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Abstract
Before the publication of the famous Chinese novel The Journey to the West, the central characters of the narrative—the Tang Monk, the monkey Sun Wukong, the pig Zhu Bajie, and the monk Sha—were venerated as deities. These same figures continue to be invoked today in a range of rituals throughout the Chinese world. This article focuses on the cult of Zhu Bajie in modern Taiwan. As a “licentious” spirit known for his voracious appetite and irrepressible libido, Zhu Bajie has attracted devotees from among Taiwan’s “special professions,” namely masseuses, hostesses, and sex workers. Unable to turn to conventional, ethically demanding deities for assistance, purveyors of illicit goods and services make offerings to spirits like Zhu Bajie who they hope will be more sympathetic to their needs. In this way, Zhu Bajie, a figure familiar from children’s books, cartoons, and blockbuster movies, has also become a patron saint of prostitutes.
Acknowledgements
This paper was initially prepared for the conference “Buddhism and Business, Market and Merit,” held at the University of British Columbia in June of 2017. I would like to thank the organizers, Chen Jinhua, Susie Andrews, and Yongshan He for their invitation to present this work. James Benn kindly sent a thoughtful response to the paper even though he was not able to attend the conference. Some of the field work informing this work was carried out in Taiwan in 2013–2014 under the auspices of the Fulbright Program. Will and Kristine Chen provided invaluable help in and around Taipei. This paper has also benefited from many excellent suggestions provided by Paul Katz, Meir Shahar, and two anonymous readers from the Journal of Chinese Religions.
Abbreviations
| DZ | = | Zhengtong Daozang 正統道藏 |
| JTTW | = | The Journey to the West |
| T | = | Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經 |
| XJY | = | Xiyou ji |
Notes on the Contributor
Benjamin Brose (本博澤) is associate professor of Chinese Buddhism in the department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Patrons and Patriarchs: Regional Rulers and Chan Monks during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2015).
Notes
1 Zhu Bajie reportedly does not care to receive offerings from men. According to one account, when the male owner of a brothel makes offerings to Zhu Bajie, he does so while showing the deity pictures of nude women from an adult magazine. Hong Chenhong 洪臣宏 and Sun Yifang 孫義方, “Baiguo Zhuge ye keren hui pengchang 拜過豬哥爺客人會捧場,” Ziyou shibao 自由時報, February 19, 2007.
2 One newspaper article reported that a particular brothel used to enshrine a statue of the prominent guardian deity Guandi to keep wandering ghosts and other unwanted spirits from entering the premises. But since Guandi does not approve of prostitution, employees had to keep moving his image so that he would not observe them at work. This was troublesome so they eventually enshrined Zhu Bajie instead. “Ye zhi nü bai Zhu Bajie zhao ke 夜之女拜豬八戒招客,” Pingguo ribao 蘋果日報, December 31, 2003.
3 Meir Shahar’s dissertation, “Fiction and Religion in the Early History of the Chinese God Jigong” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1992) was later revised and published as Crazy Ji: Chinese Religion and Popular Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1998). Robert Weller’s work on amoral cults was published in part III of his book Resistance, Chaos and Control in China: Taiping Rebels, Taiwanese Ghosts and Tiananmen (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994), and in his article “Capitalism, Community, and the Rise of Amoral Cults in Taiwan,” in Asian Visions of Authority: Religion and the Modern States of East and Southeast Asia, ed. Laurel Kendall et al. (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994), 141–164.
4 Meir Shahar and Robert P. Weller, eds., Unruly Gods: Divinity and Society in China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1996).
5 On the Wutong cult, see also the pioneering study by Ursula-Angelika Cedzich, “The Cult of the Wu-t’ung/Wu-hsien in History and Fiction: The Religious Roots of the Journey to the South,” in Ritual and Scripture in Chinese Popular Religions: Five Studies, ed. David Johnson (Berkeley: Institute for East Asian Studies, Publications of the Chinese Popular Culture Project, 1995), 137–218.
6 Richard von Glahn, The Sinister Way: The Divine and the Demonic in Chinese Religious Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 251.
7 Michel Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 256.
8 Xiaofei Kang, The Cult of the Fox (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006), 133. On animal deities in China, see also Li Wei-tsu, “On the Cult of the Four Sacred Animals (四大門) in the Neighbourhood of Peking,” Folklore Studies 7 (1948): 1–94.
