THREE CHINESE DEITIES
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expert, a geomancer. In general everyday use, prognostications are looked up in the farmer's almanac which is still published annually in Hong Kong and Taiwan and sold widely. In former days the source of information on this subject contained in the farmers' almanac, was the Imperial Calendar, the Hwang Li (). This, until the end of the Empire in 1911, gave the details of T'ai Sui's position every year. Nowadays the birth hour and date of an individual is matched to the movements of T'ai Sui given in the farmers' almanac, thereby obtaining the auspicious and unauspicious dates for most social functions, such as weddings, travel, initiating business, starting building, launching a ship or burying the dead. As can be seen T'ai Sui is important in the life of individuals: but, despite this importance, T'ai Sui is worshipped on as few occasions as possible. Persons fear approaching him too frequently as he is so alarmingly unpredictable and, being so awe-inspiring, he is given a very wide berth. Very rarely indeed, will you see devotees worshipping before his altars in comparison with other altars in the folk religion temples.
In the Yangtze Valley, and elsewhere in central and southern China, at the start of Spring, a clay bull and an image of T'ai Sui were carried on a float through the city with the civic officials bringing up the rear. The bull was constructed in a special pattern consisting of sixty separate parts. Hodous3 in 1929 tells of this image of the spring bull, a clay and coloured paper bull, being carried through the streets of Foochow together with T'ai Sui, the tutelary god of the current year. When the procession arrived at the Yamen the district officials formed a circle about the bull and each one struck it with a vari-coloured stick three times, breaking off pieces of clay. The bits of clay and other parts of the bull were picked up by the crowd and thrown to their pigs to stimulate their growth.
Hodous also continued that "the position of T'ai Sui behind or in front of the bull tells the farmer whether to begin planting late or early; and upon the position of the tail, or the opening of the mouth of the bull depends the Yin and Yang principles of the year. The tutelary god of spring and of the year is Kou Mang () who holds a whip in his hand. The age of the image, the colour of his clothing and his belt and the position of his coiffure, the holding of his hand over his right or left ear, is determined by the 3 Hodous, L., Folkways in China, Probsthain's Oriental Series Vol. XVIII (1929).