172
of
17
Guo Ziyi, born in Wenzhou in Zhejiang province ca. AD 700 and only deified many years after he had fled from Guo's service [Illustration 8].
Guo, after a dream, became suspicious of Wen's powers to perform miracles, and Wen, realizing the danger he was in, fled and became a butcher. When a heavenly messenger revealed to Wen the evil of taking life, he gave up slaughtering animals and entered a monastery. Later, he moved to a temple dedicated to Tai Shan, the Lord of the Underworld, where he became the senior medium and communicated with the souls of the dead. He was renowned for his ability to bring rain and help devotees stricken by drought.
Epilogue
These nine individuals, an omnipotent Chinese emperor, and a hero, and general, believed to have been the emperor's personal physician; a powerful victorious general with immense progeny; a garrison commander and the city mandarin who died in defence of an imperial stronghold; and four minor soldiers, referred to as generals who also died for the emperor, have been deified with their images placed on popular religion temple altars within limited areas of south-east China and Taiwan, their legends being eagerly retold by temple custodians and devotees.
The Rebellion has held Chinese imaginations for centuries - mainly, it would appear, because of the story of the fall of the emperor's concubine bringing to its listeners a mixture of sadness and anger at the weakness of character shown by the emperor.
A Chinese Biographical Dictionary published in 1898 in London by Bernard Quaritch
2 In Hunan province and the Yangzi valley in general, Lao Lang, the patron of the theatre, of musicians and actors, has been identified in a number of places as a deified human named Zhuang Zong. He was said to be the patron of Peking opera but only of such groups touring central China. His image in Hunan portrayed him as a clean-shaven, white-faced young man without any special