest by universalist religious tendencies that attempt to eradicate or at least subjugate such specificities. This is a continuing struggle that has lasted for as long as there have been translocal religious tendencies (especially religious traditions that have universalist pretensions), and in China the ritual terroirs have been putting up a good fight. Indeed, some of the locale-centric, terroir-specific practices have been responses to translocalising tendencies and their threats of incorporation (Nanda, 2011). Ironically, the PRC state’s wide-scale suppression during the Maoist period and its continuing control during the reform period over institutionally organised religious groups have given local cults in the countryside more room for self-directed development even as all the village localities are being rapidly linked to one another and to the outside world by paved roads, the railway, the television, the mobile phone, the internet and social media. But being increasingly connected to outside influences does not necessarily mean the inevitable erosion of ritual terroir; more often than not it leads to a more complex intermeshing of elements (as can be seen in the case study below).

7I will present a case study from my own fieldwork in northcentral China to illustrate the workings of ritual terroir: the Black Dragon King Temple in Shaanbei (northern Shaanxi Province). Like all local cults, the reputation and efficacy of the Black Dragon King Temple depend on an ensemble of site-specific features that combine geographical and human input. I will present a selection of the most important features (a full exposition would merit several tomes).

  • 6 It is also hoped that this article will contribute to, but also broaden, the existing literature o (...)
  • 7 However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Dutch legal scholar and philosopher Marc Schu (...)
  • 8 For related case studies examining the relationship between religious activities and the locality (...)

8Before proceeding to the case study, I shall fine-tune the definition of ritual terroir. I define ritual terroir as the mutual constitution of a locale and ritual practices constructing that locale, highlighting both the locale-specific-ness of the ritual practice and the ritual-enhancing qualities of the locale. I adopt a very broad understanding of the word "ritual," encompassing within it all human activities surrounding the cult whether or not they are explicitly "religious" in nature or not. Not all locales are equally endowed with the potential for religious and ritual investment (e.g. a piece of flat land with no particularly interesting topographical features and with communities that have in common the same set of cultural practices), and it takes years if not decades and centuries for some locales to achieve their present ritual-terroirness (or ritual terroirité?). The most prominent ritual terroirs became famous "power spots" (e.g. Native American vortexes, Mount Fuji) and pilgrimage centres (e.g. Jerusalem in the Holy Land, Mecca in Saudi Arabia, Wutaishan in northern China, Varanasi in India, Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Lourdes in France, Fatima in Portugal). This article builds on the insights from historical and anthropological studies exploring the dynamic construction of locales (Faure, 1987; Dowman, 1995; Dell’Orto, 2002; Robson, 2009; Dean, Zheng, 2010a, 2010b).6 On the other hand, I wish to distance my study from those on the relationship between migration (including long-distance international migration) and religious practices and identities (see, for example, Claveyrolas, 2017; Claveyrolas, Delage, 2016; Dean, 2011; Werbner, 2004). This study does not engage with questions of de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation of religious practices brought about by migration, transnationalism and diasporic processes.7" The vast majority of the communities of worshippers around local cults in China are still quite rooted in their own home turf.8

  • 9 I hope it is obvious to the reader that by "cult" I do not mean "questionable religious groups" co (...)
  • 10 We can also see the development of lineage-based control over a particular territory in southern Ch (...)
  • 11 See Lu 2002 for a study on the construction of locality in Taiwan in recent decades.
  • 12 However, some regions of China (such as the Yangtze Delta and the North China Plain) do have templ (...)

9To avoid any possible confusion, I will also need to define more clearly the term local cults9 Due to the richer academic literature on deity cults in Taiwan, we have come to understand Chinese local cults as primarily "territorial cults." These deity cults have a very strong sense of the boundary of the cult community and the extent of the deity’s jurisdiction, hence the label "territorial cults" (Sangren, 1987). One shared ritual practice amongst these territorial cults is the annual "inspection tours" conducted within and along the boundaries of the cult’s "territory." 10 However, this strong sense of the boundaries between cult communities had resulted from the many hundred years of militarised communal rivalry and violence-filled competitive settlement by various sub-ethnic groups of south-eastern coastal regions (comprising large swathes of coastal Guangdong, Fujian) as well as Taiwan.11 Most other regions in China have not had such an intense and prolonged experience of inter-ethnic political-economic and religious rivalry. For example, this intense sense of "territory" is completely absent from the local cults in Shaanbei that will be examined below.12

The Black Dragon King Temple in Northcentral China

  • 13 Many of the ethnographic details for this case study are derived from my previous publications on (...)

10In late-imperial times there were probably hundreds of thousand, if not millions, of dragon king (longwang) temples in China.13 Indeed, the dragon king as deity was on the roster of imperially approved deities for official worship; there were dragon king temples within city walls, and their cult activities were partly sponsored by state dispensation. But most dragon king cults existed in the countryside as popular, local cults and were independent of imperial patronage. Even though they were all called dragon kings (longwang), each dragon king had a distinct hagiography and was a separate cult, and most had a very restricted base of worship within a small geographical area (e.g. encompassing a few natural villages). Many of these dragon king temples, especially those whose sites are in today’s urban areas, have long since been destroyed and have little chance of revival in the future, their former sites having been built on with residential housing, offices, factories, and schools. However, tens of thousands of dragon king temples have been revived in rural areas during the reform era (early 1980s to the present day).

11There was a tendency in traditional China for deities to be functionally specialised (C. K. Yang, 1961). Dragon Kings were primarily responsible for bringing rain for the crops when they needed them most and ensuring good weather when the crops were most vulnerable and during harvest time. In the reform era, however, some dragon kings have become more "generalist" in their abilities, partly due to the fact that many other deities active in the same region in the past have not been revived. The Black Dragon King (Heilongdawang) in the Dragon King Valley (Longwanggou) in Zhenchuan Township, northern Shaanxi Province (Shaanbei), has become one such generalist deity. During the revival period in the 1980s and 1990s the Black Dragon King has become one of the most efficacious deities in Shaanbei, responding miraculously to all kinds of requests and problems, especially relating to business success (the temple is close to Zhenchuan, a major trading town in the region).

