The Competition for Gifts: The Social Mechanism of the Revival of Popular Religion – An Ethnographic Study of Fu Village in Eastern Zhejiang

Rural eastern Zhejiang is near the Buddhist sacred site Mount Putuo, so orthodox Buddhism has influenced its popular religion. Most statues of divinities in various local temples are bodhisattvas. But they also have other deities, such as Highest Elder Lord (Taishang Laojun), the God of Wealth (Caishen), the local deity Princess Shengshan (Shengshan niangniang), Judge Bao (Baogong), and even Chairman Mao. Villagers need to burn Buddha paper – yellow paper with signs of Buddhism – in everyday worship, yearly rituals of the four seasons, and ancestor worship.⁽¹⁾ As C. Fred Blake (2005) has said, paper money plays a pivotal role in the rituals of Chinese popular religion. With it, concrete existence and nonconcrete existence are able to communicate with each other. These rituals start with the lighting of candles. Burning incense symbolizes the establishment of connections between the worlds of yin and yang. To reinforce these connections, people offer sacrifices of food and then burn incense as gift, which symbolizes separation. Finally, fireworks mark the end of the ritual. During these rituals, the more elaborate the preparation of the paper money and other offerings, the more familiar the sacrificers are with the imagined subjects.

In the folk culture in rural eastern Zhejiang, numinous power must be conferred on Buddha paper through scripture chanting: only with the reciting of scriptural texts over Buddha paper and its burning to deities and ancestors can one get protection and blessings. Otherwise it is no different from ordinary paper. Because of this, scripture chanting is called “efficacy conferring.”⁽²⁾ While burning Buddha paper in front of statues of divinities, villagers pray and make vows to them. Buddha paper burned while making vows or praying is just a gift to deities. In the year that follows, the realization of these prayers (called “manifestation of efficacy”) is the deities’ repayment of their followers. One year’s vows and prayers are closely intertwined with those of the next year, all which are both repayment for the bestowals of deities and the sending of gifts to deities again. In this fashion, with the year as the interval, villagers’ sending and returning of gifts and the protection and blessings of deities form a continuous stream of gifts. Moreover, making vows, praying, and anticipating “manifestations of efficacy” in yearly intervals constitute a basic pattern of village religious life.

For villagers asking for the protection and blessing of deities, producing and obtaining numinous gifts is the core of their daily religious activity. According to the testimony of some older people in Fu village, the production of Buddha paper was relatively simple during the collective era. Scripture chanting to “confer efficacy” (fuling) on Buddha paper took place in households. Older people would beat wooden fish and repeatedly chant “Amitābha” in free time to accomplish “efficacy conferring.” Consecrated Buddha paper was only for oneself. It is a widespread practice for acquaintances and friends to send Buddha paper as gifts to one another, but this does not involve real money. On holidays, it is common for friends and relatives to borrow Buddha paper in cases of emergency. But if someone asks for real money for this, it will damage their reputation.

In the 1980s, popular religion in eastern Zhejiang revived. Scripture chanting slowly moved beyond the household. In the 1990s, the occasions, frequency, and amount of burning Buddha paper increased. The phenomenon of hiring people to recite the applicable scriptures appeared and expanded. Since 2000, Buddha paper that is consecrated (nianhao, literally “chanted”) has been available for sale. In addition to traditional Chinese-calendar and “red and white events” (hongbai xishi, referring to weddings and funerals, respectively), opening factories and shops, buying cars, and so on require the burning of Buddha paper. The types and prices of Buddha paper also increase with the level of sophistication of the Buddha chanting activities.⁽³⁾ The greater the number of participants, the longer the scripture chanting, and the harder the scriptures, the more efficacious the Buddha paper is believed to be and the higher its price. The types of Buddha paper are classified according to factors such as the number, age, surname, Chinese zodiac sign, and hour of labor of the chanters. Different Buddha papers also have different marks (Table 1).

