Plagues and Demons: Worshiping the Gods of Pestilence in Late Qing China

• In Event: Between Hope and Hopelessness: Reexamining the History of Diseases and Hygiene in the Late-Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century East Asia

Abstract

Religious characters play an important part in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). People believed that plagues (wenyi 瘟疫) were caused by evil spirits (wenshen 瘟神). The way to dispel the spirits of contagion is to venerate the Gods of Pestilence. Pestilence brought people hopelessness; however, worshiping the Gods of Pestilence gave them hope.
This paper intends to examine the plague expulsion festivals held by Chinese people in the late Qing dynasty through the eyes of western medical missionaries who came to China after the First Opium War (1842). I focus on several important seaports in China, such as Shanghai, Amoy and Wenchow and analyze Medical Notes on China and Medical Reports compiled by western medical missionaries. By doing this, I try to explore the varying representations of the Gods of Pestilence, the conception of “epidemics” in China, and the way these medical missionaries observed, described, and recorded the festivals. This study thus also addresses the relationship between medical missionaries, the organizations they belonged, and the empire they came from.
One thing should be noted is that previous research on the western attitude toward TCM in the late Qing dynasty rarely discusses the role of religion. I think that the relation between religion and medicine was much closer in public. People tended to search for religious help when an epidemic outbreak. My work thus seeks to present a comprehensive picture of cults to popular Chinese deities and traditional medicine.

Author

• Chun-fang Chang, National Taiwan University