If anything, the flawed side of Guan Yu’s yi actually enhanced his popularity with regular people - his imperfections only made him seem more relatable.Ī vignette from the famous Ming dynasty novel “Romance of the Three Kingdoms” illustrates the way Guan Yu juggled these two values. Guan Yu was capable of acts of cruelty and extreme violence, but his yi manifested as a strict code of behavior and sense of honor, two necessary components of any good folk hero. In this case, “righteousness” may not be the best translation of the term, which has complicated connotations in Chinese. To ordinary people, meanwhile, it was Guan Yu’s yi that made him a legend worth believing in. China’s emperors, who valued loyalty in their subjects, saw Guan Yu’s obedience and respect for his superiors as a value worth propagating. What explains Guan Yu’s almost supernatural popularity, capable of bringing together cops and criminals, emperors and commoners, Taoists and Buddhists? The answer is the one thing Guan Yu was once known for above all else, even his luxurious beard: his sense of zhongyi.Ī portmanteau of the Chinese words for “loyalty,” zhong, and “righteousness,” yi, Guan Yu’s steadfast, sometimes bullheaded adherence to the principle of zhongyi proved key to his meteoric rise. Nor is his appeal limited to the martial: So many merchants started worshipping Guan Yu, he’s become one of China’s four main wealth gods. Just as important, at the grassroots level of society Guan Yu became a kind of patron saint or protector god for everyone from blacksmiths and opera performers to triads and police officers. Guan Yu, on the other hand, is admired by proponents of all three: To Confucians, he’s a “sage,” to Taoists he’s “Holy Ruler Deity Guan,” and to Buddhists he’s the “Sangharama Bodhisattva.” Of the country’s three major belief systems - Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism - Confucius has been deified in only one. More honors would follow, and by the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1912, Guan Yu’s prestige may have surpassed even that of Confucius himself. The founder of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) later gave him the higher title of “(heavenly) emperor.” Emperor Huizong of Song, a bumbling ruler but a devoted Taoist, was the first ruler to make Guan Yu a “deity” in the official Taoist canon. Despite his posthumous “Emperor Guan” moniker, he also never staked a claim to royalty, meaning his status in life was never that of contemporaries Cao Cao, Sun Quan, or his liege and sworn brother Liu Bei.Ĭonsequently, Guan Yu’s cult grew only slowly through the Tang dynasty period (618-907), but his status reached new heights during the Song dynasty (960-1279). Although a competent military general and tenacious fighter, Guan Yu could be coldly arrogant, and he was hardly a master strategist like his comrade Zhuge Liang. To those familiar with the history of China’s Three Kingdoms period (220-280 AD), these honors might seem perplexing. 13 - he’s planted himself in Yuncheng to manage the celebrations there.įew historical personages are as venerated in the Chinese-speaking world as Guan Yu, who counts Guan Laoye (Grandpa Guan), Guan Gong (Duke Guan), and Guan Di (Emperor Guan), among his litany of officially bestowed titles. Yet with the deity’s birthday fast approaching - by tradition, Guan Yu’s birth is celebrated on the 24th day of the sixth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, which this year falls on Aug. Since ascending to his current position in 2004, Wei’s spent much of his time traveling between the thousands of temples dedicated to Guan Yu across China and around the world, guiding restoration work, organizing exhibitions, and overseeing temple rites. Positive energy is an asset in this line of work. “Following in the footsteps of (animated hits) ‘ Monkey King: Hero is Back’ and ‘ Ne Zha,’ we were confident the film would be a smash hit,” Wei tells me from his office at the institute’s headquarters in Yuncheng, also Guan Yu’s hometown. 11 on the Chinese mainland, was quickly lost in the shuffle. The film, which was produced in collaboration with the well-known animator Cai Zhizhong and released Jan. Going into 2020, the 57-year-old director of the Haizhou Guandi Temple Conservation Institute in the northern city of Yuncheng had spent the better part of three years and 12 million yuan ($1.72 million) on “God of War Guan Gong.” The animated film was to be a 1,860th birthday present of sorts to his temple’s deity, the famed warrior Guan Yu. Wei Long’s year has not gone according to plan.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |