Recovering Buddhism in Modern China

It is believed in the villages of the Hakka in Ninghua 寧化¹ county in western Fujian province that when a woman reaches her menopausal age, she has to do the “receiving Buddhist prayer beads” (jiezhu 接珠) ritual. This case study of jiezhu in Ninghua aims both to expand the ethnographic record of women’s rituals and to share insights into Buddhism in rural communities in China, particularly with respect to the role women and gender politics play in shaping the ritual in recent history and today.

The study of the lives of women in China has progressed in recent decades, as is most evident in Gail Hershatter’s survey Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century.2 Even so, there is still a tendency to ignore issues concerning women in the religious context, and most scholarship that has addressed this topic focuses on the premodern era, without extending the discussion of the ritualizing by women to contemporary China.³ Examining some of the very few records detailing rituals for women in the imperial past, Ann Waltner, for instance, has investigated notions of gender, life cycle, and royal ritual in her case study of the coming-of-age ceremony of a princess of the Northern Song dynasty (960–1126).⁴ However, women’s rituals in modern times, especially those still active today, have barely been documented or even discussed at all. The neglect of women’s rituals has been criticized by many feminists as reflective of an androcentric approach in academic research. Instead of being studied as an independent subject, women-oriented rituals have mostly been placed under the headings “ritual studies” or “popular religion,” thus leaving an enormous lacuna in the study of religious practices performed by women in China. The study of jiezhu, a life-cycle ritual that is still very much alive today in rural Ninghua, contributes in part to redressing this deficiency in the field. At the same time, in keeping with this volume’s suggestion that distinctive strands of Buddhism are present at all levels of society in China, this jiezhu case evinces highly intriguing, particular dynamics of both Buddhist identity and gender politics at the grassroots level in the local society of this part of rural Fujian.

My ethnographic study of the villages of Ninghua reveals the great significance of the jiezhu ritual to women and their communities.⁵ A woman reaching the menopausal age, it is generally accepted, must do jiezhu, without which her Amituofo recitation (nianfo 念佛) would not be efficacious. In other words, jiezhu, as a prerequisite for Amituofo recitation, is at the same time a purification rite.⁶ It is also believed that if she has not done jiezhu, she will suffer from punishment in the underworld and become a cow or a horse in her next life.⁷ When a woman dies without having done jiezhu, it is believed that her coffin cover must be hit three times with an axe. Therefore, if a woman does not perform jiezhu, her mind will not be at peace and she will feel guilty.⁸ While allaying these fears, jiezhu primarily makes a woman eligible for Amituofo recitation and to become a member of the nianfo community as a nianfo mama 念佛媽媽 (Amituofo recitation mother). In other words, jiezhu is the only means by which Ninghua women can effectively do Amituofo recitation to gain merit. The common recitation formula used in Amitābha worship, namo Amituofo, has become the most widely recognized single phrase representative of Buddhism as a whole. Not only is it commonly intoned by Chinese Buddhists but it is also a phrase familiar to people throughout East Asia.⁹

In rural Ninghua, as well as in many places in China, women have had a marginalized status as the supposedly “weaker sex,” with a lower social position. The association of female bodily discharges with defilement further diminishes their status. Jiezhu, indeed, reinforces the idea of “defilement” as being attributed to the female body. It is important to note that its participants believe that the attained merit would be nullified if the initiate became pregnant after doing jiezhu.10 This has much to do with taboos related to female sexuality. The shame that women feel in relation to the male-defined negative female bodily image affirms patriarchal hegemony. However, I argue in this chapter that the ritual acts of jiezhu provide therapeutic healing. The jiezhu woman¹¹ goes through a stage in which she has to confront the change in her role and identity as a life giver (mother) at the end of her procreative cycle.

As the predominant religious tradition of Ninghua, Buddhism views the nature of women as morally defective and presumes that women have to be reborn as men before they can attain Buddhahood. Many of the Ninghua women I interviewed expressed their wish to be born as men in their next life because men did less work and had a more carefree life. They lamented that “life as a woman is bitterly hard” because women have to bear children, suffer in childbirth, raise children, work on the farm, as well as do household chores. They are not happy with their lot as women. They want their next life to be of better quality, which, if they remain women, means marrying a good husband. Jiezhu and Amituofo recitation make for a twin means to envisage a more fortunate rebirth. In the ritual, women chant, “[We are] entering through a Buddhist door, the bell is struck thrice, we can marry a good husband in the next life.” Ninghua women typically give a lot of attention to caring for their family members in this life. For themselves, however, they pray for an improved next life.¹²

It is not entirely clear when this jiezhu practice began. On the basis of a legend about a county magistrate said to have invented the ritual to prevent his widowed mother from remarrying, an examination of the jiezhu costumes that the women wear, and consideration of the historical context of opposition to widow remarriage, I have elsewhere hypothesized that jiezhu might have originated in the late Ming or early Qing period.13 As Jan Kiely points out in chapter 6 in this volume, there are and have long been distinctive threads of Buddhism produced and reproduced at all social levels in China; jiezhu is a case in point that attests to the continuity of a significant women’s ritual and a local rural Buddhist identity in Ninghua. All the jiezhu practitioners whom I interviewed identify themselves as Buddhists. Some do not see this as an exclusive affiliation. A second-generation jiezhu ritual specialist, Zhang Lianyu 張連玉, for instance, confided that he considers himself “half Buddhist, half Daoist” and has two religious names, a Buddhist one and a Daoist one. Still, the rites in the ritual program are primarily Buddhist. Moreover, despite being called daoshi 道士 (masters of the Dao) by the local people, the ritual specialists who perform jiezhu actually wear Buddhist robes in the ritual.¹⁴

However, my research shows that jiezhu is perceived by county-level Buddhist clerical leaders and government officials as merely a lay-Buddhist or local religious (minjian 民間) practice. Yet this condescending dismissal has been a blessing in disguise with respect to preserving the ritual. Labeled a local religious practice, jiezhu has not come under direct government supervision, thus leaving its practitioners room to privately, often secretly, continue the practice even during the Cultural Revolution.¹⁵

Despite being thus categorized by state and religious authorities as a “lower” level lay-Buddhist practice, jiezhu remains a ritual of prime importance not only to the elderly women of the community but also to some elderly men in Ninghua. In fact, in the villages of Ninghua where the average annual household income was about three thousand yuan in 2002,¹⁶ families willingly spend more than a year’s income on the initiation rituals. Why is it worth so much to them? This study reveals how jiezhu is a powerful ritual that empowers the participants in four ways: (1) by performing jiezhu the initiate acquires “symbolic capital”; (2) jiezhu endows menopausal women with the identity of nianfo mama, qualified to do Amituofo recitation; (3) jiezhu generates support from a community of Buddhist friends, matrikin, and married daughters; and (4) jiezhu rewards the woman initiate as a gift she has worked hard to earn for herself.

