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CHAN WING HOI
the celebration only this time. Neither the yn-sau nor his indigenous deputy whom I talked to knew anything about the gods except for Tin Hau.
9
Neglecting my question as to whether the gods other than Tin Hau had been invited at their own places, the priest Chan Wa expounded his theory of the connection of each god with a locality. He started with the earth gods. The earth god of the “head” of a village guarded the “head” of the village, and his counterpart of the "tail" of the village guarded the "tail" of the village. Other earth gods, such as the earth gods of the homes of individual families and of hills and graves, guarded their own locations of responsibility. The same principle applied even to Tin Hau (“Ma-neung”). Each village (heung) was guarded by a different ma-neung, each of whom received offerings from the temple of her village. To stress that there was more than one Tin Hau, the priest alluded to the belief that the title was applied to three sisters, not one goddess. He compared the localized nature of the gods with the Qing administration of this region. The Dongguan and Bao'an counties were once under the same magistrate. As communication between different spots of the vast area was inconvenient, the place was later split into separate counties each under its own administration.
My impression was that although most gods were localized, some were more so than others. While the influences of earth gods were strictly limited to their localities, temple gods were given guardianship of their localities as well as a more or less global portfolio. It is therefore to be expected that when the interest of an individual or a group becomes less localized, it is gods such as Tin Hau whose protection extends beyond a narrowly defined geographic area that remain important, and localized gods whose influence is limited to a small area would receive less attention. In the case of Shek O, some of the latter were earth gods who protected the villagers while they fished and farmed. Now that Shek O residents had given up farming and fishing, although these gods continued to be invited to the jiu, many at the festival hardly knew who they were.