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Hainan island as well as within Hainanese communities in south-east Asia. Although their legends are unique to Hainanese they are similar in style and format to those told in other ethnic groups.
Sadly, most of the rural temples on Hainan island itself have little left of their original images following the ravages of the Cultural Revolution. It is fortunate that we do still have several Hainanese communities in south-east Asia where little has changed over the past century. However, intermarriage between Hainanese devotees and those of other Han ethnic groups has meant that to identify cults as uniquely Hainanese has become that much more difficult.
NOTES
1
2
Popular or folk religion is an amalgam of Buddhist, Daoist and local beliefs ignored by Confucianists, Buddhists and Daoists as well as by the majority of educated Chinese.
Hengwa is sometimes referred to as the Puxian sub-group.
Hokkien is the Fujian linguistic group word for Fujian people as well as their language. Minnan is the area of southern Fujian province from which many immigrants to Taiwan and South-east Asia originated and is a linguistic sub-group of Hokkien.
4 Buddhist and Daoist images on such altars have not been included in this article, even though a number have been seen on folk religion altars in Hainanese temples, as they are all revered China-wide.
5 Ma Zu is primarily the Fujian community title for Tian Hou.
7
Both Third and Fourth are deities that have been noted on Hainan island and within Hainanese overseas communities.
An entirely different deity, the Saintly Matron of Wenzhou, Wenzhou Shengmu would appear not to be connected in any way with Wenzhou Houwang. Nor has she been noted on altars within the overseas southern Chinese communities. She has only been noted by William Mesny who saw an image of her in Zhejiang province in 1896 [doubtless connected with the local coastal city of Wenzhou], and suggested that as her surname appeared to have been Lin she may well be Tian Hou, the patron goddess of seafarers.