Jiezhu is performed by the practitioner once in a lifetime. After the ritual, the practitioner is eligible to begin her Amituofo recitation as both a less-formal, frequent practice and as part of an annual ritual involving the nianfo recitation.17 Within three years of doing jiezhu, the initiate is obligated to begin participating in the annual recitation ritual. Jiezhu can be understood to mean literally “receiving Buddhist prayer beads.”¹⁸ The ritual is also called nazhu 納珠 (accepting the beads)¹⁹ and guozhu 過珠 (passing on the beads).²⁰ Jie means “to receive,” na means “to accept graciously,” and guo means “to pass on to.” Incorporating all these meanings, jiezhu can be described as a rite in which a woman accepts or receives the mālā (string of prayer beads) that is passed on to her.²¹ In Ninghua, there are two texts that describe what the 108 beads represent: Distributing the Mālā Scripture (Fenzhu jing 分珠經)²² and Passing on the Mālā Scripture (Guozhu jing 過珠經).²³

The ritual program of jiezhu consists of two sessions.²⁴ The first session usually starts around or past midnight, and there is a break between the two sessions in which the ritual specialist(s), who are men and commonly addressed as daoshi in Ninghua,²⁵ the daifo mama 帶佛媽媽 (the leading Buddhist mother),²⁶ and fellow Buddhist friends (Foyou 佛友) go home for a rest and return around 6:00 A.M.²⁷ If the first session starts after 3:00 A.M., the second follows with just breakfast in between.²⁸ It should be noted that the actual receiving of the beads always takes place after midnight. A specific time is also set for burning the paper offerings. This rite is commonly called “burning the golden mansion” or “burning the Buddhist mansion.” This rite is also customary at Chinese funerals, although in that context the burning takes place in the evening.²⁹

The following outlines a one-day jiezhu ritual program.³⁰

Jiezhu is a ritual that initiates menopausal women into the next stage of life, senectitude. It manages menopause as a life-crisis rite of passage in the manner made familiar by Arnold van Gennep.³² His major concern in ritual studies is “all the ceremonial patterns which accompany a passage from one situation to another or from one cosmic or social world to another.”³³ Van Gennep describes all rites of passage as a three-stage process: separation (preliminal), transition (liminal), and incorporation (postliminal). The ritual participant engages in the first stage by leaving behind the “before,” then he or she passes through the second, transition, in which one is “betwixt and between,” and finally the participant arrives at the stage of “after,” which completes the transformation.

Jiezhu begins as a rite of separation, ritualistically announcing the withdrawal of fertility, which has long been considered a blessing in Chinese communities. As a means to atone for the sense of loss of the inability to reproduce, jiezhu offers a form of approbation. It removes the “wrongdoings” of the initiate so that she is qualified to do Amituofo recitation and become a member of a community of nianfo mama, which is called a peng 棚 (literally, a group of people under the roof of a shack). The jiezhu initiate prepares to pass over the threshold from this world and into the next (i.e., Western Paradise). By means of a wengao 文誥 (ritual document), the jiezhu participant asks for forgiveness of her sins: “Now [my] sins are gone, as such good fortune is bestowed.”34 Among the transgressions referenced, the uncleanness of the female body, particularly relating to menses, is notable.

A bath symbolizing ritual cleansing has to be taken by the initiate before the ritual begins. The initiate, the leading daifo mama, and the Buddhist friends walk into the ritual area one by one. The entering through the Buddhist door symbolizes the passing over the threshold from the secular into the sacred, from the separation into the liminal stage. The separation signified by a supernatural power is symbolic of a spatial passage. To invite the presence of this power representing spatial passage, offerings, invocations, and various rites are performed. In the ritual site of Zhou Weijin, the predelle of the deities representing the ten territories or levels of achieving bodhisattva wisdom are placed in two rows on the altar. These levels are huanxidi 歡喜地, ligoudi 離垢地, faguangdi 發光地, yanhuidi 焰惠地, nanshengdi 難勝地, xianqiandi 現前地, yuanxingdi 遠行地, budongdi 不動地, shanhuidi 善惠地, and fayundi 法云地. The deities of the territories are symbolic of the passage from the lowest position (huanxidi) to the eventual arrival at the highest level of bodhisattva wisdom (fayundi). The initiate begins with her separation from her present impure state, transiting through the purification rite into being a pollution-free being.

However, jiezhu does not appear to conform entirely to Van Gennep’s three-stage pattern. First, the exchanges of gifts (the rite of presenting golden flowers) and the sharing of food (communal meals and jieyuan snacks) occur not at the end but in the middle of the ritual program. Instead of immediate reintegration into communal life as Van Gennep’s tripartite structure describes, initiates are transformed into members of a new community of lay-Buddhist worshippers, the nianfo mama. Further, the initiate is not allowed to perform her annual nianfo recitation until at least a year later. Liminality, a term used by Victor Turner, as the second stage in the ritual process, can be elaborate enough to become an independent state in certain ceremonial cases.35 The period from performing jiezhu to an initiate’s first annual nianfo is essentially transitional, thus making jiezhu a liminal rite in its own right. Separating the woman from her former reproductive role, jiezhu proclaims the removal of impurities and of the danger that comes with impurity and pollution. The initiate is separated from her previous secular, impure state and enters into a purified condition that qualifies her to do Amituofo recitation.

Buddhism is the predominant local religious tradition in Ninghua. Indeed, there is archaeological evidence that Buddhism took root in Ninghua as early as the Tang dynasty (618–907),³⁶ and its distinctive presence has distinguished Ninghua from other localities. Indeed, John Lagerwey has reported that “Buddhism is clearly far more prominent in Ninghua than in Changting.”³⁷ Amituofo recitation and jiezhu are central to local Buddhist identity. And yet, even though all the jiezhu practitioners I interviewed identify themselves as Buddhists, Buddhist authorities and government officials persistently perceive jiezhu as a kind of low-level, local religious practice.

Two officials I interviewed in 2006 at Ninghua’s Bureau of Ethnic and Religious Activities, Zhang Rongsen 張榮森 and Lei Ying 雷鷹,38 told me they supervised only the official religious institutions and that only [Buddhist] monks and nuns are considered as “instructors and administrative personnel,” the category subject to direct supervision. Local or lay-Buddhist practices such as jiezhu came under the supervision of the Ninghua Buddhist Association.³⁹ That is to say, the ritual specialists who perform jiezhu are not officially recognized or supervised by the official authorities. When I then interviewed the chairman of the Ninghua Buddhist Association, Abbot Yunci 雲慈 of the Old Buddha Temple (Laofo’an 老佛庵),⁴⁰ he explained that jiezhu is popular in the villages of Ninghua but is not a “standard [zhenggui 正規] [Buddhist] ritual.” He said jiezhu is a rite performed by elderly women who confess their sins so that they may begin the practice of Amituofo recitation. Thereafter, the women must not kill animals such as pigs, fish, or chickens. However, there is no requirement they keep to a vegetarian diet. Yunci spoke of a six-level hierarchy of Ninghua Buddhist followers (table 8.1).

The lowest level, that of the jiezhu practitioners, engaged in rituals considered by the county Buddhist authorities to be no different from other local religious practices, which, in Yunci’s mind, are not “standard” Buddhist rites. He said that the relationship between the jiezhu groups and the Buddhist Association was one of “mutual noninterference.”⁴¹ In other words, he summarily dismissed jiezhu’s place in Buddhism.⁴²

Yet this very kind of delegitimation of jiezhu by the official institutions appears to have been a blessing in disguise since its practitioners avoided the most intense direct government supervision. This had not been the case for most religions in the Maoist years. Those I interviewed from the official, state religious institutions, Buddhists and Catholics alike, told me how they were criticized and suppressed during the Cultural Revolution. Many monks and nuns were defrocked and forced to return to their birthplace. Chiju 持舉, the nun in charge of Yulin Temple 玉林寺,43 related that she had had to leave the temple, which was turned into a pig farm in those years.⁴⁴ An eighty-two-year-old nun at Laofo’an, Deqiong 德瓊, explained that the temple was turned into a factory during the Cultural Revolution, but she was nonetheless allowed to stay in an out-of-the-way “corner” of it.⁴⁵ A Catholic nun named Yan Dezhen 嚴德貞, who had spent eight years studying in Switzerland earlier in her life, recalled that religious activities were suppressed during the Cultural Revolution. Bibles were burned, and believers were severely criticized and penalized. She noted that some popular Buddhist or local religious practices, however, managed to be continuously practiced. The president of the Patriotic Catholic Association of Ninghua, Jiang Chunxiu 江春秀, and some other women Catholic members shared an even more specific recollection: at that time of repression, many people still secretly recited Amituofo at home.⁴⁶ Such statements support information provided by the jiezhu ritual specialists and other participant informants. However, Wu Guolang 伍國郎, a ritual specialist who performed jiezhu in Ninghua, told me that he was fined five hundred yuan by the government for having performed jiezhu during the Cultural Revolution.