9 Wu Cheng’en 吳承恩, Xiyou ji 西遊記 (Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 2007) (hereafter XYJ), chap. 8: 88 and chap. 19: 212–213; Anthony C. Yu, trans., The Journey to the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012) (hereafter JTTW), vol. I: 211, 378–379.
10 XYJ, chap. 19: 218; JTTW, vol. 1: 386. These dietary prohibitions should not be confused with the more traditional list of eight Buddhist precepts.
11 XYJ, chap. 100: 1190. JTTW, vol. IV: 381–382.
12 The scholarship on the history and interpretation of the Journey to the West is vast. Landmark works include Glen Dudbridge, The Hsi-Yu Chi: A Study of Antecedents to the Sixteenth-Century Chinese Novel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Anthony Yu’s “Introduction” in the first volume of his translation of the Journey to the West, 1–96); Isobe Akira, “Saiyūki” keiseishi no kenkyū 「西遊記」形成史の研究 (Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1993); and Nakano Miyoko 中野美代子, Saiyūki no himitsu: Tao to rentanjutsu no shinborizumu 西遊記の秘密: タオと煉丹術のシンボリズム (Tokyo: Fukutake shoten, 1984). Many relevant primary and secondary sources are collected in Cai Tieying 蔡鐵鷹, ed., Xiyou ji ziliao huibian 西遊記資料彙編 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2010).
13 For an annotated edition of the earliest textual account of the Journey to the West narrative, see Li Shiren 李時人 and Cai Jinghao 蔡鏡浩, Da Tang Sanzang qu jing shihua jiaozhu 大唐三藏取經詩話校注 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1997). Charles J. Wivell has translated this work into English in The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. Victor H. Mair (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 1181–1207.
14 For an exhaustive study of the stupa, see Yegŭrin Kŏnchʻuksa Samuso 예그린 건축사 사무소, Wŏn′gaksaji sipch′ŭng sŏkt′ap: silch′ŭk chosa pogosŏ 圓覺寺址十層石塔: 實測調查報告書 (Seoul: Munhwajae Kwalliguk, 1993).
15 The original text and translation is given in Dudbridge, The Hsi-Yu Chi, 177–188.
16 Isobe, Saiyūki keiseishi no kenkyū, 249–271.
17 For a discussion of pig sacrifice and pig demons in ancient China, see Eduard Erkes, “Das Schwein im alten China,” Monumenta Serica 7, no. 1/2 (1942): 68–84. My thanks to Philip Clart for informing me of this work. See also Ka Bo Tsang, “Pig Tales,” Archaeology 49, no. 2 (March/April 1996): 52–57.
18 Cai Tieying, ed., Xiyou ji ziliao, vol. 1: 391. The entire script is reproduced in the same volume on pages 348–426. Dudbridge discusses this source and gives a synopsis of its content in The Hsi-yu Chi, 76–89 and 193–200. The play was initially identified as the lost work of the thirteenth-century playwright Wu Changling 吳昌齡 but was later attributed to Yang Jingxian 楊景賢 (ca. fourteenth century). An analysis of the text by Howard Goldblatt, however, suggests that while the script likely contains material from the Yuan dynasty that could plausibly be traced to Yang Jingxian, the received edition also uses theatrical conventions that are characteristic of the Ming dynasty. The script thus appears to be a compilation of previously independent plays that were edited together into their present form sometime before the early seventeenth century. Howard Goldblatt, “The Hsi-yu chi Play: A Critical Look at its Discovery, Authorship, and Content,” Asian Pacific Quarterly 5, no. 1 (1973): 31–46. The portion of the play that centers on Zhu Bajie, the fourth act, circulated as a separate piece from as early as 1633. See “Er Lang shou Zhu Bajie 二郞收豬八戒,” in Xinjuan gujin ming ju liuzhi ji 新鐫古今名劇柳枝集, ed. Meng Chengshun 孟稱舜, in Xuxiu siku quanshu 續修四庫全書 1763 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1995), 398–407.
19 David Hall, Buddhist Goddess Marishiten: A Study of the Evolution and Impact of Her Cult on the Japanese Warrior (Leiden: Brill, 2014).
20 Fo shuo Molizhi tian tuoluoni zhou jing 佛說摩利支天陀羅尼呪經, in Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經 (hereafter abbreviated as T), 21, no. 1256, ed. Takakusu Junjirō and Watanabe Kaigyoku (Tokyo: Taishō issaikyō kankōkai, 1924–1932), 261b29–262a14.
