Decolonising the Sacred: Working with the University of Leicester on the Respectful Curation of Chinese Deities
During the summer of 2024, Brighton & Hove Museums worked with the University of Leicester and the Academia Sinica in Taiwan on a scoping project to examine the object biographies, genealogies and the socio-cultural, cosmological and religious contexts and meanings of Sacred Han Chinese objects. This included statues of Daoist, Buddhist and Confucian deities, historical figures and ancestral tablets in British museums, and aimed to inform their storage, display and interpretation.
Alongside Brighton & Hove Museums, the project included several other organisations across the country, including the Horniman Museum, Derby Museum & Art Gallery, Durham Oriental Museum, Kedleston Hall (Derbyshire) and World Museums Liverpool. It also involved other academics from the UK and Taiwan including from the National University of Singapore, the National Museum of Taiwan History, SOAS, anthropologists and Taiwanese priests.
To ensure religious artefacts are curated, stored and displayed sensitively, a basic understanding of the history and fundamentals of the religion those objects relate to is essential. The religious history of China is complex and has resulted in several different religio-philisophical traditions that exist simultaneously, influenced by geography and cultural traditions. From the early period people practised folk religions, where different systems of belief and practice were heavily affected by where you lived.
The rise of Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism (known as the three teachings) in the early centuries BC standardised some elements of religious practice. All three have influenced society, politics and philosophy alongside each other, rather than any of the three taking prominence. Even though Chinese culture is now influenced by the ‘three teachings’, local folk traditions are still very active and important within Chinese culture and practice.
A key part of Chinese religion is the belief in gods, ghosts (typically malevolent spirits) and ancestors, which form an integral part of their daily experiences. These categories are not fixed and spirits can move between categories: anything can become a spirit, spirits can become gods, ancestors can become ghosts or gods, and so on.
Each of the three teachings has a different pantheon of gods, with its own bureaucracy of gods, clerks, guards and servants, and each intertwined with mythologies about places and concepts such as the cardinal points, earthly, sea and mountain realms and the heavens and underworld. In the most popular belief, the Jade Emperor sits at the top of the hierarchy, followed by the legend deities, the historical deities and the Underworld gods.
The Jade Emperor is one of the representations of the primordial god and is the monarch of all the deities in heaven. The legend deities are hero figures that have helped humanity to flourish and are part of the creation myths. Historical deities are real people who have been deified by the reigning dynastic emperor. Underworld gods govern the underworld, and have their own cosmological bureaucracy of gods, clerks, guards and servants.
Chinese historical dating is based on reign years within a dynasty. The majority of the objects cared for by Brighton & Hove Museums are from the Qing dynasty (1644-1912), the last dynasty before the Chinese Revolution and China became the Republic of China in 1911 (before becoming the People’s Republic of China in 1949).
The project looked at 14 Chinese deity figures and 29 ancestor tablets that are cared for by the World Art team at Brighton & Hove Museums. The objects were given to the museum by two different Christian missionaries. A key part of the discussions that took place was to try and understand how the objects came to be in their possession – were they taken? Gifted? Perhaps the missionaries offered to remove objects relating to previous religious belief following a conversion to Christianity? Unfortunately, we have no record of the nature of how they came to be in their possession, and further research into the missionary archives needs to take place.
Deity figures are worshipped in temples and at home, and are consecrated during a ritual by filling a small hole in the back with the ‘5 poisons’, poisonous creatures such as wasps and scorpions. The use of incense during the ritual is crucial and has the power to attract spirits. The spirits of the gods reside in the figures situated in their main temple. This ritual asks for a part of the spirit of the god who resides in the figure in the main temple, to reside in the deity figure in question. The figures must be worshipped and given offerings such as food and clothes in order to keep the spirit of the god happy, or the spirit will eventually leave and return to the main temple.
Reverend Ernest Box (1862-1940) worked at Medhurst College, Shanghai, China, and donated a collection of Chinese artefacts to Brighton Museum in 1923. Outstanding amongst these objects are the thirteen Chinese deities represented by 14 figures in the collection (another five in the collection are also probably from this source but have little documentation) which were looked at through this project.
There are very few collections of this type in the UK and the Brighton collection has been described as the second most significant in a museum collection in the country. The figures were collected in the Shanghai district and are characteristic, stylistically, of the Shanghai area. They were most probably carved in the late nineteenth century. In this article, we will be looking at 5 of the figures in more detail.