Let us consider some data on the years in which my informants did jiezhu. Among the sixty women and men who had done jiezhu I interviewed, there was one man who did jiezhu in 1971, a time when religious practice was labeled officially as “feudal superstition” (fengjian mixin 封建迷信); one woman in 1976, the year of the death of Mao Zedong; five participants (three women and two men) between 1980 and 1981, the initial “revival” period leading up to the formal shift in state policy away from wholesale suppression of religious activities with Document 19 in 1982; twelve (nine women and three men) after 1982 through 1988. None carried out the jiezhu ritual in 1989; but from 1990 through 2006 there were thirty-three (twenty-five women and eight men) jiezhu practitioners. Of the five informants (all women) who either never mentioned or had forgotten the year of their jiezhu, two were of an age, eighty-three (in 2004) and eighty-eight (in 2003), that would suggest they had done jiezhu before 1982. All this suggests that jiezhu was performed even before the official softening of religious restrictions in 198247 and that the momentum picked up thereafter.⁴⁸ We thus see here a fundamental disconnection between the views of local people and local authorities as to what Buddhism is and which religious practices are of greatest value. And it is precisely this perspective of the authorities that has left a certain degree of space for jiezhu to continue to be performed, even in the most repressive times.

Despite being discounted by state and official religious authorities as an inauthentic, popular Buddhist practice, jiezhu remains a ritual of prime importance to elderly women and some elderly men in Ninghua. This is in part due to the “symbolic capital,” to use Pierre Bourdieu’s term,⁴⁹ that is invested in the jiezhu participants. Central to this are the gift exchanges that define and enhance social and familial relationships in the jiezhu ritual. Gift giving nearly always has a place in discussions of rites of passage.⁵⁰ Arnold van Gennep, for instance, relates gift exchanges, especially involving food and communal feasting, to rites that confirm the initiate’s incorporation after the liminal passage.⁵¹ Yet such gift exchanges are not unrelated to socioeconomic level and conditions.

As Zhang Enting points out in his study of Ninghua, the Lotus Society (lianshehui 蓮社會) form of the ritual practice of reciting Amituofo’s name⁵² is performed primarily by elderly people “whose lives have not come together in accordance with their wishes.”⁵³ Zhang’s point, moreover, that, among those involved in the Lotus Society practice, “the so-called fortunate [suowei minghaozhe 所謂命好者] are extremely rare,”⁵⁴ is further clarified by my fieldwork findings confirming that such societies are known to engage in comparatively inexpensive rituals in contrast to the lavish spending required for jiezhu. In Ninghua, being less or more fortunate is commonly associated with having less or more wealth. And as Zhang Enting and my studies show, jiezhu is a ritual done by fortunate women—that is, those who are relatively well-off.⁵⁵

Zhang observes that on the day of jiezhu, relatives and friends are invited to a big feast (dakai yanhui 大開宴會). All the friends and relatives give the ritualizing woman presents; her parental family offer particularly sumptuous gifts. The gifts include a big piece of cake (tanggao 糖糕), vegetarian food items such as mushrooms, red mushrooms, noodles, jelly-like pasta made from sweet potato (digua fenpi 地瓜粉皮), and dried bean curd and bean-curd skins. Other gifts include cloth, clothes, shoes, quilts, bags for the beads, red candles, firecrackers, “friendship snacks” (jieyuan guozi 結緣菓子), and the like. As Zhang puts it, the jiezhu ritual is very costly.56 Indeed, there is much investment in the giving of gifts.

Similar to Gareth Fisher in the previous chapter in this volume, my view of gift giving draws much on the theories of Marcel Mauss. In contrast to common notions of a gift as something given willingly, for free, and accepted without any expectation of compensation,⁵⁷ Mauss holds that a gift is not a “voluntary” transfer of “things,” it is not given for free; the recipient has the obligation to reciprocate. Actually, gifts are absolutely compulsory as a form of an enduring but invisible contract. The system works according to the rule that every gift has to be reciprocated, and, as a result, a persisting loop of exchanges within and between individuals, the social ranks, the sexes, and the generations is formed.⁵⁸ In keeping with Émile Durkheim, Mauss insists the process of gift giving enhances social solidarity, though for him self-interest and the significance of reciprocity are present in nearly all gift giving everywhere.⁵⁹ Mauss proposes that gifts include not only tangible things, such as property and wealth, movable and immovable goods, and economically useful things; they also consist of acts of politeness such as provisions of banquets, rituals, military services, women, children, dances, festivals, and fairs.⁶⁰

My fieldwork revealed that the ethics of gift giving are much emphasized in the jiezhu communities. The choice of gifts is not voluntary. Specific gift items should be given by the appropriate person. There are five groups of gift givers: the core family members (including the sons and the husband), the married daughters, the initiate’s natal family, other relatives, and the Buddhist friends. Each gift symbolizes and defines a particular social relationship. Most of the women informants said that their husband or son(s) sponsored their jiezhu ceremony. Sons typically give cash and daughters give objects (and sometimes cash as well). The gift giving enhances and reinforces the family relationships. Others, such as in-laws, married sisters, cousins, friends, and neighbors, usually bring snacks or simply cash wrapped in red packets. And the gifts given by the married daughters of the initiates represent a case in point to show how women, despite their marginalized social status, practice the art of gift giving more than men do.

The physical presence of and the gifts given by the Buddhist friends constitute a rite of incorporation. It creates a perpetual giving-accepting-reciprocating loop of relationships among the group of Buddhist friends. Mauss’s analysis of archaic societies, where a sovereign authority is absent, implies that the gift-giving system upholds social justice and peace. The system works like the social contract in the Hobbesian sense.61 People willingly abide by it even without any legal written or even verbal contract. Van Gennep argues that the exchange of gifts is a uniting act and that exchanges of gifts, food, people, and the like are rites of incorporation.⁶² In the Ninghua villages, the rite of presenting golden flowers in jiezhu maintains a collective significance. The rite includes verbal greetings and paper flowers representing the number of recitings of Amituofo’s name. This recalls Van Gennep’s point that the verbal greeting is “intrinsically a religious act.”⁶³ Each paper flower represents three thousand three hundred times that the phrase namo Amituofo is chanted. The flowers are gifts of spiritual merit the Buddhist friends thus transfer to the initiate. This passing on of their spiritual merit to the initiate is considered an important act of boosting the spiritual achievement of the initiate, who has not yet begun her proper Amituofo recitation.

This rite is performed in a devotional and solemn manner, giving a deeply symbolic overtone to the recitation group’s granting admission to the initiate as a new member. Therefore, in this third stage of the rite of passage, the initiate is incorporated into a social reality manifested particularly by her new identity as a member of this peng group. In return for the acceptance of the merit and the new identity, the initiate has to reciprocate by meeting the expectations of membership in the group. Such obligations include attending the jiezhu of new members and the annual recitation ritual of other group members. She also has to transfer the merit of Amituofo recitation to other members of the group during these rituals. This gift giving establishes and sustains bonds that hinge on obligation and the expectation that subsequent reciprocal gift giving will take place later.64

Feasts, which can, on their own, represent a kind of ritual, are a feature of almost all rites of passage. The initiate first fasts during the separation stage and then feasts as part of the incorporation stage. In jiezhu, a vegetarian lunch is served in the afternoon after the rite of presenting golden flowers. This communal meal is described as “a big feast” (daqingke 大請客). It is a public display of commitment and sentiments. The initiate generously provides drinks, snacks, meals, and gifts to guests. The guests, in turn, acknowledge, witness, and endorse the initiate’s proclamation of the right to recite Amituofo, which is justified by the purifying effect of the rites.⁶⁵ Accompanying the lively noise of chatting and laughter are drinking, toasting, and eating. The number of dishes can sometimes amount to twelve or sixteen per table. Though not imperative, an even number is expected, since it signifies pairs, which is assumed to be a preferable condition to being single. After the meal, the jiezhu woman distributes snacks to everyone attending the ritual. The guests can, in turn, pass on the snacks they have received to other people with whom they want to establish friendship. Marshall Sahlins has observed, “If friends make gifts, gifts make friends.”⁶⁶ The gift exchanges and the communal feast incorporate the initiate into the recitation group and solidify the bonds among the group members.

