keeping the local officials happy

Jennifer’s family is basically not religious: they make offerings to her father’s spirit on his death day, of course, and prepare a meal for the ancestors and burn spirit money to them on Chinese New Year’s, and also burn spirit money on the Mid-Autumn Festival I seem to remember, but not on any other days, and they never go to temples. For the most part, for whatever historical reasons, Mainlanders on Taiwan, unless they are very assimilated (for instance by marrying into a Taiwanese family and speaking Taiwanese), tend to participate in these sorts of activities less than Taiwanese people. I’d heard this described as an ethnic difference by several people and I’ve seen it attributed at least in one place (though I don't recall by whom) to the fact that Mainlanders are a very diverse bunch who came from all over the Chinese mainland in the late 1940s, most of them fleeing the Communist revolution, and so they had neither the time to properly transfer their gods to the island, nor the social networks on the island to properly reinstate their worship practices once they got here. But now that Jennifer has opened a retail establishment, her bar, she has started making offerings too. She explains it like this: “I’ve opened a store [any retail establishment is a 店 dian, a store] so I have to baibai [拜拜, pray, make offerings].” Why do you have to baibai if you open a store? “I don’t know. Everyone says you do.”

So I have the feeling that the Mainlander worship differential is the result of some sort of interaction between ethnic history and occupational structure (which itself of course is based on ethnic history, so it’s kind of circular logic): at least according to Hill Gates,[i] who was writing about this in the early 1980s, Mainlanders tended to be employed in the government and in big firms, while Taiwanese tended to work in or own small, family-run affairs—the small and medium-sized production and retail establishments that made Taiwan’s economy famously so adaptable and postmodern from the grassroots. And if you own a small establishment like this, it seems you have to baibai. And not only if you own it yourself: from what I’ve seen of people setting up tables with fruit and incense in front of their stores and restaurants, the family that stays together, prays together.

So now on the 1st and the 15th days of every lunar month, Jennifer sets up a table on the patio of her bar to Tudi Gong 土地公, the god in charge of each neighborhood or locality. She puts out three different kinds of fruit and three shot glasses of—hey, isn’t that supposed to be some kind of liquor? It looks like water. “Yes, it’s water. You know Tudi Gong is vegetarian; vegetarians usually don’t drink alcohol, right?” Umm…that’s not the case in my experience….[ii] “Well anyway, I figure everyone else always gives him liquor, so by the time he gets to me he’s probably thirsty and should really drink some water; otherwise he’ll get a headache.” I can’t believe it: your store is filled with liquor! You own a bar and you’re too stingy to give the local god a couple of drinks? “話不是這樣說的”—‘speech is not said like that,’ a phrase suggesting that someone’s utterance is “ugly” or “difficult to listen to,” without suggesting that it is technically incorrect.

Jennifer asked around about how to pray properly—Vany grew up baibai-ing and has worked in various small establishments so she is a good person to ask; the people across the street, the hairdresser and the tapioca-ball-milk-tea place, which are on very good terms with Jennifer’s bar, also gave her advice. So, first you write out one a piece of paper the relevant information that Tudi Gong has to know in order for the offerings to be of any use: your name and address. Then, after setting up all the stuff on the table outside, you light the incense and start praying. What do you say? “Tudi Gong, protect my store, give me good business, bring me customers, keep my workers happy, don’t let anything break, stuff like that.” How do you say it? “Well, they all pray in Taiwanese, of course, but my Taiwanese is terrible, so I just say it in Mandarin. I figure he’ll understand. And everyone usually prays out loud. But you know, I just can’t do it. I just say it silently to myself.” Then you wave the incense up and down three times and stick it in the incense pot—in this case a glass with used coffee grounds (it is after all a café and bar). You let the incense burn down halfway before you start burning the money. How come? “To give him a chance to eat the fruit you’re offering.”

[i] Gates, Hill 1981. "Ethnicity and Social Class." In Gates, Hill, and Ahern, Emily. eds. The Anthropology of Taiwanese Society. Palo Alto: Stanford U. Press. pp. 241-281. Another super duper article.
[ii] Of course here people are usually vegetarian out of Buddhist principles, and vegetarianism includes not only not eating formerly living beings, but not eating things that can incite or excite you, like garlic, chilli, and ginger, which seems like a relatively miserable lifestyle to me.



you have to write out your name and address so that Tudi Gong knows that the offerings are from you