Policy, Local Gentry and Religious Customs ——A Study of Religious Prohibitation of both Ghost Festival and Paper Money in Youchang Area, Kaohsiung

• Main Authors: Mei-Ching Chen, 陳梅卿
• Other Authors: Dr. Ling-Ching Wu
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/60479632852193429308

碩士 === 國立高雄師範大學 === 台灣歷史文化及語言研究所 === 101 === When people in Taiwan are celebrating the Chung-yung Ghosts’ Festival, which is a very important day in July of the Chinese calendar, but this is not the same for Kaohsiung Youchang area which is under the lead of the General Temple. Local residents in Youchang don’t have the honoring rites, called “zuo-ya” in Chinese, in the second day and the sixteenth day of the Chinese lunar calendar on each month, and neither do they consecrate meat or burn paper money; instead, they only show their respect with line-incense, flowers and fruits. In today’s society, they are very environmental. Youchang, used to be known as Youchong, takes its name from the history when the right wing of Ming-Cheng Dynasty nestled here. Before the period of being occupied by the Dutch, a man surnamed Kuo came here to reclaim the land. During the Qing Dynasty, more immigrants came to the village and thus further contributed to the development here. One thing for our notice is that the General Temple was built during the Ming-Cheng Dynasty when Youchang was defended by Guo-xuan Liu’s troops. It was during then when soldiers and generals turned their faith into building the General Temple, worshiping the General Liu and the same family name ancestors, which accounts for the fact that the General Temple honors seven marshals. After that, Youchang has four temples—the General Temple, the Sanshanguo Temple, the Fu-de Temple in Yi-jia and San-jia , with the General Temple being the major. The General Temple does not celebrate the Chung-yuan Ghosts’ Festival and burn paper money, and this has to do with the local gentry, the Yang family. The Yang family’s ancestors followed Guo-xuan Liu’s troops to Taiwan and settled in Youchang. The seventh successor Ying-long Yang ran fish farms; during the Japanese colonial period, the eighth successor Yi-an Yang, became rich with the fishery industry. In 1938, the Japanese colonial administration in Taiwan levied the fish farms nearby the Wantan port. Therefore, Yang Yi-an donated the money to building the General Temple. During the Japanese colonial period, the Japanese colonial administration in Taiwan considered burning paper money and honoring the Chungyuan Ghosts’ Festival to be a superstition. With the arising social opinions for abolishing the custom of honoring rites, Yi-an Yang stepped forward to advocate canceling the customs in 1942. After WWII, the Yang family strengthened the no paper-money-burning and no honoring rites in the name of god in 1961. Concerning the Yang family’s stable and influential status in Youchang, the custom of no celebration for the Chung-yuan Ghosts’ Festival and no paper-money-burning is getting more and more popular, and becomes the historical origin.