Of Wives, Mothers, and Goddesses: Marriage, Childbirth, & Religiosity in Wenzhou Women’s Culture
Speaker: Mayfair YANG(Professor, Religious Studies Department, East Asian Studies Department,University of California, Santa Barbara) Time: 4:30 p.m., Tuesday, 16 September 2014 Venue: LT5, Yasumoto International Academic Park, Chung Chi College, CUHK
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| The seminar |
Professor YANG’s ethnographic presentation
was based on her on-going fieldwork in rural Wenzhou, China, on the revival of
popular religion. Professor YANG shared her observations on the changes in
Wenzhou women’s marriage, childbirth and religiosity in the post-Mao era.
Traditionally, the groom’s family will offer brideprice
to the bridal family before the marriage ceremony. In return, the bridal family
will provide the dowry. Nowadays, the brideprice is less than the dowry. With the
economic development, some bridal families even refuse the brideprice, as they
consider the bride will be more respected in the groom’s family.
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| Professor Mayfair Yang |
Even though the communist party enabled women
to go out to work and promoted their social status after 1949, most married
women in Wenzhou still perform a traditional gender role after marriage. They
will stay at home to take care of the family and be the factory manager if
their family owns an enterprise. Most Wenzhou women keep a low-profile and prefer
that their husband or the family to take all the credit.
In the post-Mao era, the number of births
started to drop after 20 years of rise. When the People’s Republic of China was
just established in 1949, the average household size is 4.09 and increased to
4.8 in 1968. But after the one child policy, household size gradually declined
to 3.9 in the 1990s. The popularisation of the nuclear family is also a result
of the new housing setting and the rising real estate price.
Even though women are encouraged to engage in
society after 1949, religious activities were strictly controlled or even banned
by the communist government. Yet, women in Wenzhou, especially the older women,
still participate in the religious activities in Buddhism and/or Daoism. They
did this to pay the debt of sins and build merit for the afterlife, for personal
or familial salvation.
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| The attendants |
In Wenzhou, many religious organisations are
initiated or lead by women. Professor YANG shared the stories of how her
informants initiated and built a Guanyin temple, an 800-member Buddhist study
society and a Taiyin palace. These women face difficulties to obtain the
recognition from the official Daoist/Buddhist associations, without which they
can be shut down. But, as popular religion is considered part of intangible
cultural heritage in the Wenzhou/Fujian area, they gained a certain degree of legitimacy.
One of the major goddess the Wenzhou women
worship is the Goddess Chen the 14th. Goddess Chen the 14th
has a fearless, fierce and independent image. The stories of her are closely
related to the current problems, including the official corruption. It also inspires
a cross-strait Mother Chen festival, which has become a major semi-official event
between Mainland China and Taiwan.
