Ghost King, South Gaoluo.

Today is the Ghost Festival in China, so I’ve been reflecting on calendrical rituals (further to my In search of the folk Daoists of north China, pp.7–8). Usually I draw attention to ritual days, but this seems to be one that I’m inclined to downplay.

Yankou at Xujiayuan temple fair, north Shanxi 2003.

As one of the Three Primes (sanyuan 三元) over the annual calendar, the Ghost Festival (Guijie 鬼节, formally Yulanpen jie 盂兰盆节) on 7th moon 15th seems like a major event (see e.g. Stephen Teiser, The Ghost Festival in medieval China). On this evening, groups of temple clerics (both Daoist and Buddhist) still hold Flaming Mouth rituals (yankou, shishi) to exorcise the community, although they were surely performed more commonly before the pervasive impoverishment of temple life over the 20th century.

Li Qing’s 1982 copy of the Li family Daoists’ shishi ritual manual.

There’s an extensive Chinese literature on this complex, lengthy Tantric ritual, but the Ghost Festival is far from its only context—besides other temple fairs over the annual cycle, it is (or was) routinely performed for funerals (see many posts under Local ritual).

Notwithstanding the importance of the Ghost King (Guiwang) and the Ten Kings of the Underworld (Shidian Yanjun) in village pantheons, in my experience of rural north China, 7th moon 15th is not (or is no longer?) a major day for rituals with liturgists presiding. Perhaps its liturgical importance varies by region; I’m not sure it depends on the community still having a viable temple, since ritual buildings can be re-activated for important ritual purposes. In my DVD Doing Things on ritual life in north Shanxi, §B5 has brief excerpts from a yankou performed by Buddhist monks for the “main day” of their village temple fair—which falls on 7th moon 3rd, not 15th.

Worshipping the ancestors, Xinzhou 7th moon 15th 1992.

What does endure is the custom of domestic offerings, burning paper at the ancestral graves, as we found in 1992 in Xinzhou on our trip through north Shanxi. Neither there nor in Yanggao is it a day to summon household Daoists to perform rituals.

The Zhaobeikou ritual association leads Releasing Lanterns ritual on Baiyangdian lake,
7th moon 15th, 1993.

For village associations on the Hebei plain, 7th moon 15th may have become less of a focus for communal observance over the 20th century. But the aquatic setting around the Baiyangdian lake (click here) prompts village ritual associations there to go on procession to “Release River [or Lotus?] Lanterns” (fang hedeng 放河/荷燈). Similar rituals are held in nearby counties such as Langfang. in Bazhou, the Zhangzhuang association, with its active group of liturgists, was one of few still performing yankou on the 15th. The association of Lesser Huangzhuang, Jinghai, performed Releasing God Lanterns (fang shendeng) on 1st moon 15th and Releasing Ghost Lanterns (fang guideng) on 7th moon 15th. Around Houshan, the major days to worship the goddess Houtu are 3rd moon 1st and 15th, but 7th moon 1st and 15th also attract many pilgrims.

So we may come across a range of exorcistic behaviour on 7th moon 15th: from burning paper at the ancestral graves, to processions Relasing the Lanterns, to full-scale yankou rituals.

As to the other days of the Three Primes, 1st moon 15th is the day around which the main annual rituals revolve (whereas only domestic offerings are made on New Year’s Day—e.g. Gaoluo); the ritual segments performed are exorcistic, like those for 7th moon 15th. But (again for north China) I haven’t heard of major communal observances for 10th moon 15th—leads welcome…

Anyway, the ritual days of the standard national calendar may arouse false hopes, requiring verification on the ground; once one gets down to the grassroots, other dates may require important calendrical rituals for local deities. In south China, even the major liturgical days of the 1st moon vary by locale. This is a significant fieldwork lesson: to see beneath the tip of the iceberg of temple practice and prescriptive history to digest folk observances at the grassroots (cf. Debunking “living fossils”).

Cf. Calendrical rituals, and for Bach and Saxony, The ritual calendar: cycles, seasons.