A Deity’s Conquest of China
From the eleventh century onwards we see an increasing importance of supra-local cults for anthropomorphic deities all over China, including the worship of Lord Guan. In the conventional account of the spread of the cult, it is assumed that people were acquainted with the deity’s image from written narrative traditions, especially the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. This account derives in large part from the typical mind-set of literate elites (including modern scholars) that written texts trump all other forms of cultural influence. This chapter argues that the cult was transmitted all across northern China in particular in the form of oral stories that featured a miraculous event demonstrating Lord Guan’s power. It will be shown how the cult was already widespread by the first half of the early fourteenth century, long before the narrative traditions of the Three Kingdoms acquired their phenomenal popularity and were transformed into written texts.