Both the jiezhu rituals and donations correspond with Mauss’s theory and resonate with Bourdieu’s understanding of major donations as a kind of “return” to society for the “gift” of success, or what he refers to as “symbolic capital.”67 Bourdieu points out that the fame vested in the donor as a return from his donations may also in turn reward the person in the form of wealth or resources.⁶⁸ As regards anonymous donations, as Amartya Sen points out, the ultimate benefactor in charity donations is the donor, no matter whether the name of the donor is known or not.⁶⁹ The idea is that one feels good by being nice to other people. Therefore, ultimately, even an anonymous donation is a self-gift that pleases the giver. The pleasure reaches a higher level with the pride of being anonymous.

Rituals function in a similarly subtle manner. Mauss has argued that sacrificial offering is a gift that obliges the deity to reciprocate. He explains that “in Latin, do ut des; in Sanskrit, dadāmi se [sic], dehi me—also have been preserved in religious texts,” the phrases meaning “I give to you, you give to me.”⁷⁰ Durkheim, moreover, explicitly states that the relationships between the deities and humans are reciprocal. He notes that deities depend on humans as much as humans depend on them, because without offerings and sacrifices, they cannot sustain themselves.⁷¹ In just this way, the ritual of jiezhu, the grand offerings in particular, is a kind of “return” to the deities for the blessings that have been given. The idea is that the more sacrifices one makes, the more one can expect to be rewarded. At the same time, the initiate is reciprocated with a higher social recognition through the performance of jiezhu, particularly through the display of economic resources in the ritual.

Pamela Stewart and Andrew Strathern see presenting gifts in ritual in the Moka gift system of Mount Hagen, Papua New Guinea, as an investment and a rational and important use of resources. Based on the obligation of the recipient to make returns for a gift, this system maintains alliances and enhances prestige. It is an act of sowing; one expects to reap the harvest of one’s gift. Even the “excessive” giving in the Kwakiutl potlatch ceremony, Stewart and Strathern conclude, involves amassing sufficient wealth capable of producing symbolic capital and reproducing relationships and values.72 Similarly, as Liu Shanquan observes, jiezhu is such an important event for women in the villages of Ninghua that money has to be spent no matter how poor the family is. This implies that the event is preceded by activities such as saving, calculating, intensifying production, and pooling resources and culminates in activities of “squandering,” which in fact are acts of social investment.⁷³ The social investment works only if lavishness is conspicuously displayed. Therefore, gift giving is prominently featured in the ritual context. Conspicuous consumption does not exist only in affluent modern societies. It exists also in rituals where a dramatic display of economic resources is desired. The economic strength of the ritual host is displayed in the ritual settings, the ritual process, sacrificial and burned offerings, gifts, food at communal meals, snacks, and so on. There is no secret about these expressions of resources, not even the cash gift wrapped in red packets. They are all subject to evaluation and judgment. Zheng Enting writes as follows of the red packets given to everyone who has attended the rite of burning the Buddhist mansion: “The amount of cash for adults is more than that for children, but the amount has to be the same for each person in equivalent levels of closeness, otherwise it causes gossip.”⁷⁴ This shows that even the wrapped gift is no secret and is subject to scrutiny, as of course are other items that are visible to everyone’s eyes. Every detail of the ritual is there for everyone to view and for everyone to praise and admire if it is properly done. The more lavish the ritual, the better. The opulence of jiezhu gives its participants social standing. The visible extravagance not only boosts one’s social standing in one stroke but also sustains social standing by continued recognition of the sponsor as a jiezhu participant, now signified by the silver Buddha pin in her hair.

Women are deemed unclean in Buddhism. Buddhists are to refrain from sexual desire, which is aroused by women. Hence, sexual temptation is associated with the female body.75 Menstruation and childbirth also have been presumed to make a woman particularly polluting.⁷⁶ Van Gennep, Emily Ahern, Mary Douglas, Rita Gross, Catherine Bell, Ursula King, Daniel Overmyer, Joan Laird, among many others, have noted that blood is perceived in many cultures as one of the most feared putative polluting agents, especially when it is associated with the bodily discharge of women.⁷⁷ The idea is that menstrual blood is considered as having the potential to become a person and thus likened to “a dead person who has not lived” and, in its ambiguity, is dangerous to all.⁷⁸ As for the fetus, it, too, is formless and is both vulnerable and dangerous in that it has ill will to harm others, including its father.⁷⁹ Childbirth is just as defiling.⁸⁰ In traditional rural China, after giving birth a woman has to stay in her room for a month in order not to pollute other people. Those, men in particular, who have to come into contact with her need also to take precautionary measures.⁸¹

In Ninghua, menstruating women and pregnant women are seen as a menace to the sacred.⁸² One informant, Guo Renjin 郭潤金, told me that a menstruating woman cannot even light an incense stick, let alone enter a temple.⁸³ A number of women informed me that sitting on a stool that has been sat on by a menstruating woman or by a woman who has just given birth would bring bad luck. Another informant, Cai Zhenying 蔡振英, a lay devotee (jushi 居士) at Laofo’an Temple, told me that it is their custom that a bride goes to the bridegroom’s residence in the middle of the night. This is because of the fear of encountering a pregnant woman, a so-called four-eyed person who would clash (chong 沖) against the luck of the bride and cause misfortune in her future married life.⁸⁴

When a Ninghua woman approaches her menopausal age, she is no longer bound by the taboos concerning pollution associated with her body, hence she is eligible to prepare for her jiezhu. Menopause is a natural process in life, as are puberty, aging, and death. But the association of a woman’s value with her power to reproduce is a cultural convention that discredits the aging female.⁸⁵ There is evidence of historical periods and societies in which a woman’s life was not wholly defined by her reproductive capacity. As Barbara Walker discusses, seventh-century European Christian writings refer to the “wise blood” presumed retained after menopause that brought elder witches secret power.⁸⁶ The evidence from the Ninghua Hakka villages shows that in a society where the conception of menopause has long been associated with a “deficiency in procreation,” the religious ritual of jiezhu effectively lets the menopausal woman publicly acknowledge this transformation and so claim a new identity. When the initiate puts on the jiezhu costume,⁸⁷ which is also the apparel for her funeral, she thus forsakes her previous identity and enters into a “liminal position,” in Victor Turner’s sense.

A 2002 article about jiezhu in the Sanming qiaobao 三明僑報 newspaper commented, “The Ninghua Hakka women perform jiezhu when they are getting old. When a woman reaches the menopausal stage, she should enjoy some leisurely days. Some couples immediately opt for separate rooms.”88 This phrasing implies abstention from sexual activities.⁸⁹ This is therefore a departure from marriage through which the woman’s identity shifts from wife to new roles. Jiezhu symbolizes a renouncement of the woman’s past and her transformation into a new person. The initiate is given not only a ritualistic identity but also a name that she will go by publicly and socially. The woman’s Buddhist name (Foming 佛名) is given by the ritual specialist who performs the jiezhu ritual. In return, she gives gifts, usually money wrapped in red packets, to the ritual specialist. In Ninghua and in many other parts of China, when asking a woman how one should address her, she usually indicates her position in the family. Her name is relational to her husband. A woman will often say, “I am Mrs. Chen” or, more formally, “the name of my husband is Chen.” Older women, meanwhile, commonly respond, “Call me auntie” or, “Call me granny”—titles relational to their offspring. Women are, on their own, publicly nameless. However, those who have renounced the family to become a monk or nun have a dharma name (fahao 法號). Similarly, when you ask the name of a woman who has done jiezhu, she will tell you her Buddhist name. Much as in the way Van Gennep notes a child is “incorporated into the family by being named,”⁹⁰ the jiezhu woman is identified with the recitation community by being named. Since the Buddhist name is given by the male specialist who performs the jiezhu ritual for the woman, this process of naming creates a link between the named and the name giver. The named has the sense of becoming an adherent of the naming person, who has ritually incorporated the named into the group.

