World religions and popular beliefs

Ghost is 鬼 guǐ, and the ancients explained it with a play on sounds: 鬼者，归也, the ghost is “the one who returns” (归 guī), the dead person gone back to their origin. The character itself shows a man topped by an enormous head. A ceremonial mask, a dead man’s skull? Nobody really knows, and I will take care not to settle it.

Facing the 鬼 stands the 神 shén, the god: the altar 示 next to 申, which depicted lightning ⟶ the power that comes from the sky. Confucius avoided the subject, he spoke neither of prodigies nor of spirits (sentence 25, see Chapter 7 of the Analects of Confucius, VII.20). Laozi goes further: when the empire is governed according to the Tao, demons lose their power (sentence 24, see Chapter 60 of the Tao Te Ching). China’s three teachings are on the previous page, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism; this one deals with the religions that came from elsewhere and with what people believe without any school.

Watch out with Christianity, the trap is a classic. 基督教 Jīdūjiào, literally “the teaching of Christ” (基督 transcribes Christ), almost always means Protestantism in China; Catholicism is 天主教 Tiānzhǔjiào, “the teaching of the Lord of Heaven”. The word 上帝 Shàngdì, God, is much older than the missionaries: it was the Sovereign on High of the Shang kings, and it can already be read in the Classic of Poetry.

It was precisely this choice of words that kept the Jesuits busy. 利玛窦 Lì Mǎdòu, Matteo Ricci, arrived in Macao in 1582 and settled in Beijing in 1601 (sentence 17). He tolerated ancestor worship, which he regarded as a civil rite. Rome eventually judged otherwise: in 1715, a papal decree banned the rites, and Emperor Kangxi replied in 1721 by banning preaching.

Islam arrived earlier, by the Silk Road and by sea, under the Tang. It is called 伊斯兰教 Yīsīlánjiào, a simple transcription, but the everyday adjective is 清真 qīngzhēn, “pure and true” ⟶ halal: the 清真寺 qīngzhēnsì is the mosque, and a 清真 on a restaurant sign tells you that no pork is served there (sentence 5).

Every house has its gods. The Kitchen God, 灶王爷 Zàowángyé, watches over the family all year round; a few days before the New Year, he goes up to heaven to make his report (sentence 9). He is offered sticky sweets so that he will say only good things, or so that he can no longer open his mouth, depending on the version. The 门神 ménshén stand guard on the gate, often two Tang generals (sentence 19), and Lord Guan, 关公 Guān Gōng, a general of the Three Kingdoms who became the god of loyalty and commerce, sits enthroned in shops (sentence 16).

The dead are never far away. They are honoured before their tablet, 牌位 páiwèi, their graves are visited at Qingming (sentence 10), and paper money is burnt for them, 烧纸 shāozhǐ; today people also burn paper cars and paper phones. On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, the Ghost Festival, 鬼节 Guǐ Jié, opens the gates of the other world. And before being reborn, everyone drinks the soup of Lady Meng, 孟婆汤 Mèngpó tāng, which makes you forget everything.

风水 fēngshuǐ, “wind and water”, is said to take its name from a book attributed to Guo Pu, in the 4th century: the breath scatters on the wind and stops at the water’s edge. A good house is 坐北朝南 zuò běi cháo nán, backed to the north and facing south (sentence 11). For divination, the character 卜 bǔ shows the crack that opened on the heated bone or shell, and its sound, so they say, imitated the cracking. People still calculate their destiny, 算命 suànmìng, from their 八字 bāzì, the eight characters of the year, month, day and hour of birth (sentence 21). For lucky charms, see Ceremonies and lucky charms.

The ghost, finally, has made itself at home in conversation. A coward is a 胆小鬼 dǎnxiǎoguǐ, “a ghost with a small gall” (sentence 7), a skinflint a 小气鬼 xiǎoqìguǐ, and you cry 见鬼 jiànguǐ when your keys vanish (sentence 13). Anyone who 心里有鬼 xīnli yǒu guǐ has something on their conscience (sentence 23). The Chinese ghost makes a handy scapegoat.

Click on any character on the page: its stroke order appears stroke by stroke, with the arrow showing the direction of the line.