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发表于 2007-7-24 07:01:48
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第三節為布賴的精神信仰在時空中定位，並...
Religious Continuity and Change
Between 1978, when I first conducted ethnographic research in Pulai, and 1998,
when I last observed the Guanyin festival, the Hakka community of Pulai underwent
significant socioeconomic change. Families who had relied on a subsistence rice
growing economy for many generations shifted to cash crop rubber production, while
young people increasingly left the community to take up wage labor jobs in larger
towns and cities. These changes were hastened by the Malaysian government’s
TJSEAS 55
sponsorship of commercial gold mining in Pulai, which forced most families to move
from their ancestral agricultural land to houses in a New Village located not far from
the Pulai central area. Demographic shifts brought large numbers of new Malay
settlers into the southern Kelantan region, encouraged by government sponsored
economic development projects that also supported the building of new roads and
infrastructure. By 1998, many Pulai families who twenty years earlier had lived in dirt
floored houses that lacked running water and electricity, now had bathrooms, washing
machines, refrigerators, televisions, and other modern amenities. Lifestyle changes
were also apparent in the new attention that parents paid to their children’s education
and in the ever increasing scale and crowds of the Guanyin festival. The elimination
of local curfews that had for more than a decade hindered people from traveling into
Pulai at night, and the building and paving of new roads into the area allowed for
easier access by outside visitors to the festival. This occurred at a time of growing
support for Malaysian Chinese temples as an important ethnic marker.29 Although
some Pulai men had worried in 1978 about the future of Pulai religious customs,
commenting that my intensive note taking, photography, and tape recording during the
Guanyin festival might provide a valuable resource for them in years to come,
observations of the annual festival in 1984, 1990, and 1998, verified that the complex
round of rituals, prayers, music, and ritual chanting clearly remained intact.
Nevertheless, amidst continuities in ritual belief and practice, changes in the Pulai
community surfaced both in the festival and in the religious responses of Pulai people
to their shifting circumstances.
29 The growing visibility of Islamic institutions in Malaysia throughout the 1980s and 1990s fueled support for alternative forms
of religion. See Ackerman and Lee (1988).
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One of the most significant alterations in Pulai religious practice has been the
absence of a Maniang tongzi since 1977, something remarked upon repeatedly in
1978 and in the years that followed. Direct communications from Maniang through
the tongzi during the Guanyin festival created a sense of excitement that was sorely
missed by some Pulai people, who commented negatively on the tepid (dan 淡)
atmosphere of subsequent festivals. Although people said in 1978 that Maniang might
call another tongzi to serve at any time, as the years passed, this seemed increasingly
unlikely. Some people connected this to the growing social complexity of the Pulai
community. For example, in 1989 the son of the last tongzi compared changes in the
political sphere of the community with those in the religious sphere. He observed that
while people in previous times had brought their problems to the penghulu, who
served as local intermediary, they were now more likely to seek out other connections,
often beyond the community. He anticipated similar problems in changing attitudes
towards a Maniang tongzi, as people now had a variety of other ways to solve
problems, and said it was better that the position remain vacant.
The biggest changes in the Guanyin festival have emerged with issues of festival
organization and leadership. In 1978, election of the ritual head, luzhu, was restricted
to a list of senior male heads of Pulai families; by the mid 1980s this began to change.
In the 1990s the list used to elect the luzhu and the newly introduced fuluzhu (副爐主),
assistant ritual heads, included all major contributors to the temple, many of whom
were non-Hakka outsiders who operated logging businesses in the area. Increasingly,
the men who form the core of worshipers for the complex round of temple rituals are
drawn from outside the Pulai community and include many non-Hakka Chinese. This
inclusion of outsiders in temple affairs has been accompanied by the increasing
TJSEAS 57
difficulty of persuading sufficient Pulai men to help with the many labor intensive
tasks of the festival, such as cleaning the temple altars, preparing ritual offerings,
cooking vegetarian meals, setting up the opera stage, and keeping records of
contributions. This labor shortage is closely related to the shift from an agricultural
economy, where men can more easily adjust their schedules, to increasing wage labor
employment outside of the community. Thus, the temple festival that in 1978 had
relied largely on voluntary Pulai male labor had by 1998 changed to one where people
were paid for assigned tasks: individuals contracted out the job of setting up the opera
stage; male temple kitchen workers were paid a daily salary; and women were paid to
wash dishes outside of the temple kitchen.30 Other changes occurred in 1996 when a
new group of younger Pulai men in their 30s and 40s managed to wrest control of the
temple committee from the older core of men who had managed affairs since the
1970s. While criticized by some of the former committee leaders for certain decisions
about spending temple money and for playing recordings of Buddhist chants in the
temple during the festival, these younger men, ironically, appeared more inclined to
actively participate in ritual worship than many of their elders.31
Other changes have occurred in the area of ritual practice. In 1984, the Pulai
penghulu and the temple committee chair invited Buddhist monks from Penang to the
opening of the newly reconstructed Shuiyuegong temple, and had them conduct a
special Buddhist mass in honor of the dead. However, the push to add more formal
types of Buddhist ritual to the Guanyin celebration has garnered a tepid response from
most Pulai people. Another new practice, the offering of whole roast pigs by
30 Jordan (1994: 143-144) notes similar difficulties with labor recruitment for communal religious festivals in Taiwan with the
shift away from agriculture.
