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Belief or Leisure: The Evolution of Miaofeng Mountain Temple Festival in the Last Century


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Article

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Authors

Wang, Yaofeng 
Yue, Yongyi 

Abstract

The Miaofeng Mountain temple festival is based on Bixia Yuanjun 碧霞元君, known as Laoniangniang 老娘娘, belief in Beijing-Tianjin area. The paper discusses its historical changes and transformation through methods of text analysis and fieldwork. The historical changes of Miaofeng Mountain temple festival are organized as follow: 1) its origin, 2) the space-time distribution, 3) the ritualized behavior and interactive mode of incense organizations (Xianghui, 香会) and unorganized discrete pilgrims when offering incense and sacrifices, and 4) the impact brought by the participation of special forces represented by the Bannermen and the royal family of Qing dynasty. The driving force behind the contemporary transformation of Miaofeng Mountain temple festival is mainly tourism economy, leisure culture and the decline of the sanctity of the goddess beliefs. Changes were found in temples, managers, the time of the temple festival, the roads to the mountain, the composition and mind set of the Xianghui, etc.

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11

Publisher

Association of Cambridge Studies

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