With Buddha paper having become indispensable equipment in the daily life of rural eastern Zhejiang, more and more people are needed for scripture chanting, which is taking longer and longer. Hence Buddha masters (fotou), who convene, train, and organize older villagers to recite Buddhist scriptures, have emerged. Buddha masters are part of the “household-based ritual service providers” that Adam Chau (2010) discovered. They are local peasants doing popular religion part-time. They are not members of a religious group, and their role is close to that of mediums, who are in charge of communication between villagers and deities. Since the Buddha paper market arose, Buddha masters have also been in charge of contacting buyers of Buddha paper or scripture chanting, equivalent to managers of scripture-chanting teams. As an organizer, a Buddha master, besides having a certain leadership capacity, needs to live in a village and have wide social networks, in order to know the relevant information about the older villagers who do the scripture chanting, including their age, Chinese zodiac sign, spouse, and even personality. Only with this knowledge can they correctly convene people according to the types of Buddha paper and supervise the process of scripture chanting.⁽⁴⁾

The location of scripture chanting is not fixed. “Small Buddha” chanting, by fewer than ten people, often takes place at the homes of Buddha masters. “Buddha” chanting by more than ten people takes place in village temples. Chanters split the bills for such items as water, electricity, and space rental. There are wide spaces near the statues of divinities in village temples. Chanters can place chairs and tables here and sit in a circle. With the need for Buddha paper growing rapidly and the increase in large-scale Buddha activities customized for big bosses, Buddha masters have to not only make up any deficiency in the number of chanters but also break through the bottleneck of a lack of places for scripture chanting. This explains why some village temples have been erected in the idle fields of villages without the permission of land management authorities and, having been torn down, will be rebuilt soon.

Why do villagers in eastern Zhejiang, especially those who have made a fortune in the wave of the market economy, want to spend considerable money on Buddha paper? If we can call the behavior of consuming the result of the accumulation of labor to satisfy religious needs “faith consumption,” then what is the foundation of faith consumption? It is true that making up for spiritual deficiency, filling a spiritual void, a sense of defeat, and uncertainty are psychological effects that individual followers have when completing ritual behaviors. However, to villagers in eastern Zhejiang, engaging in such actions is something that they “must do” and “have to do.” Fu, the forty-four-year-old boss of a hardware factory, said:

We businessmen especially believe in luck. Factories need Buddha’s protection to do well. A shop needs to burn Buddha paper to have good business. Construction sites also need to burn Buddha paper in order to prevent accidents. In order for Buddha paper to be efficacious, sometimes [we] hire older ladies to come to recite [Buddhist scriptures]. Now it is common to hire someone to recite scriptures, which was promoted by some big bosses. I myself would pray every year no matter what. If the factory is doing well and production reaches a certain level, I will burn Thirty-Three-Day Buddha. Once vows have been made, you have to fulfill them. It is all up to your conscience. If you earn money, you certainly have to fulfill vows to deities, without question. When my dad was alive, he told me that money we earn from business is not all ours. You have to spend some. If you don’t, you can’t make more money.⁽⁵⁾

The interview with this middle-age business owner cannot help but remind us of the hau,⁽⁶⁾ which Marshall Sahlins (1972, ch. 4) described, Maori people, in addition to what they ate, allotted and dedicated a part of their prey to the god of the forest via priests so that the god would provide more prey the next year, part of which would also be used for sacrifice. The succession goes on like this and never ends. Yet what we want to stress here is not the profit dimension of human-deity exchange but rather the sense of obligation to return gifts in the process of gift exchange: Business is full of uncertainty, with opportunities that are dominated by some mysterious and invisible force. Only certain repayment will guarantee continuing enjoyment of such opportunities. If business does not turn out well, that is because the contribution has not been enough and people have not shown their sincerity. As for how much is enough, there is no set standard, and it fully depends on one’s conscience.⁽⁷⁾ To use the Fu villagers’ own words, “If the heart is sincere, god will reveal his power.”

More important, sending return gifts and sending gifts are one. If wishes are achieved or a pleasant surprise falls on one’s head, then one must send return gifts next year, which shows gratitude and is repayment for the blessings of deities after having prayed and made vows the previous time and for expecting continued good luck. So sending return gifts is also sending gifts, which ends the anticipation of the previous interval and automatically carries the obligation of sending return gifts in the next round. This gives historical continuity to the spreading gift exchange: once an ancestor in the family started this process of worship at some time in some place, and now the chain of sending return gifts and sending gifts can hardly be cut off. Even exterior political factors cannot remove it from private life. It is precisely because of this that the gift exchange with deities accumulates family memories of affection. The religious behavior of sending gifts and sending return gifts has evolved into an indispensable routine in family life.

