Lingnan Wong Tai Sin Faith Study

Wong Tai Sin Belief originated in the Jin Dynasty in Jinhua, Zhejiang Proyince.After incoming Lingnan in the late Ming dynasty,it gradually became one of me most influential Taoism Folk beliefs.Having full interaction with Lingnan culture and Lingnan society,it developed very fast mainly because of its successful localization.Compared to Jinhua's tradition,Wong Tai Sin Belief in Lingnan takes on a different look.Therefore,now scholars usually use the term of "tLingnan's Wong Tai Sin Belief' to describe its development and characteristics in Lingnan.Why Wong Tai Sin Belief can be so popular in Lingnan society? Firstly,I review its history in Lingnan,and then sum up the reasons of its flourish.I think,as a belief,the reason of its flourish in essence is that it meets the belief needs of Lingnan people,and it adapts the belief characteristics of Lingnan people.How to grasp the belief needs and characteristics? I try to analyze from three kinds of "integration"——its localization,integration into the Lingnan culture；its feature of realism, imegrating into the Lingnan society；its sense of keeping pace with the times,integrating into the social transformation.After finding out the reasons of Wong Tai Sin's flourish in Lingnan, the paper is intended to analyze the reasons of its many times flourish and its long-term vitality by introducing the perspective of Ethnology of religion. Both Jinhua and Lingnan are the typical regions of Han-ethnic. I also think that its flourish in essence dues to that it meets the belief needs of Han-ethnic and adapts to the belief characteristics of Han-ethnic. Therefore, Wong Tai Sin Belief features with Han-ethnic's folk belief. By reviewing the development of Wong Tai Sin Belief in Jinhua and Lingnan, I also try to sum up the characteristics of Han-ethnic's folk belief:the regions of the belief, the integration of different culture forms and content, and the ambiguity of the belief.I think the most valuable direction of the research on Wong Tai Sin belief is to look for the reason of its flourish. As it is a kind of belief in essence, we should find the reasons of its flourish from the perspective of religion. I try to combine these two perspectives to start my paper, and I think it is one of the innovation points of the paper.1.Emperors rewarding gods is a common phenomenon in Han-ethnic society in ancient times. Compared with Buddhism and Taoism, folk belief is promoted greatly by the rewarding. It is also a unique approach for official to manage folk belief. And this phenomenon was decided by the political culture and religious culture of Han-ethnic. 2. There are many religious groups like siksikyuen in HongKong and TaiWan, which successfully completed the transformation of modernization. Consider their experiences, charity is an intermediary. Is it possible that charity could contribute to the religious groups'modern transformation? Anyway, Siksikyuen's experiences would make people think about that.3. Charity is a kind of social resources, which needs to be cultivated. As the development of China, the society is not lack of the ability to help vulnerable groups, but the awareness and the system to cultivate charity resources is still need to bring up. Religious groups are always the component of charity resources from ancient times to today. We should give them the space to play a role, which can promote the development of social charity, and also promote the harmonious development of religion and society.