Miao, Lineage and Community

Miao, that can be interpreted as temple in English, can be seen everywhere in China, particularly in Han habitations, which has existed for a long time to serve gods or ghosts that Chinese people worship. Furthermore, some identified as culture heritage are run by authorities, but more run by lineage (a group of people sharing one surname) or community (a flock of people living in a particular area) as well as individuals. What must be emphasized is, the Miao here is not only a place to demonstrate one’s religion, but also an object created by humans as well as the object run by them as mentioned above, which means that there should be real relationships in it, for involving various aspects such as different persons or different things. And here we mainly pay attention to the relationships among the Miao, the lineage and the community. To be more specific, what we desire to explore is how Chinese people create Miao and how to run it? What roles the Miao play part in the real society rather in spiritual world? To discuss these questions, I will look for some cases from several researches or my own fieldwork, and more comparison will be necessary here.