|
The relationship between humans and deities(sing-ming) in rural Taiwanese society is a type of folk belief with deities(sing-ming), ghosts and ancestral spirits. This report will examine the human-deity(sing-ming) relationship of a traditional rural Taiwanese family as the main axle to record the life phenomenon, the customs and the folk religions of present rural society. It’s a kind of complex relationship of interdependence, like and dislike, meeting, departing, happiness or sadness.
The first chapter is the introduction. The author elaborates on his own family story and explains the research of some questions. It includes the story background, field investigation outline and questions researched.
From the second chapter, he starts to elaborate in the third person. The structure of this article is basically combined by the Ye families’ storytelling and what the field investigation reporter heard and saw. The story is about a rural family and the living style when the Japanese departed Taiwan. The leader of the Ye family married the daughter of the Zheng family, and lived over the wife’s home(It’s called uxorilocal marriage). His first son had to follow the mother’s family name. It’s known as the “ female pig tax”. The story also talks about the customs of adopting the daughter-in-law when they were small at that time in Taiwan(It is so called tong-yang-xi). We can see how these customs influenced the Ye family.
In 1950, The Korean War erupted and American aid came to Taiwan. All these events helped the Ye family’s textile factory. Their factory expanded from family labor style to a textile mill with more than 200 workers. From poor to rich, the interpersonal and social group relationship of the Ye family also changed. Besides, the simple, pure family love in the Ye family became disordered because the eldest son Zheng Sui married a second wife after his success. This marriage caused tension between the mother, sister-in-laws and daughter-in-law. Finally, the situation in the family was out of control. Zheng Sui decided to leave the textile factory business, and took his second wife and four-month-old son to Hualien, away from his hometown. In the second year after Zheng Sui left, his 18-year-old first son committed suicide. Thus a succession of disorders and tragedies impacted the Ye family. They believed that all these troubles began from the time when the father married into the Zheng family and followed their family name. That marriage initiated complicated non-blood relative relations which caused unhappiness among the Ye ancestor worships. So, they decided to change the eldest brother’s family name from ”Zheng” back to “Ye”, for comforting, mediating or constraining the ancestor worships’ disputes. The Ye families welcome some local deities(sing-ming) home, like Ma Zu, Tai Zi Ye, Fa Zhu Gong. Could this solve the problem between two family ancestor worships?
The local deity(sing-ming) “Fa Zhu Gong” put his spirit into the second son Ye Jin-Hu. (This is so called “Ji”). This deity(sing-ming) showed his power and the power pushed the construction of his temple “ Fa-Xuan-Gong”. This let us see a legend that the local deity(sing-ming) created from the Ye’s family main hall.
However, after the 921 big earthquakes and highway construction, Fa-xuan-Gong declined immediately. The villagers believed this is because the natural change and artificial destruction changed the local Feng Shui. From popular to cold stove, the change of Fa-Xuan-Gong made the Ye family start to feel the conflict and agitation of their ancestor worships spirit.
The final conclusion of this report is that the researcher who is one of the Ye family members tries to analyze the point of all the problems in this story, and the consciousness and awakening to the ancestor worships’ respecting when you are under a complex relationship of relatives, blood, and family names. Finally based on this to research the human-deity(sing-ming) relationship in a traditional rural family.
|