When sending return gifts is associated with conscience and affection, it is permeated with moral implications. Ms. Wang, a middle-aged lady and a Buddha master of a villager team in Fu village, said:

It is a must to burn Buddha [paper] every year. [You] cannot stop [doing it] and hug the leg of a statue [baofojiao, a Chinese saying referring to worshiping deities on an ad hoc basis]. Not efficacious! Oh, you only worship Buddha when something comes up and then forget [to repay] once you receive the benefits. It’s not like that! It is like exchanging renqing [a gift, often in the form of cash, literally “human emotion”]. If you receive money but you are no longer in contact [with whoever sent the money], what kind of person is that? Not only will people think you are stingy and not a nice person, but they will also think that you have gotten into a money hole [zuanqianyan, a Chinese saying meaning “to be money grubbing”].⁽⁸⁾

I well remember that when answering the question “Why would you buy Buddha paper to fulfill vows, since your wishes have been fulfilled?,” the interviewee’s face reddened with indignation and her eyes filled with reproach. She just stood there, suggesting “Why don’t you understand this?”⁽⁹⁾ In the eyes of many followers of popular religion like her, sending return gifts to deities is just a type of virtue, which is also full of strong affection. It is the same as having to send return gifts in “exchanging renqing,” which is prior to rational reasoning and interest calculation and is a basic principle of a person being a person. As long as a part of your prayers is fulfilled, sending return gifts is an obligation. It reflects one’s level of morality and basic credit as a person. If you received benefits but did not repay, this would be regarded as demeaning and immoral behavior, and your neighbors would look down on you. Here moral obligation follows acquisition of fortune. Success in business is not a result of just personal efforts. It also relies on the blessing of deities. Therefore the return gifts to deities are periodical reciprocal futures. The return circle with the year as the interval unit generates a person’s credit and dignity. Without it, if you made a fortune, people would associate you with negative tags such as “the demeaned one being successful” (xiaoren dezhi, literally “little man finally grabs his chance”), “only scheming for profit,” “not keeping one’s word,” “cheapskate,” and “money grubber.”

On the other hand, deities also have the obligation to send return gifts. If for a long time they could not grant their followers’ prayers, incense offerings (xianghuo, literally “incense fire,” a metaphor suggested by the number of visitors to temples) to them would wane, and they would even be discarded and forgotten. Conversely, if deities enshrined in country fields are especially efficacious, people might promote them to temples. This situation does not exist only in rural eastern Zhejiang; it also appears in other regions where Chinese live. In central Shannxi, for instance, a Dragon King who was not efficacious in traditional village rainmaking ceremonies was whipped by the sacrificers. In the early history of the Monga district in Taipei, shrines of some families eventually developed into temples because of the efficacy of their deities.⁽¹⁰⁾ So deities whom people believe in must also send return gifts, because deities who do not repay are not “efficacious” and deities who are not “efficacious” are not real gods. Just as Yue Yongyi has said, “Deities or immortals are not nonexistent in Chinese life. They are not without power. They are on high above, but not above everything else. They can be manipulated because ‘efficacy is conferred by humans’” (2008, 117). As a subject of worship, the deity does not exist in a world of immortals that is separated from this world and that overrides ordinary people. It is never separate from the everyday life of people. In the reciprocal relationship of human and deity, the deity is subject to humans.

In villages of eastern Zhejiang, the better a villager’s economic condition, the more advanced Buddha paper they will use, and the higher its cost will be. We call this “faith consumption stratification.” To take Fu village as an example (Table 2):

In Fu village’s economic stratification structure, upper-class families have industry and commerce as the main sources of income. Their number is the least, but they consume large quantities and advanced types of Buddha paper, for instance Golden Dragon Buddha and Thirty-Three-Day Buddha. Upper-middle-class families usually own small hardware workshops or have big agricultural contracts. Their expenditures on faith consumption are relatively lower than those of private enterprise owners. Midlevel Buddha paper like Ten-Person, Six-Hundred-Year-Old Buddha is a common type they often use. Villagers in the middle class are the majority population in the village and usually work at nearby factories. They buy less and cheaper Buddha paper than the rich families.

The upper and upper-middle classes in the village are the fixed-demand side in faith consumption. Even older members of their families will not sacrifice their free time to recite Buddha scriptures themselves, because it is a tiring and boring thing to do. Some of these families invite older people from other, lower-class families in the village to their houses to recite Buddha scriptures, though the cost is higher than the direct purchase of Buddha paper. Plus, they have to prepare tea and refreshments and take care of utility bills, such as for water and electricity.

