Journey of a Goddess: Chen Jinggu Subdues the Snake Demon, translated, edited, and with an introduction by Fan Pen Li Chen, is an attractive, insightful, and resourceful book. It consists of three parts with different elements: introductory articles, pictures, a novel, and excerpts from a play, which bring to readers an enjoyable learning experience. The first part of the book offers a concise introduction and interpretation of the origin, transformation, and historic background of the local belief and practice of the Chen Jinggu cult in Southeast China and of its relationship with Daoism, Buddhism, and snake cult customs, based on rich historic resources as well as onsite observations. The second part, with forty-six pictures, visually displays the cult with images of temples, statues, ritual implements, performers, and miscellaneous items, many of the pictures taken in recent years. The third part includes a novel and two play excerpts. The novel, Journey of a Goddess: Chen Jinggu Subdues the Snake Demon, which includes nine scenes, is the first English version, translated by Fan Pen Li Chen from a 1753 woodblock novel, Hai you ji. This smooth translation of the mythological story of the goddess Chen Jinggu makes this English version appealing and easy to read for non-Chinese readers.
This book has these notable features. First, it presents an interesting ethnological interpretation of the origin and symbolic meaning of the Chen Jinggu cult and its lore. In her research essay, Fan Pen Li Chen scrutinizes various resources regarding Chen Jinggu and snake cults, from local gazetteers, hagiographies, and geographic marks on the land, to explore how the emphasis shifts from Chen Jinggu in earlier stages as a woman’s childbirth protector to serpent slayer in the Ming and Qing dynasties. The author points out that the deep meaning of Chen Jinggu subduing the snake demoness is the establishment of a new belief system through vanquishing local deities/demons, eliminating previous sacrifice rules, and putting in place the new deity and its worship (35). This perspective is convincing, considering these historic facts: the early indigenous Min (?, an alternative name of the Fujiang) people worshiped the snake as their ancestor totem, so the sacrificial ritual of the snake was popular among Min Yue (??) and the circle of Yue (?) people in southeast China, where the snake was an important creature in the environment. There have been many other snake stories resonating with a demonized snake sprite over the period of a thousand years in the region. For instance, a famous Han legend, Bai she zhuan (Legend of the White Snake), widespread in Jiangsu and Zhejiang in Southeast China, tells a touching love story of a girl transformed from a snake sprite and a young man named Xu Xian. In this legend, the White Snake sprite is finally suppressed by the monk Fahai under the Leifeng Tower in Zhejiang. It is pertinent to note that, during the sequence of historic periods in China, there were largescale Han migrations from the central plains of Henan and Hebei to south China, due to wars, natural disasters, and civil unrest. They settled in as Hakka people and gradually integrated into and dominated the area.
A second attractive feature of this book is the pictures. These pictures, taken and collected from several locations in Fujian, Zhejiang, and even New York, vividly convey the tortuous history of the Chen Jinggu cult. They also show the contemporary continuity of the cult in various settings, including temple rituals, marionette plays, and home-based sacrifices. Many cult objects in the pictures appear to be new restorations, such as the Linshui Ancestral temples, the ritual implements, and the props for marionette plays. The restoration of these objects reflects the flourishing of local belief and practice among the Chinese in recent decades, along with the wave of recovering and preserving local tradition and promoting the local tourism economy in contemporary China. Thus, the old and new material objects recorded in the pictures show readers how the old Chen Jinggu lore has been continuously expressed and updated locally, though readers could better understand the distribution of the cult in its natural and social environment if the book provided a cultural-geographic map.
Finally, it is worth pointing out that by combining three different elements in one book, multiple viewpoints are present for readers to grasp features of these Chinese local beliefs and practices. The introduction presents a scholarly perspective that decodes the lore as a metaphor for the triumph of the migratory Han religious deity over the indigenous snake deity. The novel offers readers a storyteller’s take on the cult practice. This mythological novel actually follows a narrative formula in traditional Chinese religious legendry: a mortal hero who has an unusual life linked with the god/goddess acting as a delegate to annihilate evil demons, then becomes a local deity. These narratives emphasize the hero/deity’s supernatural ability to protect the populace from harmful demons. In this novel, Chen Jinggu accumulates supernatural powers from multiple religions rather than from a single belief system. Her life is transformed by a fingernail of the Buddhist Guanyin, her ritual techniques obtained from the Daoist Lüsan sect. She also has a mortal family, just like a local shamanic priestess. Thus, as expressed in this lore, vernacular Daoism, shamanism, and imported Buddhism are all working for Chen Jinggu to subdue the snake demoness.
The pictures in the book show that Chen Jinggu still serves religious functions in protecting women’s childbirth and in the annihilation of bad demons. Chen Jinggu statues are located not only in the Lady’s Temple, a shamanist shrine, but also in the Linshui Ancestral Temple served by Daoist priests (see Plate 29). The narratives and ritual practices of the Chen Jinggu cult have been engaged for the practical purpose of praying for a safe and happy life. This exemplifies the flexibility, openness, and pragmatism of Chinese folk belief. Overall, the book offers readers multiple flavors and valuable insights into local cult practice and its development in China.
--------
[Review length: 993 words • Review posted on April 19, 2018]