21 Fo shuo da Molizhi pusa jing 佛說大摩里支菩薩經, T 21, no. 1257, 267a21–25.
22 Yuqing wushang lingbao ziran beidou bensheng zhenjing 玉清無上靈寶自然北斗本生真經, Zhengtong Daozang 正統道藏 (hereafter abbreviated as DZ), no. 45 (Taipei: Yiwenyin shuguan, 1962), 2a–b; and Taishang xuanling doumu dasheng yuanjun benming yansheng xinjing 太上玄靈斗姆大聖元君本命延生心經, DZ, no. 621, 2b.
23 Early inconsistencies in the writing of Zhu Bajie’s name suggest that he belonged to an oral tradition before his story was committed to writing. His name is variously written as 朱八戒, 豬八界, and 豬八戒.
24 Zhen’gao 真誥, DZ, no. 1016, j. 10, 10b. See Michel Strickmann’s translation of the spell in his “History, Anthropology, and Chinese Religion,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 40, no.1 (1980): 228. For a study of the cult of the Northern Emperor, see Christine Mollier, “La méthode de l’empereur du nord du mont Fengdu: Une tradition exorciste du taoïsme médiéval,” T’oung Pao, Second Series, 83, no. 4/5 (1997): 358. On the cult of Tianpeng, see also Li Yuanguo 李遠國, “Tianpeng, Tianpeng xinyang ji qi tuxiang de kaobian 天蓬、天蓬信仰及其圖像的考辨,” Zongjiaoxue yanjiu 宗教學研究 2 (2011): 1–7.
25 Daofa huiyuan 道法會元, DZ, no. 1120, j. 217, 5b–6a.
26 XYJ, chap. 29: 340, chap. 85: 1021; JTTW, vol. II: 52, vol. IV: 152.
27 There is a growing body of ethnographic work documenting the ritual functions of Journey to the West narratives in China. See for example Ye Mingsheng 葉明生, Fujian sheng Shaowu shi Dafugang xiang Heyuan cun de “tiao fan seng” yu “tiao ba man” 福建省邵武市大阜崗鄉河源村的“跳番僧”與“跳八蠻” (Taipei: Shi He Zheng minsu wenhua jijinhui, 1993); and Jiang Yan 姜燕, Xianghuo xi kao 香火戲考 (Yangzhou: Guangling shushe, 2007).
28 Mark Meulenbeld has argued convincingly that several Ming-dynasty novels function as “collections of local, sacred histories” that “synthesize the diversity of Chinese religions and present them as a unity.” See his Demonic Warfare: Daoism, Territorial Networks, and the History of a Ming Novel (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2015), 10.
29 In what may be the most (in)famous example, Zhu Bajie and his companions were channeled by the Boxer rebels at the turn of the twentieth century so that the pilgrims’ divine powers could be brought to bear against the Christian “demons” that were invading China. See Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Yuan Jindaishi Yanjiusuo 中國社會科學院近代史研究所 and Jindaishi Ziliao Bianjizu 近代史資料編輯組, eds., Yihetuan shiliao 義和團史料 (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1982), 505.
30 Cao Lin 曹琳, Jiangsu sheng Nantong shi Zhadong xiang Gongyuan cun Hanren de mianzai shenghui 江蘇省南通市閘東鄉公園村漢人的免災勝會, Minsu quyi congshu 42 (Taipei: Shi He Zheng minsu wenhua jijinhui, 1996), 106 and 245.
31 On Lü Dongbin, see Paul Katz, “Enlightened Alchemist or Immoral Immortal: The Growth of Lü Dongbin’s Cult in Late Imperial China,” in Shahar and Weller, eds., Unruly Gods, 70–104.
32 In her study of patron deities, Li Qiao gives the following list of gods venerated by prostitutes: The Goddess of the Brothel 勾欄女神, Lü Dongbin 呂洞賓, Perfected Immortal Iron Bridge 鐵板橋真人仙師, Five Great Immortals 五大仙, Golden General 金將軍, Guanyin 觀音, Giving Spirit 施神, Pissing Grandpa 撒尿老爺, Brothel Earth God 勾欄土地, Great Lord who Teaches Musicians and Singers 教坊大王, The Emissary of the Mist and Flowers 煙花使者, Immortal Maiden of Cosmetics 脂粉仙娘, White Lady 白娘子, Zhu Bajie 豬八戒, Fox Immortal 狐仙, and Gold Mother Liu 劉赤金母. Li Qiao李喬, Zhongguo hangye shen, vol. 2 中國行業神 (下卷) (Taipei: Yunlong, 1996), 183–194.
