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Folk Customs
--- The Worship of Mazu >
Grand Celebrations for Mazu's Birthday |
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Puxian
Opera is staged for three days and three nights around
Mazu's birthday.
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People come to the temple to pay homage all
year round, but the busiest day on Meizhou Island is the 23rd
day of the third lunar month, Mazu's birthday. Every year, starting
on about the 15th day of that month, boats and ships decorated
with coloured pennants and laden with pilgrims arrive at Meizhou
from all directions. By the 22nd and 23rd, everywhere on the
island from the shore to the top of Mount Meifeng is packed
with people. Gaily dressed, they sing and dance as they make
their pilgrimage.
Among the crowds of people there is usually a group of women
whose clothes are particularly eye-catching. They wear tall,
sail-shaped hairstyles and half-red, half-blue wide-legged trousers.
People call them "Meizhou Women" and their outfits are said
to be modelled on the costume Mazu used to wear. As Mazu is
the goddess of the sea and protector of boats, her hairstyle
is reminiscent of a sail, and the symbol of her identity as
the Holy Mother in Heaven is the red outfit she wears when she
flies through the sky. Since women in the human world are subordinate
to her and therefore must not wear identical clothes, their
trousers are only half red.
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On
the eve of Mazu's birthday Tianhou Hall is brilliantly
illuminated. Pilgrims hasten to offer the first incense
to Mazu at zero hour on her birthday.
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Among the pilgrims, some come representing
their families, some as delegations selected from villages or
townships, and others as "Incense sharing Groups" that have
been organized by Mazu temples in other places.
"Sharing Incense" or "Sharing the Goddess" means that Mazu temples
elsewhere dispatch people to bring their temple's Mazu statue
to Meizhou Mazu Temple, for all the statues of Mazu worshipped
in other temples come from the ancestral temple at Meizhou.
So, on important festival days such as Mazu's birthday and Mazu's
ascension day (the ninth day of the ninth lunar month), clergy
and laity at other temples organize pilgrim bands to come to
Meizhou with their statues to have them "visit their old home".
After these statues are worshipped in the ancestral temple,
the pilgrim bands take them back to their home temples.
The eve of Mazu's birthday is the most sacred time for followers
of the Mazu cult. Puxian Opera performances are held for the
three days and nights around her birthday, attracting hundreds
of pilgrims to the temple square. After the
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The
audience sitting in the square watch Puxian Opera with
great interest.
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performance is over the pilgrims take part
in various recreational activities in the square until almost
midnight. Then they form into lines and climb the mountain,
each one carrying burning incense. They vie with each other
to reach Tianhou Hall first to offer incense to Mazu at zero
hour on her birthday. They believe that it is most effective
to worship the goddess and ask for her blessing at this hour.
Crowds of people fill the hall, which is thick with burning
incense. Firecrackers are set off in front of the incense burner
outside the hall, producing a deafening noise. After offering
incense at Tianhou Hall, the pilgrims go to pay their respects
at Ascension-to-Heaven Rock and then climb to the mountaintop
to pay homage to the goddess' statue. A powerful lamp installed
on top of the goddess' head shines like a luminous pearl the
whole night through. Some of the pilgrims stay on the mountain
till daybreak, while others go back to spend the night in Tianhou
Hall. |
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