The Lady of Linshui: A Chinese Female Cult by Brigitte Baptandier (review)

Book Reviews 99 compound. This is treated as a clash between “belief” and “religion” with the potential to “cause people to question and challenge the Party’s inviolable principle of ‘love the state, love religion,’” which in turn might prompt people to choose “between ‘love religion’ and ‘love the state’, and place the former over the latter” (pp. 69-70). Apart from being somewhat forced, the dichotomy of religion and belief presented above seems rather similar to views promoted by the Chinese state. Finally, there are a few careless errors, such as giving Liu Xun’s name as “Xun Liu” (pp. 188, 209). Some of the translations are also questionable, such as “minor spirits category” for yincilei 淫祠類 (p. 51; “illicit shrines category” might be more appropriate), “lay nun halls” for zhaitang 齋堂 (p. 127; “vegetarian halls”), and “cult” for xiejiao 邪教 (p. 241; “heterodox teachings/religion”). Despite these flaws, however, Making Religion, Making the State represents an invaluable step forward in research on this topic. Not only does this book elucidate a number of key issues in the study of modern Chinese religious history, it also points to promising directions for future research, particularly the varying roles played by central and local government officials. It will also be interesting to see how future research reconsiders the authors’ analyses in light of data being collected on pre-1949 China as well as religious groups not covered in this book, particularly Taoist associations and redemptive societies. PAUL R. KATZ, Academia Sinica The Lady of Linshui: A Chinese Female Cult BRIGITTE BAPTANDIER; translated by KRISTIN INGRID FRYKLUND. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008. xiii, 374 pages. ISBN 978-0-8047-4666-3. US$65.00 hardcover. In Brigitte Baptandier’s reworking of La Dame-du-bord-de-l’eau,1 translated into English by Kristin Ingrid Fryklund, we see the culmination of decades-long research on the symbolic and practical meanings of gender and the feminine. Its content spans vast sacred and real geotemporal spaces from myths about Chen Jinggu 陳靖姑 (d. 790) and her deification as Linshui Furen 臨水夫人 (Lady Linshui), twenty-first patriarch at Mount Lü 閭山, to practice in Tainan 台南 (Taiwan) from 1979 to 1986, and after 1986 in Daqiao 大橋 township (Gutian 古田 county) and more generally in Fujian Province. At the core of this tome, with ten chapters in addition to the introduction and conclusion, are myths, beliefs, and practices related to Lady Linshui. Through the many detours we take to hear their telling, Baptandier retains the structure of the previous work published in French 20 years ago. While a glossary 1 Nanterre: Société d’ethnologie, 1988. 100 Journal of Chinese Religions of Chinese terms and maps to show the locations of fieldwork and mythical sites might have been useful aids, the author’s prose carefully elaborates on the legends, textual material, and translations in the first section, and in the following chapters weaves together an understanding of the intersections of myth and ritual performance. In terms of subjects, the work is equally remarkable, providing windows into religious life and society on the margins of post-1911 southern China and post-1949 Taiwan, and developing an appreciation of the modern significance of efficacy (ling 靈) in sustaining social, spiritual, and gendered networks and relationships (blood and fictive kin). Through the unraveling of mythical details about the person Chen Jinggu, born from a drop of blood and having died after performing a rain rite and rejecting the traditional feminine roles of motherhood and wife, Baptandier shows Chen as healer, exorcist, and transformative power in the hagiographical account titled Linshui pingyao 臨水平妖 (Linshui Pacifies the Demons) as well as in other texts. But Jinggu is not a solitary ritual performer; rather, through her change from woman to medium and apprenticeship with others, she learns “magic formulas, talismans, and ritual elements” (p. 15) and uses them to assist a community of her own gender and their children, and to become associated with Red Head masters today. Gradually, Baptandier presents the backdrop out of which emerges the synthesis of Chen’s persona as Goddess of Pregnancy. As such she presides over the sacred geography that is the Bridge of a Hundred Flowers (baihua qiao 百花橋), protects women and children, and triumphs despite...