A theme ubiquitous to most women’s ritual is the bonding among women.91 After performing jiezhu, the Ninghua elderly women become members of their ritual community. One recitation community usually consists of about twenty women who live in the same neighborhood or who come from the same village but have settled in the county seat. When a woman is about to do jiezhu, she invites the members of the ritual group to come to her ceremony. These Buddhist friends become witnesses of the rites as well as supporters of the initiate’s future annual chanting rites. Their physical presence indicates the acceptance of the initiate as a member of this ritual group. The idea of mutual support among members of the group highlights the attribute of sisterhood.

The emphasis on sisterhood is accentuated also in verses that the women doing jiezhu sing: “I [the jiezhu woman] cross the golden bridge hand in hand with my good friends. We receive Amitābha with our refined fingers.” The bridge they cross is over the “the river of the underworld” (minghe 冥河). The jiezhu woman is thus making a break with the past when she crosses the bridge. It is her wish that the trip be made with her good friends (i.e., those in her ritual group). This metaphor of crossing the bridge to the underworld is enacted in the rites of ascending and descending the bridge, around which all the Buddhist friends circumambulate with the initiate.

The rite of presenting golden flowers in jiezhu also celebrates the bonding among the members of the ritual group. The gift of paper flowers symbolizes the transfer of karmic merit from the fellow Buddhist friends to the initiate. Since the karmic merit of Amituofo recitation is believed to be valid only after one has done jiezhu, it can be transferred only by women who have done jiezhu. And not only do the flowers represent religious merit but they are also signs of acceptance, attention, and caring for the new member of the group.

Friendship is much emphasized in jiezhu. Every guest and attendant of the ritual is given a bag of “friendship snacks.” Jie means “to tie”; yuan means “destiny.” Distributing jieyuan snacks thus means to bind up together in mutual destiny. In other words, the act builds bonds of friendship. This theme of friendship is further enhanced by the communal meal, which, as discussed, is of such paramount importance in the events surrounding the ceremony.

Notwithstanding its association with the negative beliefs about the female body, jiezhu has effectively become a symbol of prestige and valued resources. It provides the women with an experience that counters the social disdain associated with the loss of reproductive capacity. The eligibility to do Amituofo recitation in order to earn karmic merit, the acquiring of a new identity, and gaining membership in the ritual community all help the women to restore self-esteem and resist the loneliness of aging.

To appreciate this, it is vital to recall the traditional Chinese concept of the married daughter. A married daughter is called waijianü 外嫁女 (literally, “daughter married off”) and is no longer considered a member of her natal family. Rubie S. Watson reported that the Teng family in the New Territories in Hong Kong found it natural to say that daughters “are born looking out; they belong to others.”92 Although this is also the common view in Ninghua, the gift-exchanging practices in jiezhu connect the married-off daughter with her natal family through her mother. Of direct relevance here is the fact that the term that describes the natal family of a married daughter is niangjia 娘家, which refers to the mother’s family. When a married daughter visits her natal family, she thus “returns to her mother’s family” (hui niangjia 回娘家), not to her own nor to her father’s family.

In jiezhu the presence of the matrilateral relatives and the material gifts provided by them are vital to the ceremony. With the exception of the cash given by the husband and sons, all the gifts are necessarily given by female relatives or by the matrikin. In addition to the red candles with floral patterns (hua zhu 花燭), bedsheets, fabric, and shoes given by the initiate’s natal family,93 the initiate also receives from them food items.⁹⁴ These include, as mentioned, cakes, vegetarian foods such as bean-curd skin, dried bean curd, and noodles, and snacks. These gift items come in large quantities. The vegetarian foods are cooked for the several meals served during jiezhu. The snacks must be sufficient to give everyone attending the ceremony a full bag of food to take home. Zhang Enting mentions that the jieyuan snacks are distributed to relatives and friends to thank them for their attendance, and he claims that jieyuan also has the meaning of “not yet able to attain the way of the Buddha, just to make benevolent connections with people.”⁹⁵ This suggests that although jiezhu is not being considered as “the way” to attain Buddhahood, it enhances friendly relations among its participants.

These notable quantities of edible items have several significant implications. First, the provisions reaffirm the woman’s role in taking charge of the food supply for the family. Caroline Walker Bynum, in her examination of the food behavior of European medieval women, argues that women’s food behavior manifests their efforts to gain power and give meaning. In contrast to the view that these women hated their bodies and their sexuality, Bynum argues that their food practices were a means of controlling their sexuality. This was particularly so because the woman’s body was associated with food since breast milk is a human being’s first and essential nourishment, and men are nursed while women nurse.⁹⁶ As a major source over which women have most control, food is also a means through which women control their world. As the supposedly weaker gender having a lower social status and the implicit asexual identity associated with menopause, women use food to gain control of their daily life. The edible gifts from the matrikin and married daughters are symbolic of women’s role as the food providers. If Bynum is right in saying that food consumption represents lust and that food abstinence is symbolic of sexual restraint,⁹⁷ then it would seem plausible that the lavish distribution of food by the women who do jiezhu subverts the principle of sexual abstinence.

Second, matrilineal support provides a sense of reassurance and security for the woman who has been married off to be an “outsider” in the family she has married into. Having a supportive, and better still a well-off natal family helps to secure a higher status and respect in the family she has married into. The big piece of rice cake, mushrooms, candies, snacks, and other edible items given by her natal family are used for the various meals during the jiezhu ceremony. These edible gifts are not to be kept by their recipients. The huge portion of rice cake is publicly displayed in a prominent place, typically over the main altar, for everyone to see. Therefore, the size and weight of the cake are subject to scrutiny by all the guests. Moreover, the cake is served to the guests during the intermittent mealtimes. The candies and snacks are packed into red plastic bags and distributed for all the guests to take home and share with their family members. The woman initiate feels she “has face” by being well supplied with the snacks by her natal family. These gifts are strategic in demonstrating the strong ties and support of her natal family.

According to traditional Chinese thinking, a married daughter not only leaves her family for her husband’s family but also is no longer considered formally a member of her natal family. Jiezhu, however, strengthens the bond between the mother and her married daughter. The rite of repaying the debt of mother’s kindness reconnects the initiate to her premarriage identity with her natural mother.98 As the initiate is reconnected to her natal family, the jiezhu woman’s married daughter is likewise being reconnected to her through the ritual. An essential ritual item that the initiate must receive from her married daughter is the mālā bag. The jiezhu woman needs two mālā bags (Fodai 佛袋 or zhudai 珠袋), one from her married daughter and the other from her own mother or someone from her mother’s family.⁹⁹ One of the bags is for holding the mālā, which is always folded into a Guanyin 觀音 shape before it is put into the bag. This bag accompanies her when she attends her Buddhist friends’ annual recitation ritual. The other one holds the paper flowers and certificates documenting her participation in jiezhu and the annual recitation ritual. The paper flowers represent the number of recitings of Amituofo’s name. This bag is kept at home and will be burned at the woman’s funeral.

Another item that the married daughter has to give her mother is the lotus shoes the initiate wears at her jiezhu ritual. The shoes are made of cloth (in the traditional Chinese fashion) and are exquisitely embroidered with pink lotus floral patterns.100 The number of lotus flowers varies from four to the more luxurious twenty-four. The greater the number of lotus flowers, the more expensive the shoes will be. The flowers can be big or small or a combination of large and small ones. The mālā and the mālā bags, and even the shoes, are easily available at shops and market stalls that sell Buddhist-related goods. I have also seen women selling them in front of the Daoist Dongyue Temple during its temple festival. However, exquisite, well-made shoes have to be tailor sewn by special shoemakers.