33 Justus Doolittle, Social Life of the Chinese: With Some Account of Their Religious, Governmental, Educational and Business Customs and Opinions; with Special but Not Exclusive Reference to Fuhchau (New York: Harper and Bros, 1867), 821.
34 Gail Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 101.
35 The presence of Zhu Bajie in the brothels of Singapore is described in Xu Zhenyi 許振義, “Zai Xinjiapo, Tianpeng Yuanshuai (jiu shi Zhu Bajie la) shi hongdengqu de shouhu shen 在新加坡，天蓬元帥（就是豬八戒啦）是紅燈區的守護神,” Zhongzhi wang 眾知網, December 21, 2016, accessed February 13, 2017, http://twnews.siliconeoil.cn/zhongzhi/content-266298.html.
36 Shuishou ye 水手爺 (Father Sailor) is also known by the homophonous name of Shuishou ye 水守爺 (Father Water Guardian) and Shoushou ye 狩狩爺 (Father Hunter).
37 The earliest sources for this temple report that the jar was placed before an image of the Buddha. Liu Jiamou 劉家謀 (1814–1853), “Hai yin shi 海音詩,” in Taiwan xianxian ji 台灣先賢集, vol. 3 (Taipei: Zhonghua, 1971), 1261. Later sources claim that the jar was associated with Father Sailor. At the current incarnation of the temple, rebuilt in 1956, the jar of vinegar is kept before the deity Subao si 速報司. See Zheng Daocong 鄭道聰, Wenhua jiequ daolan: bashiliu nian du quanguo wenyi ji 文化街區導覽: 八十六年度全國文藝季 (Tainan: Tainan shili wenhua zhongxin, 1997), 17.
38 Lian Heng 連橫, Ya yan 雅言 (Taipei: Taiwan yinhang, 1963), 37. 鴇兒每夕必焚香而祝曰：『水手爺，腳蹺蹺、面繚繚，保庇大豬來進稠。來空空、去喁喁，腰斗舉阮㩚，暗路著敢行。朋友勸忽聽、父母罵忽驚，某囝加講食撲駢』. Translation tentative.
39 See Ke Ruiming 柯瑞明, Taiwan fengyue 臺灣風月 (Taipei: Zili wanbao, 1993), 107; and Chang Pang-Yen 張邦彥, “Taiwan zhu de shehui wenhua yihan 台灣豬的社會文化意涵” (MA thesis, Taiwan Shifan Daxue, 2011), 198–202.
40 Zhang Wenhuan 張文環, “Geitan no ie 芸妲の家,” in “Gaichi” no Nihongo bungakusen 「外地」の日本語文学 vol. 1, ed. Kurokawa Sō 黒川創 (Tokyo: Shinjuku Shobō, 1996), 138.
41 See also the photograph reproduced in Ke Ruiming, Taiwan fengyue, 109.
42 This altar, located in a side hall, is dedicated to the wife of the City God. Its array of male and female deities known to protect women is particularly popular with female devotees. Other City God temples in Taiwan also enshrine Zhu Bajie. In a brief notice in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch, Keith Stevens reproduced a photograph of a statue of Zhu Bajie kept in the City God Temple in the Taiwanese city of Jiayi. “Patron Saint of Prostitutes: Zhu Bajie,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch 40 (2000): 195–196.
43 A similar statue, in the collection of Academia Sinica’s Ethnology Institute, was collected in 1967. Academia Sinica Digital Resources, “Tianpeng yuanshuai 天篷元帥,” obj. 3580, http://digimeta.iis.sinica.edu.tw, accessed July 9, 2018.
44 One exception to the asexual nature of this group of icons is an undated statue in the collection of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. The icon depicts a figure with a black pig head and a pink human body. Its robe is open to reveal a bare chest and what appear to be two swollen testicles emerging from its pants. This may be a reference to boar studs, whose testicles swell to twice their normal size prior to mating. Zhongguo Wenhua Ziliao Ku 中國文化資料庫, “Zhu Bajie 豬八戒,” obj. 97853, http://nrch.culture.tw, accessed July 9, 2018.
45 The Li 李 family, who own Longshan Foju 龍山佛具, a store selling Buddhist paraphernalia near Longshan Temple in Taipei, claim to have created this iconographic form specifically for sex workers in their neighborhood. “Foxiang shijia: Longshan foju dian 佛像世家龙山佛具店,” Mingri fengshang 明日風尚 6 (2010), 54–55.