The Dragon King Valley as a Site

12The power of the Dragon King Valley (Longwanggou) rests on two broad sources, one temporal and the other magical. The temporal or secular source of the power lay in the temple’s organisation, particularly its leadership (under the autocratic and charismatic Temple Boss Lao Wang [‘Old Wang’]), as well as the human investment in constructing the place as a place with special power. The magical or divine source of the power lay in the magical efficacy of Heilongdawang, believed in and activated by worshipers. The magical power of Heilongdawang as a deity and Longwanggou as a place has a spatial dimension, residing in and emanating from the temple buildings (especially the main temple hall that houses Heilongdawang’s statue), the magical spring next to the temple, and the overall geomantic configurations of the temple surroundings.

Figure 1. Carved stone gateway, with re-enforced concrete as base structure, to the upper reach of the Dragon King Valley

Figure 1. Carved stone gateway, with re-enforced concrete as base structure, to the upper reach of the Dragon King Valley

Dragon King Valley

Adam Yuet Chau, 2016

Figure 2. A panoramic view of the centre of the Longwanggou temple complex during the 2016 summer temple festival. Note the reforested slopes surrounding the valley

Figure 2. A panoramic view of the centre of the Longwanggou temple complex during the 2016 summer temple festival. Note the reforested slopes surrounding the valley

Longwanggou temple

Adam Yuet Chau, 2016

13Part of the stele inscription at the entrance of the main temple hall recounts the early history of the temple, highlighting especially the geomantic properties of the temple site, which were presented as the reason why the Black Dragon King chose to move from a nearby village (Chenjiapo) to the present site (up valley from the village of Hongliutan). This stele inscription was dedicated in the sixth lunar month of 1982 by the Longwanggou Temple Committee, concluding the first phase of the revival of the cult after its suppression during the high Maoist years that saw the complete destruction of the temple and the flight of the Black Dragon King away from the area [my brackets]:

The ancients said: it doesn’t matter how tall the mountain is, as long as there is an immortal it will be famous; it doesn’t matter how deep the water is, as long as there is a dragon, it will be efficacious. That is why the Dragon King Valley has been called the best of all magical domains in Yulin. The dragon god (longshen) who dwells here has done so many mighty deeds that no other god can ever match him. His greatness is as bright as the sun and the moon and as everlasting as Mount Tai.
It has been said that in the beginning, the dragon’s mother swallowed the magical peach and gave birth to five dragons. The Black Dragon roamed into the hills to the north and often demonstrated his power on Tower Temple Ridge in Chenjiapo. In awe of his magical efficacy, the villagers built him a small shrine and worshiped him. It was like that for a few hundred years. Later on, the dragon god chose for himself as dwelling place a secluded valley with nine dragon pools to the east of Hongliutan. This valley has the shape of a golden bowl. On four sides the hills point upwards and circle around; purple vapours float atop them and colourful lights shine and shimmer. The valley presents nine pools and the springs flow and jump. Orchid-green, the water is so clear that one can see the bottom of the pools; there are tiny ripples running across the surface and a chill rises from the depth. At the bottom of the valley there is a peculiar rock called "Water Beauty" (shuixiu), a precious treasure. To the north-east of the valley there is a protruding cliff, on the left side of which one finds a natural egg-shaped spring mouth called "The Sea’s Eye" (haiyan). It is six cun [Chinese inches] or so wide and of unfathomable depth. A clear thread of spring water drips down from it all year round and it is never exhausted. It looks like a dragon spitting out a string of pearls and it just flows and flows. This is called "Dragon Hole Hiding Treasures" (longxue cangzhen) and is a great sight at Longwanggou.
The Heilongdawang Temple was first built during the reign of the Zhengde Emperor [1505-1521] of the Ming Dynasty. Rebuilt and expanded a few times during the Guangxu reign [1875-1908] of the Qing Dynasty and during the Republican era [1912-1949], it was made more perfect and magnificent. Rising above the pools were built the main temple hall, the entrance hallway, the bell tower, the drum tower, the stone lions, the flagpoles, the stone arch, the opera stage, and so forth. The layout was orderly and precise; the architectural and building techniques were refined and the results impressive; the structures were elegant and evocative of ancient simplicity, showing the special talents of the artisans. It was truly a fine work of tradition. The main hall of the dragon god reclined on the north hills, and it climbed up the dragon pools as if it were washing its feet in them; it appeared as if the dragon were playing with the water in the pools, jumping out and diving in. In the main temple hall the Dragon King’s gilt statue wore an embroidered silk robe and an official cotton gauze hat. He stared out with the eyes of a tiger, making people look at him in awe and solemn respect.
Over time, the efficacious god increasingly showed his power and he became famous near and far. When rain was requested, rain there would be; when illnesses were consulted, health would be restored. The country people who came to burn incense and pray were so numerous that they formed endless streams. Inside the temple flags and procession umbrellas were like forests and everyone fought to hang their plaques of praise. It was an incredible sight.
There were a hundred or so mural paintings inside the temple, one of which recorded the historical event of the Dragon King going to Taiwan to help General Zhang Yao beat the invading Japanese pirates and accomplishing a patriotic deed for the nation. The Guangxu Emperor of the Great Qing Dynasty looked up to the divine power and granted the Dragon King the official title of "Marquis of Efficacious Response" (lingyinghou); the emperor also gave a gift of a golden plaque, with his personally written exaltation: "Mighty Saviour of the People, Your Loyal Contributions Have Been Put Down in Records" (gongbu weilin); also conferred was half a set of imperial processional insignia to honour the Dragon King’s meritorious deeds. Years later, because he had successfully prayed for rain, the magistrate-examiner of the Yulin Prefecture honoured the Dragon King with a gift of a colourful plaque with sculpted human figurines.
In 1966, Longwanggou experienced a violent calamity in which the cultural relics and ancient remains were almost completely destroyed. During that period of time the god left and the water dried up; everywhere there were merely crumbling walls. It looked so sad that words could hardly describe the scene. The Heavenly net casts widely but surely: evil people were punished for their crimes and foolish people were brought back to their senses before it was too late. A decade or so later, the dragon god’s magical power reappeared, and people from all around crowded back here to worship and pray. The temple leaders of the nine surrounding villages decided to rebuild the temple. When people knew about the plan, countless numbers of them helped out with money and labour. On an auspicious day in the autumn of 1981 the foundation was laid, and in early June the next year the preliminary construction was completed. The main hall for the Marquis of Efficacious Response and the entrance hallway were rebuilt; two mountain-guarding stone lions and one three-tier stone incense tower were carved; and the statue of the Marquis of Efficacious Response was also resculpted. On the first of the sixth lunar month that year the "Opening the Light" (kaiguang) ceremony welcomed the god. The Dragon King’s sedan chair finally came back to the palace, and the god’s power and virtue were both bolstered. People thank the god for his divine power; the god blesses people’s livelihood; the god and people complement each other and live side by side. Such is the auspicious sign of an era of peace and prosperity for the nation and the people and of a great reign of all under Heaven.