Kuan Yin/ Guan Yin, Goddess of Mercy (WA505646)
Boddhisatva of Compassion. Boddhisatvas are those who have achieved enlightenment but choose to stay on Earth to help enlighten others. Kuan Yin is derived from the Indian male deity Avalokitesvara and transformed to her current female state at some point after Buddhism arrived in China during the first century AD. Depicted here as a Buddhist nun, she sits cross-legged on a lotus flower, symbol of purity; she’s more often depicted in white robes, pouring water from her vase to calm the troubles of the world. As one of the patrons of childbirth Kuan Yin is universally popular and many Chinese temples, whether Buddhist or Daoist, include a shrine to her.
Hai Lung Wang, The Sea Dragon King (WA505642)
Depicted as an emperor, with a beaded Imperial cap and long white beard. He would originally have been holding a hu tablet (or flat sceptre) in front of his face; an emperor’s tablet was jade, those of his officials either ivory or bamboo. Dragons are water elementals, found in clouds, rivers, lakes and oceans, and worshipped by anyone whose livelihood depends on water – including farmers, bargemen and sailors (so a popular deity at Shanghai, a seaport close to the mouth of the Yangzi river). The Sea Dragon King appears in several folktales such as Journey to the West, when he is bullied into handing over his magic staff to the brilliant but unruly Monkey King.
Zao Jun/ Tsao Chun, Stove God, often translated as Kitchen God (WA505641)
In charge of the family’s destiny. Most homes wouldn’t have a statue to him, but a woodblock print in a recess above the hearth, from where he could observe all family activity. A week before Chinese New Year this print would be taken down and honey rubbed on its lips – either to seal Zao Jun’s mouth or sweeten his words. The print would then be burned, sending Zao Jun riding back to heaven on his horse to report on whether the family had been naughty or nice over the previous twelve months. The night before New Year a fresh print would be installed. In the afterlife Zao Jun serves as the Overseer of Fate, writing “bad” or “good” on the foreheads of newly-arrived spirits so that they can be sorted for judgement. This statue once held a hu tablet in front of his face, now lost.
Guan Yu/ Guan Di, though often described in English as the God of War, he’s more the patron of Martial Righteousness (WA505645)
He’s based on a real third-century general featured in the Chinese historical novel “Romance of the Three Kingdoms”. As with many deities he serves several other functions, including as a deity of learning – hence the book, perhaps (he’s also a god of wealth, and patron deity of both police and various criminal gangs).
Guan Yu (also known as Guan Di, “Emperor Guan” and Guan Gong, “Lord Guan”) is a deified third-century general from the Three Kingdoms’ Period, when China’s Han dynasty collapsed and the country split into competing states. One of the major characters in the fourteenth-century novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms, where he is depicted as a red-faced, brave and unrelentingly moral warrior, Guan Yu is usually incarnated as the God of Martial Righteousness (less accurately as the God of War), patron of the military, police and criminals. He also serves as a god of wealth and, as here, as a patron of learning, holding a writing brush and book. His cult boomed during the early Qing dynasty (1644–1912), as the ruling Manchu emperors sought acceptance from the wider Chinese population by promoting his worship.
Yen Lo Wang, God of the Underworld (WA505695)
The base names two deities: Yanluo, aka Yama, Ruler of the Underworld; and Bao Zheng, one of the judges in the afterlife. In parts of China worship of these two was conflated, elsewhere they were seen as entirely separate entities. Both get depicted with black faces but the white mark on this statue’s forehead suggests Bao Zheng’s crescent moon birthmark. The Chinese afterlife is divided into nine levels of punishment; after death the spirit is judged before either being directly reincarnated or consigned to the relevant level of hell. Worshipping Bao Zheng and/or Yama might get your sins treated more leniently.
Bao Zheng (999–1062; popularly known as Bao Gong, “Lord Bao”) was a Song-dynasty official renowned for his utter honesty and impartiality. During the nineteenth century a Beijing teahouse storyteller published Three Heroes and Five Gallants, a collection of folktales about his life and career.
The project has informed curatorial decisions on how to store the objects, with all deity figures and ancestral tablets now stored standing, at the top of the shelf with nothing above them, to ensure respect is shown. It will also inform future curatorial decisions on how to display the objects, taking into account the hierarchy of the deities and ancestral tablets. Our catalogue has been vastly improved, particularly in regards to the ancestral tablets, as we now have so much more information on who is being commemorated. A second round of funding will hopefully be secured to deliver a second phase of the project, to allow the project partners to research their collections in more detail and improve displays.
Article written by Portia Tremlett, Curator (World Art) at Brighton & Hove Museums, with special thanks to Associate Professor Yunci Cai at the University of Leicester, and author and researcher David Leffman, alongside participants of the Decolonising the Sacred Project.