46 Sun Yingzhe 孫英哲, “Zhu Bajie shenxiang wu ci zao qie 豬八戒神像五次遭竊, “Pingguo ribao蘋果日報 February 10, 2004, accessed July 9, 2018, http://www.appledaily.com.tw/appledaily/article/headline/20040210/704203/.
47 Hua Mengjing 花孟璟, “Si changliao weizhuang shentan bai Zhu Bajie lan Zhuge 私娼寮偽裝神壇拜豬八戒攬豬哥,” Ziyou shibao自由時報, May 28, 2015.
48 Matthew H. Sommer, Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), chap. 7.
49 For an overview of prostitution in Taiwan, see Mei-Hua Chen, “Selling Bodies/Selling Pleasure: The Social Organization of Sex Work in Taiwan,” in International Approaches to Prostitution: Law and Policy in Europe and Asia, ed. Geetanjali Gangoli and Nicole Westmarland (Bristol: Policy Press, 2006), 165–184.
50 An exception was made for government-sanctioned brothels established to serve Taiwan’s military personnel, a system known as “Military Paradise” (junzhong leyuan 軍中樂園). Hans Tao-Ming Huang, “State Power, Prostitution and Sexual Order in Taiwan: Towards a Genealogical Critique of ‘Virtuous Custom’,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 5, no. 2 (2004): 240.
51 Chen, “Selling Bodies/Selling Pleasure,” 169. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, many of these sex tourists were American G.I.s on “rest and relaxation” leave from Vietnam. Huang, “State Power, Prostitution and Sexual Order in Taiwan,” 243.
52 “Quan Tai 11 gong changguan ke yuan di yingye 全台11公娼館 可原地營業,” Pingguo ribao, July 15, 2011, accessed July 9, 2018, http://www.appledaily.com.tw/appledaily/article/headline/20110715/33529810/. At least one of these legal brothels, “Heavenly Pleasure” (Tiantian le 天天樂) in the city of Taoyuan, maintains a shrine to Zhu Bajie.
53 Chen, “Selling Bodies/Selling Pleasure,” 177–179.
54 Dai tian fu Shengming gong guanli weiyuanhui 代天府聖明宮管理委員會, ed., Shengming gong yange jianjie 聖明宮沿革簡介 (Private publication, 2000), 14–15.
55 Von Glahn, The Sinister Way, 182–184.
56 Chien Yu, “Three Types of Chinese Deities – Stone, Tree, and Land” (Ph.D. diss., Lancaster University, 1997), 217–218.
57 Sawada Mizuho discusses a tree shrine to Sun Wukong at a City God temple in Guangdong province. Sawada Mizuho 澤田瑞穗, “Songokū shin 孫悟空神,” Chūgoku no minkan shinkō 中国の民間信仰 (Tōkyō: Kōsakusha, 1982), 92. In Taiwan, a tree in the courtyard of Wanfu an 萬福庵 in the city of Tainan is also identified as a manifestation of Sun Wukong. Sun Wukong is venerated in tree form in Singapore by those hoping to obtain winning lottery numbers. See Adeline Chia, “‘Monkey Tree’ Draws Crowds,” The Straits Times, September 16, 2007, accessed July 9, 2018, http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne+News/Singapore/Story/A1Story20070918-25897.html.
58 “Tai baishen jianghu jiemi: dutu kang Hanxin seqingye qiu Bajie 台拜神江湖揭密: 賭徒扛韓信色情業求八戒,” Zhonguo xinwen wang 中國新聞網, August 17, 2010, accessed July 9, 2018, http://news.sina.com.cn/o/2010-08-17/143117977955s.shtml.
59 Weller, “Capitalism, Community, and the Rise of Amoral Cults in Taiwan,” 149.
60 On gambling deities in Taiwan, including Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie, see Hu Taili 胡台麗, “Shen, gui yu dutu: Dajia le duxi fanying zhi minsu xinyang 神、鬼與賭徒─大家樂賭戲反映之民俗信仰,” in Di’er jie guoji hanxue huiyi lunwen ji 第二屆國際漢學會議論文集 (Taipei: Academia Sinica, 1989), 401–424.