  • 14 The double theme of, first, Heilongdawang’s patriotism and his role as local protector and second, (...)

14This stele inscription recounts the legends of the Black Dragon King’s birth, his magical exploits, the history of the temple (including the destruction of the temple during the Cultural Revolution that began in 1966 and ended with the death of Mao in 1976), and the deity’s miraculous responsiveness to the worshippers" requests for divine assistance.14 But most significantly, the inscription presents the marvellous geomantic properties of the temple site (the nine dragon pools, the spring called "sea’s eye," the peculiar rock at the bottom of the valley called "water beauty," etc.). After all, these geomantic properties were presumably the reasons why the Black Dragon King decided to leave its former dwelling and settle down in this spot in the Dragon King Valley. Fengshui (literally "wind and water") is widely practised in Shaanbei. It is inconceivable that anyone would construct a house, a grave or a temple without consulting with a fengshui master (locally called yinyang master, referring to their profession in relation to the dwellings for the yin, i.e., the world of the dead, and the yang, i.e., the world of the living) to determine the best location and orientation. In a way "geomancy" is a poor translation of fengshui since it is not primarily used as a mantic art (i.e., for predicting a future outcome); rather, it is a ritual manoeuvre to maximise potential advantage for the lives of the current and future generations for a particular household or community. Therefore, it would be more accurate to render fengshui as "geo-cosmic optimisation". Once a site and an orientation are determined for a temple, the community can further augment the geo-cosmic power of the site through more building work and staging regular temple festivals (thus infusing the site with vitality generated by human activities). But a temple’s otherwise excellent fengshui can also be vulnerable to potential damage, e.g. by a highway ploughing through, or near, the temple site (Feuchtwang, 2004).

  • 15 See Chau, 2019, for more on efficacy.

15The stele inscription excerpt points to the key importance of the investment of human actions in constructing the temple site in each historical era, with particular emphasis on the Republican era and the reform era. There is a saying in Shaanbei that highlights the mutual dependence of deities and their worshipers: humans depend on gods and gods depend on humans (ren ping shen, shen ping ren). In other words, humans pay respect to and worship gods and goddesses in response to the efficacious interventions of the latter in their lives.15 These human investments include building and maintaining temples, burning incense and making offerings to the deities, beseeching the deities for divine assistance, staging temple festivals, engaging in rituals (e.g. processions, exorcisms, giving thanks), and magnifying the renown of the deities by telling and spreading miracle tales, etc. These human activities make a terroir into a ritual terroir; conversely, the terroir endows these human activities with distinct terroirness.

Re-Branding the Dragon King Valley into the Black Dragon Pool

16The Black Dragon King Temple sits half-way up a valley that’s called locally the "Dragon King Valley" (Longwanggou). It is a name as common and earthy as "temple hill" (Miaoshan). Both names are found in many places in Shaanbei as informal toponyms. A hillock with a temple on top would be called locally temple hill; a valley with a dragon king temple in it would be called locally dragon king valley. Neither are strictly speaking proper place names, and one would rarely see any hill or valley named using these informal toponyms. When Temple Boss Lao Wang and his colleagues revived the Black Dragon King Temple in the early 1980s, they hit upon a brilliant idea: Why don’t we re-name the whole place as the "Black Dragon Pool" (Heilongtan) so as to accentuate the Black Dragon King Temple? The "pool" (tan) in the name is derived from the physical features around the spring (see above on the fengshui features of the temple site); plus, dragons are always imagined as hiding in deep pools. Their choice of name was also an obvious borrowing of fame from some famous "Black Dragon Pools" elsewhere in China (there is one in the vicinity of Beijing).

  • 16 Because I preferred the earthiness of the name Dragon King Valley and had a slight dislike of the (...)

17Once this re-branding was decided, all publicity materials relating to the temple began referring to it as the Black Dragon Pool (e.g. posters announcing the annual temple festival, etc.), and there was an aggressive publicity campaign to get the name of the temple out (spreading miracle tales, boasting of the scale of the annual temple festival that included staging the best and the most expensive opera performances, etc.). As the fame of the temple grew, more and more people from outside the local area began to visit the temple and to attend the temple festival, and they would only know the place by its newly-christened name: the Black Dragon Pool. It was before long when only older people would still refer to the place as the Dragon King Valley by the inertia of habit. Even the operators of all the long-distance buses and vans started calling it by its new name; soon afterwards the mouth of the valley by the side of the main road (upgraded in the 1990s to National Highway 210) gained an official bus stop with the name Black Dragon Pool.16

  • 17 This is not to say that the locals do not welcome these developments in their own right.

18Over the past four decades, the temple has been in continuous expansion, engaging in project after project. At the beginning of the revival of the temple site, it was little more than a relatively humble temple hall and an opera stage facing the temple. Then a primary school and temple association office building were added. Soon afterwards the arboretum and the reforestation project transformed the surrounding landscape (more details on this below). Then more temple halls and many other built structures were added (arched stone gateways, covered corridors, pavilions on hill tops, a tourist centre and hotel, a stele gallery, a dragon culture museum, a giant stone wall with nine carved dragons, a secondary school, a musical fountain, etc.). Since the 2000s the Black Dragon Pool has become one of the most famous tourist destinations in Shaanbei. Recently the site was granted the status of AAAA-grade scenic area (jingqu). An important part of the re-branding exercise was to strategically hide the "superstitious" elements of the deity cult. These elements have not disappeared, but they have been successfully shielded from view under the much more glamorous and politically-palatable cloak of the scenic site.17

Figure 3. The musical fountain featuring water-spouting dragons

Figure 3. The musical fountain featuring water-spouting dragons

Musical fountain

Adam Yuet Chau, 2016

The Heilongtan Civil Hilly Land Arboretum

19There is a key terroir feature that was not mentioned in the above inscription because this feature was added a few years after this inscription was written and carved. The feature is the Heilongtan Civil Hilly Land Arboretum that fundamentally transformed the surrounding landscape of the temple and paved the way for the further spread of the temple’s renown beyond its immediate geographical region. Ever since the revival of the Heilongdawang Temple in the early 1980s, it became quite rich thanks to the incense donation money from worshippers and began engaging in a variety of activities such as running a primary school affiliated to the temple, sponsoring irrigation projects, etc. Beginning in the mid-1980s and with the help of a forestry engineer who was a native of Zhuzhai, one of the six newly-affiliated villages to Longwanggou, Longwanggou began a hugely successful reforestation and arboretum project.

