RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h
THREE CHINESE DEITIES

175

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).
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n
128

Chinese lives have long been regulated by two separate calendars, the lunar and the solar. To agrarian peasants the accuracy of the combined calendars is of vital importance having long had a religious as well as a practical function. Chinese geomancers use their skills of prediction melding the religious and practical so that time and what in the west would be regarded as astrology are intermingled. Lunar calendars cannot predict the seasons any more than the solar calendar can predict the full and new moons.

All Chinese religious festivals follow the lunar calendar which changes from year to year, complicated by whether a particular lunar month has twenty-nine or thirty days. Festivals play a major rôle in people's lives breaking up the monotony of life. There were, and still are, three major annual festivals: San Jie, known colloquially as guo jie literally as 'passing the joint', consisting of guo nian, the festival of seeing the old year out and the new year in; guo duanwu, the Dragon Boat Festival on the Double Fifth; and guo zhongqiu, the Autumn Festival, on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. The great majority of festivals in China have been and still are determined by the waxing and waning of the moon.

Until 1911 an annual Imperial Lunar or ‘Dynastic' Calendar, known as the Yellow Calendar, the determination of which was a royal prerogative, was precisely calculated following meticulous observations by Chinese astronomers in order that imperial ritual sacrifices could be carried out and confirmation obtained for political action. This legitimised the emperor's power to rule and his claim to the Mandate of Heaven. The one stationary star of the Heavens was the Pole Star around which all other stars seem to circulate. The Pole Star was recognised as the linchpin of the heavens. Chinese emperors were cosmic figures, the equivalent on Earth of the Pole Star, with their every move regulated in conjunction with astrology. The calendar divided the year into twelve months; the new moon fell predictably on the first of each lunar month and the full moon on the fifteenth. A similar popular Calendar, known as the Farmers' Almanac, costing coppers, was and still is widely circulated amongst the masses. This enabled, and still enables, the population, mainly the peasants and petty merchants, to be informed when specific actions or functions can be performed as well as taboos warning them against carrying out daily activities which would be counter to the feng shui, such as on a certain
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