61 Liu Qinghuo 劉慶侯, “Zhuge fushen wangle shengun xingqin nü xinzhong 豬哥附身網路神棍性侵女信眾,” Taibei baodao 台北報導, March 5, 2011, accessed July 9, 2018, http://news.ltn.com.tw//news/society/paper/473631. Police reports related to Liu Changming’s arrest are reproduced in Huang Ying-Chieh 黃英捷, “Taiwan diqu jin shi nian lai liyong zongjiao de xing fanzui chutan 臺灣地區近十年來利用宗教的性犯罪初探” (MA thesis, Shude Keji Daxue 樹德科技大學, 2012), 47–51.
62 Huang, “Taiwan diqu jin shi nian lai liyong zongjiao de xing fanzui chutan,” 26–35.
63 See Li Jianmin 李建民, “‘Furen meidao’ kao: chuantong jiating de chongtu yu huajie fangshu⟪婦人媚道⟫考: 傳統家庭的衝突與化解方術,” Xinshixue 新史學 7, no. 4 (1996): 1–30; and Lin Fu-shih, “The Image and Status of Shamans in Ancient China,” in Early Chinese Religion, Part One: Shang through Han (1250 BC–220 AD) vol. 1, ed. John Lagerwey and Marc Kalinowski (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 397–458.
64 Donald Harper, “Ancient and Medieval Chinese Recipes for Aphrodisiacs and Philters,” Asian Medicine 1, no. 1 (2005): 91–100.
65 An historical overview and analysis of this material is provided in Dominic Steavu, “Buddhism, Medicine, and the Affairs of the Heart: Potency Therapy (Vājīkarana) and the Reappraisal of Aphrodisiacs and Love Philters in Medieval Chinese Sources,” East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 45 (2017): 9–48.
66 Jui-shan Ch’ang, “Scripting Extra-Marital Affairs: Marital Mores, Gender Politics, and Infidelity in Taiwan,” Modern China 25, no. 1 (1999): 69–99.
67 Hsiu-Hua Shen, “‘The First Taiwanese Wives’ and ‘the Chinese Mistresses’: The International Division of Labour in Familial and Intimate Relations Across the Taiwan Strait,” Global Networks 5, no. 4 (2005): 419–437.
68 The talismans in these books are very similar to those that were confiscated in the police raid of Liu Changming’s “temple.” In fact, the author of one such compendium, a self-proclaimed specialist in Zhu Bajie talismans and mudras named Lin Jicheng 林吉成, maintains a small temple just down the street from Liu’s former residence. For examples of Zhu Bajie talismans, spells, and instructions on their use, see Lin Jicheng’s Taohua ganqing hehe jingdian 桃花感情和合經典 (Taipei: Yulin chuban), 2009, 120, 271–292; and Zhuge Ling 諸葛綾 and Zixian 紫閒, Maoshan fujue 茅山符訣 (Tainan: Wenguo, 2012), 35, 57–61, 136.
69 This phenomenon appears to date to 2010, after the broadcast of the popular Taiwanese drama “Xili renqi” 犀利人妻 (The Fierce Wife), which portrayed a woman whose husband has an affair. The show apparently prompted nervous “other women” to seek divine protection and, after learning that there was no deity specializing in safeguarding the mistresses of married men, they adopted Zhu Bajie as their tutelary deity. See Zhang Chaoxin 張朝欣, “Zhuazhu qingfu xiaosan qiang bai Zhu Bajie 抓住情夫小三搶拜豬八戒,” Zhongguo shibao 中國時報, March 6, 2011.
70 On Thai amulets, see Justin McDaniel, The Lovelorn Ghost and the Magical Monk: Practicing Buddhism in Modern Thailand (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2011). The introduction of Zhu Bajie into the popular Buddhist pantheon of Thailand and the use of corpse oil and Thai deities like Brahma (a.k.a. the Four-faced Buddha) by some Taiwanese ritual “masters” point to unexplored links between the sub-cultures of lay magicians in Taiwan and Thailand.
71 If Zhu Bajie has a parallel in the Christian pantheon, it may be Santa Claus. The jolly old man in the red suit who brings presents to children on Christmas day also once served as a patron saint of prostitutes. Like popular representations of Zhu Bajie, elements of Saint Nick’s story have been selectively forgotten and elided in the stories, sermons, and songs that transmit cultural knowledge. On the development of the cult of Saint Nicholas, see Adam C. English, The Saint Who Would Be Santa Claus (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2012).
72 XYJ, chap. 67: 807; JTTW, vol. III: 253.