The lotus shoes are a symbol of fertility.¹⁰¹ A woman who makes lotus shoes named Luo Shangxiu 羅上秀 told me that xie, the Chinese word for “shoe,” has the same pronunciation as that for “together.” It thus suggests the idea of “togetherness,” and the hope is to be tong xie dao lao 同鞋到老, or a couple that remains harmoniously together into old age. In addition, tong 同 implies money, since it is a homophone of the tong in tong qian 銅錢 (copper coins). It is also said that “lotus flower steps increase fortune and longevity.” This expression may allude to the story that every step the Buddha took left a lotus flower behind on the ground, and it implies that she who walks in the lotus shoes will increase her fortune and longevity. Moreover, the fruit of the lotus plant has a head and a tail, thus making it look like a fish. Since fish carry many eggs, they are a common symbol of procreation in Chinese society.

The apron worn when doing Amituofo recitation (nianfo shoujin 念佛壽巾 or baijin 拜巾) is another item that must be given to the initiate by her married daughter. Unlike the jiezhu costume, which is a plain solid color of blue or black, the recitation apron comes in all sorts of floral patterns and colors. I have seen them in green, red, and light blue with multicolored patterns. There is a small triangular patch of colored cloth with a buttonhole knot at one of the corners that can be buttoned up to the right shoulder of the Buddhist top, which is part of the jiezhu costume of blue skirt over a pair of black pants and a black headband.102 This apron is quite large, about twenty inches square, reaching usually to the thigh when hanging down from the shoulder. When a woman recites in a sitting position, the apron is neatly spread over her lap so that the mālā will be kept clean even if it happens to fall from her hands. Instead of wearing the jiezhu costume, the women sometimes simply put the apron over their regular clothes when they do Amituofo recitation.¹⁰³

The initiate also needs a pair of kneeling mats (putuan), which are made of straw and woven and given to her by her married daughter. If the mother of the initiate is alive, she also gives the initiate a pair of straw kneeling mats. However, the kneeling mats from the mother are more symbolic than functional, since the initiate never actually kneels on this pair of mats. The personification of the kneeling mats is made apparent in the rite of giving thanks to the kneeling mats (xie putuan). Kneeling on the mats given by the mother would be seen as mistreating the mother and hence opposed to filial piety. The mats serve as a reminder of the heritage of religiosity and the blood connection between the initiate and her mother.

It is different from the pair given by her married daughter, whose filial piety is symbolized by the straw mats she personally wove for her mother to kneel upon. Each mat has a handle that makes it easy for the women to carry it about to the annual recitation rituals of their Buddhist friends and to the jiezhu rituals of new members. The initiate also must have a piece of white cotton cloth called a baidang 拜襠 for putting over the kneeling mat when she does her worship. The baidang must also be made and given by her married daughter. Its length is three Chinese feet (chi 尺) and eight Chinese inches (cun 寸);104 its width is the width of the roll of cloth from which it is cut. The jiezhu initiate’s Buddhist name is written along the top edge of the cloth with the following words: “Presented to [the named] woman follower [the Buddhist name of the woman] by the ritual specialist.” The dharma seal (fayin 法印) of the ritual specialist is also affixed on the cloth.

Like the natal family, the married daughter also brings a big Chinese-style cake to celebrate her mother’s jiezhu ceremony. It is made of glutinous rice and weighs at least 25 to 30 catties (jin 斤).¹⁰⁵ It is cut into small slices to be eaten as a snack during the ceremony and is also distributed to relatives and friends as part of the snacks for them to take home. The married daughter typically also gives her mother one set of clothing of any style and shoes for daily wear.

A jinggai 經蓋 (scripture-covering cloth) is an optional luxurious gift that the married daughter may acquire for her mother. It is a piece of double-layered silk, mostly embroidered with colorful patterns, used to cover the canons or liturgical texts during ritual events when the texts are not being recited. It is very difficult to get one made these days. I interviewed a ninety-year-old woman who used to make beautiful and exquisite canon covers, but she no longer does so because of her age.

To understand the significance of the gifts given by the married daughter, it is necessary to clarify which items the initiate must purchase for herself; only then can we make sense of the rationale for why the married daughter’s gifts must never be bought by the initiate herself. The items that the jiezhu woman buys for herself are the jiezhu costume, the silver rings, plates, and pins. These items are for the purpose of identification. When the initiate puts on the jiezhu costume, she is transformed into a new person. The silver plate has her newly given Buddhist name and is to be attached to her mālā bag. The ring and the pin make her status known as being a woman who has done jiezhu. One common aspect to these items is that they are all of a plain, solid color of black, white, or blue.

By contrast, all the bright and colorful gift items including the mālā bag, lotus-pattern shoes, recitation apron, and the canon cover have to be given by the married daughter. However, if the woman does not have a married daughter, then it falls to an unmarried daughter, (nominally) adopted daughter (gan nüer 乾女兒), younger sister, or, last, any younger female relative.

The contrast of the plain, solid-color items acquired by the initiate with the colorful, beautifully patterned items given by the married daughter carries notably subversive meanings. This has to do with choice. The jiezhu costume is the apparel that the woman will wear at her funeral. In traditional Chinese society, women acknowledge their advanced age by wearing muted, plain-colored clothing. A woman has no choice but to abide by this tradition when accepting the jiezhu costume. However, she retains an element of choice when it comes to the gifts given by her married daughter. Moreover, although the items are gifts, a woman can actually make something of a choice of color, pattern, and even style—preferences that can be informally expressed to her daughter. The apron comes in all sorts of colors and patterns. Moreover, the size of the apron is so large that, once it is put on, it covers a significant part of the dull-colored jiezhu outfit (figure 8.1).¹⁰⁶ And even if the woman chooses an apron of a solid, muted color, it is her own choice. The exercise of choice works in a similar manner with respect to the new set of clothing and shoes from the married daughter. To be in a position to make her own choices, even though indirectly in the case of jiezhu, is also a form of power for these women.

The mālā bags are red with colorful floral patterns. The red or green lotus shoes and the canon cover are also exquisitely pretty and ornate. This also reflects the Hakka women’s favoring of highly colorful outfits. Besides this indirect means of exercising the power to choose beautiful items, there are other subtle subversive aspects. Whereas men’s mālā bags are in the black or blue background color generally seen as funerary colors and typical for older people, those of the women are red, the color that represents joy and happiness and that is associated with younger women. Moreover, jiezhu men do not have lotus shoes or aprons like the women.

A corollary to this is the symbolic character of the pair of kneeling mats. The emphasis on having a pair of kneeling mats woven by the married daughter and another pair by her mother suggests several meanings. Such straw mats for worshippers to kneel upon are commonplace in temples, monasteries, and nunneries. They are functional in protecting the knees of the worshippers. They are also literally in a lowly position, always laid on the ground, and seldom noticed. Women, like kneeling mats, are perceived as being functional: they are needed but are placed in a secondary if not lowly status. Jiezhu turns the tables on the status hierarchy by bestowing upon this reputedly lowly object two rites. One relates to its worship and the other to giving thanks to it. There are no liturgical texts relating to kneeling mats, but there are songs that the women sing during the two rites. They worship the mats with a humble and open heart, as well as a purified body; and they thank the kneeling mats for bringing benevolent friendship.107 The initiate never kneels on the pair of mats given by her mother because they represent the mother’s persona.

Although remaining within a patriarchal social system, certain twists and turns come into play through jiezhu rituals, particularly by means of the role of the married-off daughter. As noted, the married daughter is considered a former member of the family. This status gives her room to provide the initiate with all the beautiful accessories that in turn effectively downplay the sense of agedness created by the jiezhu costume. This subverting move is subtly enacted since, after all, it is technically not someone within the family who has defied the norms associated with being an elderly woman. Hence, the married-off daughter becomes a partisan to her mother—a married-daughter comrade—assisting her mother in altering the status hierarchies in the midst of the ritual and so celebrating the older woman.