  • 18 The central government abolished the agricultural tax in 2006.
  • 19 One of the reviewers objected to my characterising the reform-era PRC as merely "semi-authoritaria (...)

20The temple offered to use temple funds to lease hilly land around the temple from the villagers to plant trees in return for a rent that is the equivalent of the estimated highest yield possible from those plots. Most of these plots are on steep or rocky slopes, have no irrigation access, and are thus agriculturally unproductive. The most common crops for this kind of marginal farm land are potatoes and black beans with low yield. Hence it was not difficult to persuade the villagers to lease out these plots to the temple for a steady annual rent. At this time many villagers were involved in trade, commerce, or rural industry and were only happy to have their farming obligations reduced. In addition, not farming the land also meant that they would no longer need to pay agricultural tax on those plots.18 After much negotiation with various local state agencies (including the Yulin Prefecture Forestry Scientific Research Institute) the project was finally approved, and the Heilongtan Civil Hilly Land Arboretum (minban shandi shumuyuan) was officially established ("civil" [minban] because it is not operated by the state). Because the arboretum project would not be possible without the money from incense donations to the temple, the arboretum (just like the primary school affiliated with the temple) thus justified and shielded the divine efficacy-related activities (officially considered as superstitious and illegal) of the Heilongdawang Temple from possible official criticism and crackdown. It was a manifestation of the politics of legitimation (commonly seen in all similar situations of negotiating acceptance under unfavourable legal-political environments in semi-authoritarian regimes).19

21After having secured the land for the project and the green light from the authorities, the next step was to plant trees. Capitalising on his long years of experience as a forestry engineer and his personal and professional connections to different forestry bureaus, seedling stations, and botanical gardens in Shaanbei and beyond, Zhu Xubi managed to obtain for Longwanggou a large number of different species of trees, shrubs, and flowers. The temple truck became very handy in hauling the plants back to Longwanggou. The planting work itself was arduous, as the land was not suitable for trees (often rocky with thin soil cover) and needed a lot of preparation. Lao Wang and the other temple officers worked with a team of hired labourers and volunteers to blast holes into the rocky slopes with dynamite, build small terraces, haul dirt and seedlings up the hills, and plant the trees. Zhu and his associates provided the scientific expertise in zoning the different species and ensuring the optimal conditions for survival for the new trees. The arboretum subsequently also served as a scientific research base for the Yulin Forestry Scientific Research Institute with dozens of different research projects. A few of these projects won some prefectural level scientific research awards. Zhu Xubi was allocated an office at the temple and became a resident consultant for the arboretum, until he had a fight with temple boss Lao Wang and was eventually ousted from the temple and the arboretum project. Thankfully the arboretum’s management passed onto the able hands of one of the locals trained by Zhu Xubi. Over the course of three decades the surrounding hills of the temple have been completely transformed, as they have been covered with lush evergreens and many other kinds of vegetation. The overall fengshui properties of the temple site have also been enhanced.

Figure 4. A view of the Heilongtan Hilly Land Arboretum

Figure 4. A view of the Heilongtan Hilly Land Arboretum

Heilongtan Hilly Land Arboretum

Adam Yuet Chau, 2016

22The Black Dragon King Temple succeeded in tapping into the expanding environmentalist discourse in China and grafting a tree-planting enterprise (a hilly-land arboretum) onto the existing temple complex, thus attracting visitors to the temple site from far and wide, including even environmentalist-activists and students from Beijing (18 hours away by chartered bus) as well as many foreign visitors. This is a story of the transformation of a ritual terroir by incorporating entirely new elements which in turn attract new categories of people who infuse new energy and ritual contents into the overall construction of the ever evolving ritual terroir. This particular success story with the arboretum innovation tells us that the “ritual” in the term “ritual terroir” does not have to be strictly understood as religious rituals. Something that seemed to be completely unrelated to religious rituals (e.g. planting trees and hosting environmentalist visitors) not only entailed all kinds of ritualised practices but interacted with more religious aspects of human activities at the site in multitudinous ways. Needless to say the tens of thousands of trees and the transformed local ecosystem have altered the core physical aspects of the Longwanggou terroir. The locals now believe the Black Dragon King is happier still with the site with its lush green surroundings. In other words, in the case of Longwanggou, the local people did not simply make use of the topography; they actively transformed the landscape.

The Black Dragon King Temple Festival

  • 20 On the concept of "sensorium," see Chau, 2006 (chapter on "red-hot sociality").

23Despite the magnificence of the temple buildings and the temple complex, on most days of the year the Black Dragon King Temple has only a trickle of visitors. This is the case for most temples in China except the most famous tourist temples in urban areas or in famous tourist sites. However, the whole site is transformed into a red-hot sensorium during the annual festival days, e.g. the first few days and the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the "birthday" of the Dragon King’s Mother (Longmuniangniang) and, most importantly, the few days around the thirteenth day of the sixth lunar month, which is the "birthday" of the Black Dragon King.20 These temple festival days are an explosive concentration of ritual and other actions in the construction of the ritual terroir, and these days of intense activities (what I have called "actants amassing’; Chau 2012, 2013) make deep impressions upon the memories of all participants. In other words, these festival days (and the festival-goers) are the most important contributors to the site as a ritual terroir. Below I will provide a snippet of the temple festival celebrating Heilongdawang’s birthday (the ethnographic present is set in the 1990s, the time of my long-term fieldwork on the temple) so that the reader can get a sense of the atmosphere at the festival.

24Imagine yourself as a Shaanbei peasant villager, living on the famed yellow earth plateau, and a worshiper of Heilongdawang. Imagine also that today is the thirteenth of the sixth month of the lunar calendar (i.e., in mid-July in most years), the birthday of the Black Dragon King and the most honghuo or "red and fiery" day of the six-day temple festival at Longwanggou. You get up early, have a quick breakfast, dress up in clean and finest clothes, and head off in the direction of the temple ground, walking, or biking, or riding your motorcycle, or taking a three-wheel tractor truck or minibus. The sun is already up and it is going to be a hot, mid-summer day. From morning till late at night, you and tens of thousands of others will be participating in co-producing and co-consuming all kinds of "sensory utterances": ambient/participatory, heat, proprioception, kinesthetics, noises, sights, smells and tastes.

