Nuns and Guandi Temple

According to legend, the Guandi Ding in Guandi Temple is an iron pot made in fine steel, with a diameter of 1.2 meters and a depth of half a meter, decorated with ding patterns. The locals brought them from their hometown in Shanxi to protect them from the wandering of migration and the destruction of war in the late Ming Dynasty, so they were regarded as sacred objects. It is said that Chu Zhuangwang's men once took Guandi Ding as their own, and were struck by lightning without staying overnight. There is no resident Taoist in this temple, and the local patriarch also supervises the work of the temple. Several farmers who cultivate the temple fields are responsible for the chores in the temple. Taoist practitioners and Yin and Yang Feng Shui masters are both part-time workers, and their salaries are used to subsidize their families. However, their "divine power" comes from the candlestick in Guandi Temple.

The woodcut Guanyin statue in "The Nun" came from Putuo Mountain and was brought by the Lakers from their hometown in the south. In the buddhist nun where they stopped for the second time, under the ancient willow tree, the first small shrine was built with rubble and broken tiles, half a meter high, just enough to install the Guanyin statue. If Guandi Temple is in charge of national and family public affairs: funeral, living, praying for rain and resolving disputes, then a nun developed from a small ancestral temple is in charge of personal affairs: praying for blessings, eliminating disasters, finding children and repenting. A nun is different from Guandi Temple. It is supervised by nuns, does not store land, studies classics, begs for alms and holds charity ceremonies. Because it has the functions of healing, women's Federation and charity, it is quite influential among women, and nuns are mostly the way out for lonely or unfortunate women.

Guandi Temple can be regarded as a man's temple, and a nun is a woman's temple, which has solved the old problem of remarriage. The husband's family is subject to Confucian ethics, the husband's family is subject to the sphere of family influence, and the remarried party is subject to the subordinate position of women and cannot dominate this matter. Through the accumulated personnel information and the religious authority of Bodhisattva, nuns became "matchmakers" and actively contributed to this event.

During the Republic of China, the valuable temple property of nuns and Guandi temples was completely occupied by local strongmen, and after liberation, they were all in ruins. "Breaking capitalism" gave it the final fatal blow. Guandi Temple was replaced by the spectacular township government, but the social function of nuns was not replaced by the government, so Christianity had to take over and develop secretly. My second mother is one of them.