The women-oriented ritual of jiezhu is, perhaps foremost, a gift that the woman gives to herself for the celebration of her arrival at the menopausal age. The initiate claims the rewards she has earned over the years by calling for a ritual for herself. In the study of self-gifts that has increasingly gained attention since the 1980s,108 self-gifting has been termed “monadic gift giving,” with “I” as the subject as well as the object. David Glen Mick notes that people make self-gifts to reward personal accomplishments, to cheer themselves up, to celebrate a holiday, just to be kind to themselves, to relieve stress, to maintain a good feeling or mood, when there is some extra money to spend, and to provide an incentive toward a desired goal.¹⁰⁹ Of course, if one considers a self-gift only something paid for by the gift receiver, then, as discussed, this is not the case with jiezhu. What I mean by identifying jiezhu as a self-gift is based on an understanding of Mick’s idea of a self-gift as “doing something pleasing for oneself.”¹¹⁰ The various sources or resources necessary to make the gift possible are not the determining factor; a self-gift is such because of the intention and meaning inscribed in it by the donor and recipient.

Jiezhu is also a therapeutic self-gift that is meant to redress negative mental states usually due to illness or a sense of failure in certain aspects of life.111 Jiezhu is therapeutic in helping women to harness their menopausal distress and fear of potential underworld suffering to come.¹¹² The giving of such self-gifts can be an experience of “self-definition and self-esteem” that involves “sacredness” as part of these gifts representing, in Mick’s phrase, “out-of-the-ordinary consumption phenomena.”¹¹³ Certainly in jiezhu, through the ritual process, ritual experience, and ritual gifts, the woman is able to reassure and redefine herself.

There is also an “I earned it attitude” that justifies a self-gift as a reward for the successful completion of a task.¹¹⁴ The Ninghua women spend the prime of their lives working for the well-being of their families; menopause announces the completion of her task, at least on the reproduction front. However, unlike people who are paid for what they do at work, the women have never been formally paid as a wife or mother, let alone as a family caretaker. There comes a sense of deserving a certain peace and bliss. Since, as with most women, by the time they reach menopause their children have grown up and they have time to attend to their own needs, the Hakka women of Ninghua can consider doing Amituofo recitation and joining social groups. For those seeking to claim just rewards for a life of hard work and sacrifice, their claim is formalized through jiezhu. And the woman is the protagonist of the whole event. She is the one who makes the ritual happen. She initiates the giving of the gift to herself for what it does for her as a woman, especially in relation to all her most significant familial and neighborly communal relations.

Interestingly, jiezhu is not solely a women-oriented ritual, even though many people in western Fujian believe it is undergone only by women. Fan Xixiu 范細秀, a woman from the village of Shuixi 水茜鄉, told me, for instance, that no man would ever do jiezhu.115 In Mingxi county 明溪縣,¹¹⁶ to the northeast of Ninghua, moreover, informants told me that they had never heard of jiezhu being done by men.¹¹⁷ Yet in my fieldwork in the town of Shibi 石壁鎮¹¹⁸ and the surrounding villages of Jicun 濟村鄉 to its north, Huaitu 淮土鄉 to its south, and Fangtian 方田鄉 to its southeast, I found that in Shibi and certain villages jiezhu is indeed performed by men.¹¹⁹ So, for instance, in the five villages of Huaitu, namely Hekeng 禾坑村, Wupo 吳陂村, Shuidong 水東村, Qingping 青平村, and Qiaotou 橋頭村, informants from the first three villages said only women do jiezhu; however, the people from Qingping and Qiaotou reported that both men and women do jiezhu. Clearly, men had appropriated jiezhu from women.

Explanations offered varied. Some of these men said that it was “a custom” that had been in practice for a long time. Some said that they were afraid that the cover of their coffin would have to be struck three times with an axe if they had not done jiezhu before their death. Others said that only people who had sufficient money and resources could do jiezhu; those who lacked wealth could only “become initiates” (guiyi 皈依). One man from Shibi remarked that for men, “jiezhu means refraining from having mistresses.” Another informant, a secondary-school language teacher from Shibi, Zhang Yunyin 張運銀, was “required” by his wife to do jiezhu when he was fifty-two. In his application for a day off from school to do his jiezhu ritual, he wrote the following poetic lines:

As I have mentioned, women jiezhu initiates are given a Buddhist name because, in effect, they are nameless as individuals.121 But the men are not given a Buddhist name since they do not need one: they have meaningful personal names. In the jiezhu ritual, men simply use the name given to them at birth or the name given to them once they begin school.¹²² It is believed that a jiezhu woman who becomes pregnant loses all the merit she gained in the ritual and her Amituofo recitation is nullified. In addition, she must apologize to those who helped her in her jiezhu by sending them gifts. Moreover, although she may again do jiezhu, the opportunity may not arise again due to the requirement for both an auspicious an 案 (record or case) and dao 道 (realm), a combination that may occur only a few times in a lifetime. An and dao refer to two configurations in a person’s astrological life that are considered important indications of the person’s connection with the Earthly Branches (dizhi 地支) and the Six Realms (liudao 六道).¹²³ There is nothing like this for the men, of course. They are free from such risks even if their wife gets pregnant after they have done jiezhu, since it is believed that only a woman’s body has polluting attributes.

A further intriguing point about these places where both men and women perform the ritual is made by Liu Shanqun regarding the comparative status of the nianfo mama and the nianfo gonggong 念佛公公 (Amituofo recitation maternal grandfather). Liu writes, “The nianfo gonggong have a lower status than the nianfo mama, as is shown by their seating positions in the ritual place. The nianfo gonggong sit in the ‘lower hall,’ while the nianfo mama sit in the ‘upper hall.’”¹²⁴

The “upper hall” refers to the area close to the main altar and is in a position superior to the “lower hall,” which is close to the main entrance. Liu explained to me that the men in Shibi, unlike any other Ninghua men, are imitating the women in performing jiezhu. In doing so, hence, they have a lower status than that of the women in the ritual context. Why would these men concede to this lower ritual status?

I would suggest they share an interest similar to that of the women involved in jiezhu, since they are particularly marginalized men. The area around Shibi is poor and mountainous. Average annual income in Shibi in 2004 was 2,752 yuan—the lowest at the town and township level in Ninghua.125 There is no public transportation connecting villages to Shibi town, so people walk up and down the hills if they have no bicycle or motorcycle. These people live on the margins, geographically and socially. They are disadvantaged even in comparison with rural people in nearby districts. It seems that the men of this area who follow the women in claiming higher spiritual and social recognition through ritualization share much in common with other marginalized groups, such as the elderly, children, and women. I call these men “the other women,” for men thus shunted to the margin are left “degendered.” These men have lost the superior status generally assigned to men. This is especially the case when these men age and are less able to use their key resources such as physical strength to labor.

Unlike rituals dominated by men that feature rigid and clearly defined taboos against the presence of women, the boundaries of jiezhu as a women’s ritual have apparently not been developed to exclude. At least the women-focused jiezhu ritual does not have rigid gender boundaries. Women who had done jiezhu did not report any hard feelings about male participation; they were seemingly tolerant and not concerned about men doing jiezhu. Indeed, as in the case of Zhang Yunyin, there were men being pressured to do jiezhu by their wives.

Still, some men I interviewed clearly stated that it had been their own wish to do it. One man from Shibi, Zhang Yunyou 張運優, told me how upset he had been about not doing jiezhu in the year when he had had the appropriate combination of an and dao and found out later that there would be no more appropriate an and dao combinations for the rest of his life.¹²⁶ Only forty-eight at the time, Zhang said he had considered himself not old enough to do jiezhu without realizing that he was missing his last chance for a suitable an and dao. He said there was nothing he could do at this point, so he had been trying not to think about it. Another man I interviewed in Shibi, Zhang Yunshang 張運尚, told me he had arranged for a village elder to consult an almanac to find the auspicious an and dao for him so that he could prepare himself to do jiezhu. These were men with a strong personal desire to do the jiezhu ritual.

