I ran into these pictures online:
500,000 citizens went to Guiyuan Temple, burning incenses and requesting blessings to worship the god of wealth.
The pictures remind me of what Qian Yong wrote on Popular Religion in 1838:
Every year in the spring when there is no farm work to tend to , people feel superstitious doubts about ghosts and spirits. What happened then is called "going out for a gathering," Everyone says that this [religious processions and gatherings] can "exorcise evil and bring good fortune" or "get rid of hardship and eliminate locusts." There is a great commotion when these gatherings occur and the whole area goes wild. Tens of thousdnads of men and women appear to watch these parades and although lcoal magistrates occasionally ban such actitives, they grow and prosper from year to year.
Qian Yong was frowning eyebrow on this. He recorded "Ten Evils of Relgious Gatherings" ( a scholar of Jiangyin, LiJiantian) to show his consent with the author. Li listed ten evils of such gatherings:
1. Blaspheming the ghosts and spirits
2. Confusing the ritual code
3. Squaderign money
4. Disrupting normal occuptions
5. Mixing of men and women
6. Causing fires
7. Promoting gambling
8. Causing fighting
9. Attracting robbbers and thieves
10. Damaginign social customs
If Li and Qian had lived today, they could have criticized the worship of the god of wealth with the same excurses. If it were twenty years ago, I would imagine that Xinhua New agency would have had a commentary criticizing such gathering as squanderign money, causing fires, and damaging social new customs.
Now people would hesitate to criticize such gatherings. At least in the above pictures, such gatherings is considered to embody the prosperity of China. We are living in the era of consumption.
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