25You get off the minibus or tractor-truck that brought you and follow the swarms of other worshipers up and along the Dragon King Valley, passing through noodle stands, watermelon stands, gambling circles, sing-dance tents; you buy a few bundles of incense and spirit money from the incense hawkers, climb up the steep steps to the main temple hall, throw the spirit money into the large bonfire of spirit money, light a string of firecrackers, kneel and pray in front of the Black Dragon King deity statue, burn sticks of incense, put some money in the donation bowl, shake the divination cylinder to divine your fortune in the coming months and obtain your divination slip number, are immediately pushed aside by worshipers coming up from behind, go to the divination slips room to the back of the main temple hall and have the divination poem interpreted, then squeeze your way through the crowd to catch a glimpse of the opera performance, and wander through different parts of the festival ground, snack or eat a bowl of spicy soup noodles, chat with acquaintances and co-villagers or complete strangers, play a few rounds of games, watch the fireworks at night, and always find yourself in the company of tens of thousands of other worshipers.

26Tractors, motorcycles, minivans, and buses are constantly bringing people into and out of the festival site; on the roads leading to Longwanggou bus operators are shouting: "Longwanggou! Longwanggou!’; at the mouth of the valley the bus operators heading out shout out the destinations or directions (names of towns): "Mizhi! Mizhi!" "Yulin! Yulin!" "Zhenchuan! Zhenchuan!" "Quick, quick, we are leaving!"; the diesel motors are relentless with their staccato "tok tok tok tok tok tok tok," rhyming with the different pitches of honking; loudspeakers tout people into freak show or sing-dance tents; people are shouting, laughing, chatting, playing games, gambling; firecrackers explode; drums, gongs, trumpets of the yangge dance troupes are playing; the sacrificial pigs and goats squeal; the sound of opera singing and music pierces the air.

27People are everywhere, people in festive colourful clothes; an ocean of people, a few you know but most you do not; game stands, trinket sellers, incense and firecracker sellers, watermelon stands, noodle tent, freak-show tent, sing-dance tent, fortune tellers, folk music bands; men, women, children, old people; people climbing up the steps to the main temple hall; people kneeling down in front of the deity, burning incense and spirit money, praying and offering thanks, and putting money into the donation box or bowl; the pile of bright yellow spirit money burning like a bonfire; the brightly-lit opera stage and the opera singers in colourful costumes; the yangge dance performances; the fireworks at night; the dazzling chaos.

28The smells and tastes of all kinds of food: noodles made of wheat and potato flour, griddle cakes, goat intestine soup, stir-fried dishes, garlic and scallion, vinegar and red pepper, watermelons, small yellow melons, icicles, soft drinks, burning liquor, beer; the pungency of diesel exhaust, exploding firecrackers, freshly slaughtered pigs and goats, and their warm raw blood; the mixed fragrance and pungency of incense and burning spirit money; the thirst-quenching and cold taste of the divine spring water; the faint smell of sweat from so many people squeezing through the main temple hall…

Figure 5. Incense hawkers line the main path to the temple in the early hours of the main day (thirteenth of the sixth lunar month) of the Black Dragon King temple festival, getting ready for the big day

Figure 5. Incense hawkers line the main path to the temple in the early hours of the main day (thirteenth of the sixth lunar month) of the Black Dragon King temple festival, getting ready for the big day

Black Dragon King temple festival

Adam Yuet Chau, 2016

Temple Inscriptions

  • 21 Similarly, all famous mountains in China are endowed with numerous cliff inscriptions of the poems (...)

29The stele inscription presented above is not just a text to be read by the curious visitor to the temple. Over time a temple accumulates all kinds of inscriptions: stele inscriptions that recount the building or rebuilding of the temple; lists of benefactors who have donated money and labour to the building and maintenance of the temple (sometimes found at the back of the steles); ex voto plaques brought by grateful devotees to thank the deities for their divine assistance; plaques indicating favour from the emperor and local officials (from the imperial era); praises, poems and couplets by famous literati and officials that have been inscribed onto steles or cliff surfaces around the temple; plaques indicating the status of the temple (e.g. having been incorporated into the official Daoist or Buddhist Association); etc. The sacred aura and awesomeness of a temple are enhanced by these inscriptions, thanks to the traditional reverence for literati learning and calligraphy. More than texts to be read (many visitors in fact never read them due to inadequate literacy or lack of interest), these inscriptions collectively exert a kind of awe-inducing power over the visitors. I have called these "text acts," modelled upon what John Austin has called "speech acts" but focusing on the extralinguistic performative power of ostensibly textual materials (Chau, 2006: chapter 6; Chau, under review). The visitors can feel the power of the texts without needing to read them. The production and display (thus ensuring continuous action) of these text acts are important components of many ritual terroirs.21

30Various areas of the lower reach of a hill side at the centre of the Longwanggou complex (to the back of the main temple hall) were "shaved" one after another in the 1990s to accommodate an increasing number of inscriptions (and some decorative carvings) (see figure below). Many of these inscriptions were based on brush-written comments left by visiting dignitaries (e.g. prominent regional officials, etc.). The biggest inscription includes a line: gongguo shifei, ziyou pingshu (Merit or demerit, right or wrong, it is to be decided and commented on [in the future]). It is a thinly veiled reference to the building of temples and whether this kind of "superstitious activity" should be judged right or wrong. The message is also intended for actual and potential critics of the Heilongtan Hilly Land Arboretum and reforestation project that took away a large amount of land from agriculture. One interesting detail of some of the inscriptions in Longwanggou will escape the attention of most casual visitors: in an attempt to leave as many traces of himself as possible as a record of his legacy, Temple Boss Lao Wang brush-wrote many of the important "header" inscriptions (e.g. on top of the arched stone gateways).

Figure 6. Inscriptions and carvings on a hill side at the centre of the Longwanggou complex to the back of the main temple hall. The big character at the top is long (dragon)

Figure 6. Inscriptions and carvings on a hill side at the centre of the Longwanggou complex to the back of the main temple hall. The big character at the top is long (dragon)

Longwanggou

Adam Yuet Chau, 2016

Being Incorporated by Daoism and Incorporating Daoism

  • 22 Temple officers of different temples that were in the process of applying to be registered told me (...)

