NO. 2 FOLK RELIGION IN SOUTHWEST CHINA — GRAHAM 1 75 



Images of the gods may be drawn, written, or printed on paper. 

 Before the New Year people all over West China sell colored images 

 of door gods and kitchen gods that have been printed on paper. 

 During the day before the New Year the door gods are pasted up 

 on the front doors, and between midnight and daylight on the first 

 day of the year the kitchen god is pasted or hung up in the kitchen. 

 They are worshiped as real, living deities. Other such gods printed 

 in color on paper and sold before each New Year are the t'u-ti and 

 his spouse and three gods printed on the same paper, the gods of 

 heaven, earth, and water. 



Occasionally I have seen other gods printed on paper, including 

 Chang Tao-ling, Ling-kuan, Kuanyin, and the god of wealth. On 

 Mount Omei the writer saw two food advertisements and one of a 

 noted biscuit company that had been framed and were being wor- 

 shiped as gods in temples because they had on them pictures of 

 Buddha and his worshipers. These were apparently discarded before 

 1945 ; probably they were criticized and their meanings disclosed by 

 Chinese who could read English. 



When priests are invited to Chinese homes to conduct funerals, 

 memorial ceremonies, or ceremonies to exorcise demons, they gen- 

 erally bring with them a paper scroll on which is a pantheon of gods. 

 The priests hang the scroll up in the home or nearby and worship it, 

 burning incense or candles and making prostrations. 



Most images in China are made of clay ; a small number are carved 

 out of wood or stone, and a very few are made of iron, bronze, or 

 brass. In Sikang many small Tibetan idols are made of brass or 

 bronze and covered with gold leaf. 



The innermost core of a clay idol is a stick of wood to give the 

 image rigidity. Straw is wrapped around this stick, then clay is added 

 and allowed to dry. The best idols are beautifully shaped and, in 

 some places, then covered with gold leaf. Clay images made by 

 specialists are real works of art. 



Living creatures with flesh and blood have organs and intestines, 

 and therefore idols have square holes through their backs into their 

 chests, in which are enclosed strings of thread, short pieces of straw, 

 beans, tea leaves, bits of isinglass, gravel, and other small objects repre- 

 senting the heart, intestines, and other organs. The beans represent 

 hearts and brains, and the bits of straw represent intestines. 



Priests generally perform certain ceremonies before which the 

 images are merely statues and after which they are living gods. Often 

 as part of the ceremony a bloody feather is pasted to the head of the 