The term “women-oriented ritual” becomes necessary because of the lack of equal footing for women in the general religious ritual practices. In my study of jiezhu, I came to appreciate the accommodating attitude of the women who do jiezhu in opening their ritual to men. As an observer, I have no reservation in expressing my feeling that the women deserve respect for their generosity in sharing this ritual with men.

Nonetheless, jiezhu gives the woman a certain kind of honor. The ritual is ostensibly a gift offered to the deities in exchange for blessings and favors, but it is also a social investment. A proper, full-scale jiezhu ritual mobilizes a relatively great amount of economic resources. The preparation, the visits, the rites, the exchange of gifts, the communal meals all transform into a conspicuous event with emotions and expressions of excitement that affirm family and social ties by answering personal needs and enhancing social status. Jiezhu thus produces symbolic capital that enhances the women’s social standing.

At the same time, jiezhu also aligns three generations of mother-daughter bonding in a subtle manner.127 Although the focus of the female initiate’s wishes on her next life is a feature seemingly particular to Buddhism, the bonds of sisterhood that the ritual produces are not confined to the Buddhist friends of her recitation community. Ties to both the matrikin and married daughters are also strengthened through such aspects of the ritual as when married daughters are thanked for giving kneeling mats in a song extolling their “benevolent friendship.” In other words, through a ritual that announces their bodily change of menopause, these women acquire new religious identities and reclaim matrilineal bonds that are otherwise attenuated by dominant social structures and norms.

Finally, jiezhu should also be understood as a once-in-a-lifetime gift that a woman offers herself during her passage into the postmenopausal stage of life. The forging of a rite of passage into as prominent an event as jiezhu is not easily achieved. In addition to her daily chores of working in the fields, bringing up children, and taking care of her husband and family, the woman doing jiezhu needs to fulfill the full range of criteria to be eligible to do the ritual: she must reach menopausal age, her family members and female relatives have to be willing to provide the required resources, she must find a group of Buddhist friends, and, most important, she needs to have both an auspicious an and an auspicious dao occasion in the year she is ready to participate in the ritual. Jiezhu is therefore a self-gift that is hard earned, yet the anticipation of its enactment encourages these marginalized women (and some marginalized men) to persist in their otherwise relatively difficult lives. Jiezhu is an event that helps women endure the hardships in life because it is something that they look forward to and will always remember.

3. See, for example, Daniel L. Overmyer, “Women in Chinese Religions: Submission, Struggle, Transcendence,” in From Benares to Beijing: Essays on Buddhism and Chinese Religion in Honour of Professor Jan Yün-hua, ed. Koichi Shinohara and Gregory Schopen, 91–120 (Oakville, Ont.: Mosaic Press, 1991); Vincent Goossaert, “Irrepressible Female Piety: Late Imperial Bans on Women Visiting Temples,” Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China 10, no. 1 (2008): 212–41; Beata Grant, “Women, Gender and Religion in Premodern China: A Brief Introduction,” Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China 10, no. 1 (2008): 2–21; and Jesse G. Lutz, “Women in Imperial China: Ideal, Stereotype, and Reality,” in Pioneer Chinese Christian Women: Gender, Christianity, and Social Mobility, ed. Jesse G. Lutz, 29–50 (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2010).

15. For the major religious policies in the 1982 Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, see Lian Zhengming 廉正明, Renshi Zhongguo zongjiao zhengce 認識中國宗教政策 [Coming to know China’s religious policy] (Hong Kong: Mingbao, 1997). For discussion on religion and the state in China, see Prasenjit Duara, “Knowledge and Power in the Discourse of Modernity: The Campaigns against Popular Religion in Early Twentieth-Century China,” Journal of Asian Studies 50, no. 1 (February 1991): 67–83; Rebecca Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2010); Vincent Goossaert, “1898: The Beginning of the End for Chinese Religion?” Journal of Asian Studies 65, no. 2 (May 2006): 307–35; Fenggang Yang, Religion in China: Survival and Revival under Communist Rule (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 45–64; Mayfair Mei-hui Yang, “Introduction,” in Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation, ed. Mayfair Mei-hui Yang (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 19–29.

17. There are two aspects of the ritual activity of reciting the Buddha’s name relating to the context of jiezhu in Ninghua. The first concerns the devotee’s reciting the phrase namo Amituofo for the purpose of accumulating merit, and this is an individual practice that can be done anytime, anywhere by the devotee alone. The second relates to a ritual that those who have undergone jiezhu perform once a year. This annual ritual practice involves the participation of other Buddhist friends and at least one ritual specialist. The annual ritual is sometimes referred to as nian Laofo 唸老佛 (literally, “reciting Old Buddha”) because it is done mainly by elderly people. On the annual ritual, see ibid., 156–59.

18. John Lagerwey refers to this ritual as “receive the rosary” or “rosary initiation,” both of which represent attempts to provide the ritual with an explicit, clear meaning for readers. However, I use in this chapter the Chinese term jiezhu to avoid using a term associated specifically with a Christian ritual that, despite superficial similarities, has a very different historical development and cultural meaning. See Yang Yanjie 楊彦杰, ed., Ninghua xian de zongzu, jingji, yu minsu 寧化縣的宗族，經濟，與民俗 [Lineage, economy, and customs in Ninghua county], Traditional Hakka Society Series, vols. 23–24 (Hong Kong: International Hakka Studies Association / École française d’Extrême-Orient, 2005), 28.

20. The name guozhu is used in the town of Hucun 湖村鎮, Ninghua; see Deng Guangchang 鄧光昌, Huang Ruiyi 黃瑞儀, and Zhang Guoyu 張國玉, “Ninghuaxian Hucunzhen chunzhong xinyang Dingguang gufo gaishu” 寧化縣湖村鎮群眾信仰定光古佛概述 [The worship of Dingguang in Hucun, Ninghua], in Minxibei minsu zongjiao yu shehui 閩西北民俗宗教與社會 [Customary religion and society in northwestern Fujian], ed. John Lagerwey and Yang Yanjie 楊彦杰, Traditional Hakka Society Series, vol. 11 (Hong Kong: International Hakka Studies Association / École française d’Extrême-Orient, 2000), 208.

40. Laofo’an is situated in the village of Xiaoxi 小溪村 in Ninghua county. It is also the office of the Ninghua Buddhist Association. It was built in the Tang dynasty and called Chongfuyuan 崇尼院. Its name was changed to Chongfutang 崇福堂 during the Ming dynasty, and it was again renamed, as Laofo’an, in the reign of Emperor Shunzhi of the Qing dynasty. See Li Shixiong 李世熊, Ninghua xianzhi 寧化縣志 [Ninghua county gazetteer], ed. Liu Shanqun 劉善群 (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1992), 64, and Zhang Enting 张恩庭, Ninghua si guan 宁化寺观 [Observations on temples in Ninghua] (Ninghua: Ninghua xian caise yinshuachang youxian gongsi, 2001), 48. My visits to Laofo’an were in June 2002, January 2004, May 2004, and August 2006.

75. The Buddha’s aunt Mahāprajāpati was at first refused when she asked permission to become a nun because of the perception that women represented a temptation to men and threatened the moral codes of monks. See Rita Gross, Buddhism After Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), 32, 42–48; Overmyer, “Women in Chinese Religions,” 103; Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (New York: Routledge, 2002), 44.

Level 6 (highest)	Monks who live by the 250 precepts
Level 5	Converted Buddhists who have vowed to live by the bodhisattva precepts (pusajie 菩薩戒)
Level 4	Converted Buddhists who have vowed to live by the five precepts (wujie 五戒)
Level 3	Lay devotees who have vowed to take refuge in the Three Jewels (guiyi 皈依)
Level 2	Those who recite Amituofo but are not lay devotees
Level 1 (lowest)	Jiezhu practitioners