31In the PRC, local cults such as the Black Dragon King cult of our case study belong to the category of "feudal superstition," lying beyond the pale of the five officially-recognised religions (Buddhism, Daoism, Protestantism, Catholicism and Islam). Local-cult temples are not officially-endorsed "venues for religious activities" (zongjiao huodong changsuo) and therefore are not protected by law. In theory the local police should be cracking down on all these illegal activities, even though during the reform era there is very little incentive for the local police to antagonise the local communities by destroying their temples (though such episodes do occur sporadically). But due to the perceived advantages in getting legal protection, many local-cult temples seek to be recognised by the local civil affairs bureaus (which absorbed the religious affairs bureaus) as belonging to one of the official religious associations. Temple Boss Lao Wang and his colleagues in the temple association sought to gain institutional membership in the local Daoist Association for many years and finally, in 1998, the long-awaited blessing came: The Yulin Prefectural Religious Affairs Bureau granted Longwanggou the official status of the “Heilongtan Daoist Shrine Management Committee” (Heilongtan daoguan guanli weiyuanhui). In other words, the Heilongdawang Temple was now officially a Daoist temple, and Heilongdawang a Daoist deity.22 From then on, the temple itself was finally legitimate and enjoyed the legal protection of the PRC constitution. As popular religious deities, dragon kings have traditionally hovered at the edge of official Daoism, not quite members of the Daoist pantheon. But these were just minor details that both the temple association and the Religious Affairs Bureau officials were willing to ignore. The “Daoification” of the Heilongdawang Temple and other similar popular religious temples in a way made these temples “legible” to the state (Scott, 1998) even if it involved a wilful misreading.

  • 23 Yet another form of "text acts," organisational plaques like this are crucial material markers of (...)
  • 24 The VIP guests included the chief of the prefectural Religious Affairs Bureau, the assistant chief (...)

32Temple Boss Lao Wang orchestrated a beautiful ceremony during the 1998 Black Dragon King temple festival to inaugurate the temple’s newly-gained status. He first commissioned a master carpenter to make an elegant, six-foot-long wooden plaque and on it the carved inscription “Heilongtan Daoist Shrine Management Committee” (Heilongtan daoguan guanli weiyuanhui), to be hung by the entrance to the main temple association office.23 The ceremony was called the “plaque-hanging ceremony” (guapai yishi). Lao Wang invited the relevant officials and leaders of some other important temples in the area to come24, and the ceremony was to be held at noon on Sixth Month Thirteenth (which was August 4 in 1998), i.e., Heilongdawang’s birthday. Noon of the thirteenth had traditionally been the most valued time of the entire temple festival; it had been the time when the opera troupe had to play "Bao Wenzheng Chopping off Chen Shimei’s Head" (Zhameian), the Black Dragon King’s favourite opera piece. By holding the ceremony he had literally arranged a meeting between Heilongdawang, himself the temple boss, the guests he invited (especially the official representatives of the local state), and the throng of festival-going masses. The ceremony would infuse the secular authority of the state into the popular religious space and time of Longwanggou to ritually bolster Longwanggou’s and Lao Wang’s legitimacy.

33After Lao Wang gave his brief speech, a few speeches from the VIP guests followed. The head-priest of the White Cloud Mountain Daoist Shrine talked about how happy he was that the Heilongdawang Temple had now become a "brother" Daoist shrine. The chief of the Religious Affairs Bureau explained the importance of gradually ridding Longwanggou of all superstitious elements and becoming an exemplary Daoist shrine. The assistant chief of the Public Affairs Bureau used the opportunity to advertise the bureau’s new charity program. One of the two township officials lauded Longwanggou’s role in promoting the economy of the area.

34Even though the official Daoist status of the temple was announced at the ceremony, the Black Dragon King did not become any more Daoist. The management of the temple remained in the hands of the local villagers, and the cult remained a resolutely popular-religious cult. It was only many years later that the temple began incorporating some Daoist elements as part of the ever more elaborate expansion of the temple complex. For example, an independent temple hall dedicated to Daoist deities was erected; next to it a dormitory was built to accommodate visiting Daoist clerics. The temple never wanted any permanent Daoist cleric to manage this temple hall; instead, it provides hospitality to a small number (up to half a dozen at any one time) of celibate Quanzhen Daoist monks and nuns on their "wandering" tours (Herrou, 2011). Having only clerics who are short-term visitors means that they and the Daoist temple hall are always under the control of the temple association. After Temple Boss Lao Wang passed away in 2008, leadership of the temple association was taken over by one of his three sons, whom I will call Wang Junior. Wang Junior had worked for many years as a cadre in the prefectural government and proved to be a competent successor to his father’s legacy. He even got nominally ordained as a Daoist priest (though he almost never dons any Daoist attire). The temple festival also added an element featuring a group of Daoist clerics paying respect to the Black Dragon King. Here one does not find the (alleged) dominance of the "Daoist liturgical framework" over the local cult (Dean, 1993; Lagerwey, 1987; Sangren, 1987; Schipper, 1974; but also Hymes, 2002 and Chau, 2020); instead, a local cult has successfully incorporated and "domesticated" Daoist elements for its own benefit.

Figure 7. A new temple hall dedicated to Cihangzhenren, Wenchangdijun and Guandi

Figure 7. A new temple hall dedicated to Cihangzhenren, Wenchangdijun and Guandi

Temple hall

Adam Yuet Chau, 2016

Figure 8. Male and female Quanzhen Daoist priests participating in the offering-making ritual during the temple festival

Figure 8. Male and female Quanzhen Daoist priests participating in the offering-making ritual during the temple festival

Quanzhen Daoist priests

Adam Yuet Chau, 2016

Conclusion

35The French word terroir has been primarily used in the evaluative schemes of discerned eating and drinking, contrasting the flavourfully local with the 'soulless,' blended and "bland" mass-produced foodstuff found in the supermarkets all over the world. With the global dominance of transnational agribusinesses (including the production of fertilisers and animal feeds), the value of the identifiably locally grown foodstuff has taken on extra salience, especially in the developed world and especially amongst the middle class and the better-off, while peasants, nomads and tribesmen living in places far from the commercialised world eat and drink foodstuff that are by definition terroir though without the accompanying cachet. Buying groceries at local farmers" markets and preferring terroir food and drinks (even when they are shipped from thousands of miles away) belong to the same loose movement to savour and sustain what remains or is made terroir (and of course to construct culinary "distinction"; see Chau 2014b on "culinary subjectification").