31 Pulai women have also increased their participation in festival activities. For an analysis of gender shifts in the festival, see
“Gender, Temple, and Community in a Hakka Malaysian Settlement” in Carstens (2005:101-126).
TJSEAS 58
individuals and businesses in the worship of temple deities at the breaking of the fast
has been more enthusiastically embraced; the offerings allow visible displays of
personal success while also providing additional meat for the communal feast that
follows. A third change, the staging of a procession of Pulai temple deities to the
nearby town of Gua Musang on the fifth day of the festival, has ignited more
controversy. Given the growing support of the Pulai Guanyin temple from Gua
Musang residents (many with family ties to Pulai), some people interpret this as
symbolic of Guanyin’s expanding protective powers. Others, however, have criticized
the procession as an unnecessary drain on limited Pulai resources and a possible
dilution of local tradition.
Meanwhile, changes in the local Pulai economy have created economic
uncertainties, which have prompted other types of spiritual responses. The appearance
of Caishen, the God of Wealth, on the main Shuiyuegong altar in 1984 coincided with
the shift from a padi growing subsistence economy to one based on cash crops, wage
labor, and government reparations for land and houses lost to gold mining. Although
Pulai’s subsistence economy had supported a relatively low standard of living, it was
nonetheless seen as dependable: people in the 1970s said that in Pulai you never need
lack for food or shelter. New economic enterprises, while potentially more profitable,
are also more uncertain. Supplications to Caishen appear to be one response to this
newly monetized, yet unstable economic environment. The decision to shift their
labors from rice cultivation to rubber production was one that Pulai families and
individuals made on their own. The arrival of gold mining was a different story:
something Pulai people protested against, but could not prevent. Rumors in Pulai in
1989, more than a year after gold mining operations had begun, claimed that very
TJSEAS 59
little gold was being found, and people credited their successful prayers to the local
laduk or tudigong (earth god) for this mining failure.32 In 1990, a different concern in
the form of an extended local drought, which threatened rubber trees and other crops,
prompted another course of spiritual action: the statue of Tangongye, the rain god,
was set out in the hot sun of the temple courtyard for three days in hopes that this
would stir him to action.
To conclude, for the foreseeable future, the older Hakka Chinese of Pulai will
very likely continue to rely on many of the spiritual beliefs and practices of their
Hakka ancestors, even as they, like generations before, adjust these beliefs to an ever
changing world. At present, the traditional rituals of the Guanyin festival that older
Pulai men had feared might disappear seem to potentially have a new lease on life in
the hands of a younger cohort of Pulai men, who have even constructed a Pulai temple
website (www.shuiyuegong.com.my). It is quite possible that the increasing outside
influences of secular education, jobs, and travel will make it progressively more
difficult for children growing up in Pulai today to accept the traditional spiritual
beliefs of their Hakka elders. Alternatively, while certain changes are to be expected,
it is also possible that popular religion in Pulai will become a marker of Chinese and
perhaps even Hakka cultural traditions that are consciously preserved in the face of
massive social change.33 Given the past social isolation of the Pulai community and
its relatively homogenous ethnic composition, Hakka identity within Pulai has never
been well developed.34 While my own research has made links to certain religious
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practices in Pulai that appear to have their parallels in Hakka communities elsewhere,
many of the beliefs and practices described in this paper are widely found in other
Chinese communities. It thus remains to be seen whether Chinese in Pulai choose to
highlight their identities and religious practices as Hakka in the future, or whether this
ethnic label and the practices associated with it continue to have relatively minor
meaning in their lives.
32 People said that original government plans had called for mining an even larger area of Pulai, and they hoped that bad returns on the initial operations would discourage further expansion.
33 Katz (2003) comments on the continued support for religion among educated Taiwanese, including the establishment of temple websites, while also pointing to temples as sites for cultural activities and cultural preservation.
34 For observations on Hakka identity in Pulai see chapters in Carstens (2005) “Pulai, Hakka, Chinese, Malaysian: A Labyrinth of Cultural Identities”; “Form and Content in Hakka Malaysian Culture”; and “Border Crossings: Hakka Chinese Lessons in Diasporic Identities.”
[ 本帖最后由 namlow 于 2007-7-24 07:32 编辑 ] |
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发表于 2007-7-24 06:54:52
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抢沙发