The Identity Of The ’Caigu’ In Minnan And Their Religious Life

‘CaiGu’ is a group of people of minnan society, the female monk with hair, inminnan,People called them ‘caigu’. This article will study the tentacles into thegroup of special religious group. After determining the ‘caigu’ is a buddhistbelievers, clarify its source is that the rich for the sake of his wife and daughter athome to build buddhist temple in ancient times, the author found that because of theirritating ‘hair’,‘caigu’ in different historical periods always faces ‘whether fororthodox buddhist female monk’ this identity dilemma. Specific analysis in order to‘caigu’ dentity in this paper, the research focused on chongwu town ‘caigu’ inHuiAnXian of Minnan. Based on field visiting survey, the author found they haveestablished a family temple, quasi family management.‘caigu’ temple just like afamily, and successful transplantation copy of patriarchal family pattern; Chongwu‘caigu’ is becoming a monk in the temple,but no cut off contact with their secularfamily.‘caigu’ in order to have a foothold in the local society, to take a strategicselection, and build up their own value system, and form their own symbol boundary,made of local daily religious matters. With this issue,‘identity’ of chongwu‘caigu’,there is a outline of a ‘lost identity’–‘the shaping of the identity’–‘the plightof identity’-‘identity transformation’, clearly depicts the different historicalperiod.Finally, in the clear ‘caigu’ why the religious groups always maintain thevitality, this article attempts to make further analysis to its transformation and the wayout, to the nantian temple in jinjiang, xiamen xuefeng temple,qinglian temple injinjiang, three development modes make interpretation, in order to make outlook theidentity dilemma of ‘caigu’.