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The question we must ask is why the poor, the peasants, labourers, children and beggars rise to the ranks of the spirits? There is the notion, as mentioned earlier, that all deities who are not Heavenly or Nature deities are kuei, and only Heavenly and Nature deities are shen. The answer would appear to lie in the fact that all of our examples can be said to have evolved as one might have expected through coincidental happenings linked to the departed shade, a kuei, becoming a benefactor, protector etc., and thus coming to be regarded as a shen. However, Wang the sailor, and Miss Liu/Lin with the parrot do not appear to have anything going for them apart from the sailor having gained renown and status by having been a member of the fleet of the famous admiral, Cheng Ho.
One does not have to be too sceptical to react to some of the tales of deities appearing in dreams requiring the dreamer to set him or herself up as a temple keeper with what would be a reasonably lucrative income from devotees, and it is not beyond suspicion that the spirits of a few ordinary people just might have been manipulated and exploited by individual or group opportunists, though perish the thought.
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NOTES
CK Yang: Religion in Chinese Society: University of California: 1961.
DC Graham: West China Missionary News: Cheng-tu: May 1929.
Ch'ing-ho Hsien-chih (1936) Chuan 2