36A similar dynamic of global-local struggle is found in the sphere of religion. We now live in an age of large-scale religious globalisation, with a number of so-called world religions as well as a myriad of new religions spreading to all corners of the globe. The majority of these globalised religions are premised on sets of beliefs and practices that are readily de-territorialised even if they originated in particular historical and geographical settings. Often these major religions get re-worked significantly locally or spur unexpected innovations, but the imprint of a pre-packaged religious tradition getting transplanted onto new soil is very clear (e.g. Tibetan Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Pentecostalism, etc.). On the other hand, the multiple features of particular locales sometimes assert themselves and yield a multitude of ritual terroirs despite the universalising tendencies of organised religions. For example, the Taiwanese lay Buddhist organisation Ciji (Tzu Chi) has become a hugely successful transnational religious movement in the past few decades with branches and aid-relief activities in dozens of countries (even including mainland China despite the very different environment for religious life). Ciji’s founder, the nun Master Zhengyan (Cheng Yen), encourages her followers to practise the great love of bodhisattva compassion and to help the needy (e.g. disaster victims, the poor, the sick) through monetary donation and volunteering through many of the organisation’s volunteer groups (meticulously organised according to gender, age, rank seniority, mission institutions, functional departments and locale/congregation, differentiated by corresponding uniforms). Ciji’s mission is largely independent of geographical constraints, but just as it has grown into a significant global organisation, its headquarters in Hualian (Hualien) in eastern Taiwan quickly became a place of pilgrimage for all Ciji followers (Huang, 2009: chapter 3). Ciji followers within Taiwan and overseas Ciji followers all try to go on "homecoming" visits to the Ciji headquarters for spiritual retreat and, most importantly, to see the founder Master Zhengyan. Special chartered trains and buses bring Ciji members from all over the world to the headquarters, and they engage in all kinds of ritual activities along the way and when they are in Hualian. The centre of the pilgrimage is the modest Still Thought Abode where Master Zhengyan and her monastic disciples reside and practise. Sobbing uncontrollably when seeing Master Zhengyan is one of the most memorable experiences for many Ciji members. All of these centripetal movements of people and activities constitute what I have called "rites of convergence" (Chau, 2006, 2012), crucially constructing the Ciji headquarters in Hualian as a ritual terroir.

  • 25 Otherwise known as appellation d’origine contrôlée ("controlled designation of origin" or proof-of (...)

37I have presented a number of key elements in the construction of Longwanggou as a ritual terroir. Any individual element may be replicated in other locales (for example, the reforestation project) but it is the overall configuration of these elements that makes this particular ritual terroir the way it is, which is unique and truly terroir. Most other local cults in Shaanbei (or in China more broadly) are not as successful as Longwanggou in attracting worshippers, tourists and funds (mostly in the form of incense-money donations), but each nonetheless has its own configuration of elements. In other words, each local cult deserves an appellation controlée label as does a famous French wine.25 The implications for our understanding of religious plurality (as reality on the ground) and religious pluralism (as ideology and policy) are obvious. If we recognise the vitality and legitimacy of these local cults in terms of ritual terroir, it will accentuate the fallacy of the official religious policy of recognising the so-called "five religions" as the only legitimate "religions" and the only possible form of religious diversity in China.

38One can easily apply the concept of ritual terroir beyond the domain of religion. All educational institutions foster an institutional culture and a sense of belonging by inventing rituals and legends that highlight special features in the natural and built environments of the establishments, be they secondary schools or universities. For example, at the University of Göttingen in Germany all PhD graduates are supposed to mark the occasion by climbing up to the fountain in the city square and kiss the "goose girl" (Gänseliesel), surrounded by cheering and often inebriated fellow graduates. Though seemingly an ancient tradition (or at least so the tourists are told), this ritual practice was only invented in the early 1900s. In the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge not only has the university developed a set of rituals over time (e.g. the admissions interviews, the graduation ceremony, the boat races, etc.) but each constituting college has its own unique traditions (e.g. Latin grace read before and after dinner, May Balls, ghost stories, legends of former students and Fellows, etc.), some invented more recently than others but all fastidiously observed, and all constituting the colleges and the university as a whole as ritual terroirs. Similarly, the branding of cities requires a large amount of human resources and ritual enactments, always working with existing physical and symbolic materials yet always adding new elements. One might attempt to enact rituals without much care for terroir (though this is in fact quite difficult to do), but one cannot construct terroir without rituals.

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Notes

1 I am grateful to the organisers (especially Vincent Goossaert) and fellow participants in the international conference Religion in a Plural Society: Comparing the Chinese and Indian Worlds, held at the Confucius Institute, University of Geneva, in the summer of 2016. I also benefitted from the detailed comments and critiques of the four ASSR reviewers on the article manuscript. Parts of the argument were also presented and discussed at "Vitalism, Sacrifice, and Utopia: A Workshop on the Human Impetus" (June 18-19, 2016; Ginostra, Stromboli, Italy) and the workshop "Agency of People, Nature and Artifacts: Religion, Animism and Pilgrimage" (Oct 13-14, 2019; University of Roehampton, London).

2 Because the word terroir has entered the English language, I will not italicise it.

3 See Chau, 2006 on the concept of "event production".

4 For a tree-planting activity at a temple site, see Chau, 2018 and Chau, forthcoming.

5 On the globalisation of Islam, see, e.g., Roy 2004; on the globalisation of Buddhism, including Tibetan Buddhism, see, e.g., Obadia, 2011.

6 It is also hoped that this article will contribute to, but also broaden, the existing literature on pilgrimage studies, not just in the contexts of China and India but more generally. See Aukland, 2016; Charleux, 2015; Chau, 2014a, 2018; Debreczeny, 2011; Jacobsen, 2012; Lochtefeld, 2010; Naquin, 1992; Naquin, Yü, 1992; Oakes, Sutton, 2010; Parry, 1994; Reader, 2014; Shinde, 2007; Singh, 2011; Sutton, Kang, 2016; Van der Veer, 1988; Yang, 2004; Ye, 2009; Yue, 2017).

7 However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Dutch legal scholar and philosopher Marc Schuilenburg deployed the concept of terroir in his advocacy for the rights of immigrant and marginal groups (Schuilenburg, 2011), proposing the notion of "the right to terroir’: "Under the right to terroir we must then understand rights such as the "right to community’ (organizing life in small and meaningful places), the 'right to difference' (a tolerance towards practices that diverge from one another), the 'right to openness' (refraining from determining how places should look in several decades' time) and the 'right to citizenship' (linking rights and responsibilities to local practices).

8 For related case studies examining the relationship between religious activities and the locality from the South Asian world, see Trouillet, 2017.

9 I hope it is obvious to the reader that by "cult" I do not mean "questionable religious groups" commonly used in the sociology of religion literature.

10 We can also see the development of lineage-based control over a particular territory in southern China during the late-imperial period – with ancestral trust plots to maintain ancestral worship and fengshui-based surrounding topographical features being held as sacred and jealously guarded (Brown, under review) – as a kinship-based variant of the territorial cult.

11 See Lu 2002 for a study on the construction of locality in Taiwan in recent decades.

12 However, some regions of China (such as the Yangtze Delta and the North China Plain) do have temple cults specifically dedicated to issues of territory regarding the control and management of fields and access to irrigation, fishing and transport (e.g., Duara, 1988, on “water associations” in North China and their accompanying cults).

13 Many of the ethnographic details for this case study are derived from my previous publications on this deity cult (especially Chau, 2006). But I am using them to support new lines of argument.

14 The double theme of, first, Heilongdawang’s patriotism and his role as local protector and second, official recognition of his power and virtue, is common in the hagiography of local cult deities in traditional China. Needless to say, we must take the veracity of the account with a grain of salt. For example, the story about the Heilongdawang helping the Qing troops to defeat the Japanese invaders of Taiwan seems far-fetched. There was a certain General Zhang Yao in Zuo Zongtang’s army during its military expedition in the Northwest to suppress the Muslim rebels of the mid-19th century (Fields, 1978), who might have served as a historical reference for the legend.

15 See Chau, 2019, for more on efficacy.

16 Because I preferred the earthiness of the name Dragon King Valley and had a slight dislike of the new name, in my own work on the cult I never use the new name (also as a thinly veiled attempt at disguising the site). For this article, however, because I am discussing this re-branding exercise, it would make sense to refer to the official organisational names (such as the one for the arboretum) using their actual names. But I will still refer to the site itself as Longwanggou. I beg the reader for his or her forbearance regarding this possible confusion.

17 This is not to say that the locals do not welcome these developments in their own right.

18 The central government abolished the agricultural tax in 2006.

19 One of the reviewers objected to my characterising the reform-era PRC as merely "semi-authoritarian". But had China been an authoritarian regime there would not be any room for this kind of negotiations and for conducting fieldwork to investigate them.

20 On the concept of "sensorium," see Chau, 2006 (chapter on "red-hot sociality").

21 Similarly, all famous mountains in China are endowed with numerous cliff inscriptions of the poems and phrases by famous (and sometimes not so famous) people, including literati-officials, emperors, local notables, etc. Such a mixture of the topographical and the textographic is in fact the ideal landscape.

22 Temple officers of different temples that were in the process of applying to be registered told me that this approval and registration process always took considerable time and effort. Typically, a temple association had to treat the official representatives of the local state – from the Religious Affairs Bureau and other related bureaus and offices – as guests of honor at temple festivals, at banquets, and on other occasions. The relationship between the local state and the temples is one between patron and clients: its officials support temples that pay them respect and tribute.

23 Yet another form of "text acts," organisational plaques like this are crucial material markers of an institution’s legitimacy in Chinese political culture.

24 The VIP guests included the chief of the prefectural Religious Affairs Bureau, the assistant chief of the prefectural Civil Affairs Bureau, the head-priest of the White Cloud Mountain Daoist Shrine, three temple bosses from other temples, and two officials from the Zhenchuan township government.

25 Otherwise known as appellation d’origine contrôlée ("controlled designation of origin" or proof-of-origin certification). I thank one of the reviewers for suggesting this term, crucial in the construction of the world of terroir in France.

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Table des illustrations

Titre Figure 1. Carved stone gateway, with re-enforced concrete as base structure, to the upper reach of the Dragon King Valley
Légende Dragon King Valley
Crédits Adam Yuet Chau, 2016
URL http://journals.openedition.org/assr/docannexe/image/58331/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,3M
Titre Figure 2. A panoramic view of the centre of the Longwanggou temple complex during the 2016 summer temple festival. Note the reforested slopes surrounding the valley
Légende Longwanggou temple
Crédits Adam Yuet Chau, 2016
URL http://journals.openedition.org/assr/docannexe/image/58331/img-2.JPG
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,1M
Titre Figure 3. The musical fountain featuring water-spouting dragons
Légende Musical fountain
Crédits Adam Yuet Chau, 2016
URL http://journals.openedition.org/assr/docannexe/image/58331/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,7M
Titre Figure 4. A view of the Heilongtan Hilly Land Arboretum
Légende Heilongtan Hilly Land Arboretum
Crédits Adam Yuet Chau, 2016
URL http://journals.openedition.org/assr/docannexe/image/58331/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,0M
Titre Figure 5. Incense hawkers line the main path to the temple in the early hours of the main day (thirteenth of the sixth lunar month) of the Black Dragon King temple festival, getting ready for the big day
Légende Black Dragon King temple festival
Crédits Adam Yuet Chau, 2016
URL http://journals.openedition.org/assr/docannexe/image/58331/img-5.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,1M
Titre Figure 6. Inscriptions and carvings on a hill side at the centre of the Longwanggou complex to the back of the main temple hall. The big character at the top is long (dragon)
Légende Longwanggou
Crédits Adam Yuet Chau, 2016
URL http://journals.openedition.org/assr/docannexe/image/58331/img-6.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,1M
Titre Figure 7. A new temple hall dedicated to Cihangzhenren, Wenchangdijun and Guandi
Légende Temple hall
Crédits Adam Yuet Chau, 2016
URL http://journals.openedition.org/assr/docannexe/image/58331/img-7.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 930k
Titre Figure 8. Male and female Quanzhen Daoist priests participating in the offering-making ritual during the temple festival
Légende Quanzhen Daoist priests
Crédits Adam Yuet Chau, 2016
URL http://journals.openedition.org/assr/docannexe/image/58331/img-8.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 1,2M
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Pour citer cet article

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Adam Yuet Chau, « Ritual Terroir », Archives de sciences sociales des religions, 193 | 2021, 25-54.

Référence électronique

Adam Yuet Chau, « Ritual Terroir », Archives de sciences sociales des religions [En ligne], 193 | janvier-mars 2021, mis en ligne le 02 janvier 2024, consulté le 18 avril 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/assr/58331 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/assr.58331

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Auteur

Adam Yuet Chau

St John's College, Cambridge – ayc25@cam.ac.uk

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Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence © Archives de sciences sociales des religions. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.

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