Lower-class and some middle-class families in the village correspondingly play the role of supplier. Along with the rapid growth of Buddha paper demand, a scripture-chanting group appeared, mainly composed of middle-age and older villagers, especially older females whose family economic condition was not good. Many scripture chanters receive an allowance from the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee program (wubaohu). They start work at 3 am, finish at 4 pm, and have a two-hour break. The intensity of this labor is relatively high, and they have to be vegetarian. The reason that these women are willing to do such hard work is that older people have few job opportunities and thus no source of income. Moreover, Buddha paper has become a daily supply. If you do not buy it, you have to produce it yourself. Funerals, for instance, need a lot of Buddha paper, so older people often save for their own funerals some of the Buddha paper that they have consecrated. Also, they can earn money from chanting scriptures. In these ways they can decrease the burden on their sons and daughters and therefore relieve intergenerational tension.

Social competition among different classes for intimacy with deities is a notable dimension of this human-deity gift exchange. On the other hand, this activity also redistributes wealth among different social classes through the production of gifts and the confirmation of social status.

As mentioned earlier, the production of gifts – that is, the scripture-chanting ritual to “confer efficacy” (fuling) on Buddha paper – is done by older people convened by Buddha masters, household specialists living in villages. These people are from the middle and lower classes of the villages. Each of the four areas in Fu village that we investigated has a dozen Buddha masters. They are similar to feng shui masters and fortune-tellers. With their units, they all provide spiritual medium services and receive corresponding rewards. Because local faith consumption has expanded so rapidly, household religious specialists are no longer able to provide on-the-spot ritual services. Driven by huge demand, they have convened older villagers to form scripture-chanting groups. Villagers can not only hire people to come to their homes and chant scriptures but also buy Buddha paper that has already been “conferred efficacy”: Buddha paper has thus become the equivalent of a religious service – scripture chanting. The labor of chanters “accumulates” in Buddha paper but is separated from the ritual spot temporally and physically.

Why are workers in gift production – that is, recipients of income from scripture chanting – older people from middle- and lower-class families in the villages? Several things account for this. First, income from scripture chanting does not accord with the intensity of this labor. A full-time chanter works 8–9 hours per day and has an average monthly income of two thousand yuan, which is a good amount of money for those who are free at home. This work has no attraction for young or middle-age adults, however. Chanting scriptures is exceptionally hard work. One must not only be loud and clear but also strictly follow the rules. During the work, one cannot chat or make jokes or violate various taboos.⁽¹²⁾ Otherwise, the efficacy of the Buddha paper will be affected. For this reason, even if older people from wealthy families are willing to do it, their sons and daughters do not want them to join the ranks of scripture chanters. After all, that would mean that acquaintances in their village would supervise their aged parents or even scold them for violating the rules. Not only is this not necessary for those who have gotten rich, but they also ought not to do it.

Second, there are status differences in the work of scripture chanting. From the perspectives of ordinary villagers and chanters, the subject of deities’ protection is not those who chant scriptures. The older people who recite “Namo Amitābha” are praying for other people and working for money. Only those who buy gifts and burn them before statues of divinities are really worshiping deities. The older lady Ms. Li, who had been chanting scriptures in the group Nine-Person, Eighteen-Surname Buddha for ten years when we met her, said, “We have a saying: ‘Reciting scriptures does not mean believing in deities. Those who buy Buddha [paper] believe in deities.’ No one would give jobs to old ladies. They came to chant scriptures just to earn a little money. Plus, it is also convenient for them to take care of [the] kids [of their sons and daughters who work elsewhere]. Only those who spend money buying Buddha [paper] truly believe in deities. The more businesses and factories they have, the more they believe. If they no longer believe, to whom will we sell those Buddha papers?”⁽¹³⁾

The person whom deities protect and bless is the sender, but not the producer, of a gift. This conception legitimizes the wealthy class’s purchase of more Buddha paper and the poor’s labor to earn income through scripture chanting. Scripture chanting is therefore considered part of Buddha paper production. In the process of its manufacture, workers are separated from the product. To consume Buddha paper is to buy the labor of chanters. Scripture-chanting groups serve not deities but rather those bosses who spent money on faith consumption. Older people who have gone to chant scriptures in the homes of bosses could not have gotten closer to deities even if they had chanted themselves hoarse. They sell their labor to rich people in their village to make a living. This relationship contains a strong contrast. The experience of older chanters is just like that of servants hired by landlords before 1949. Because their source of income is extremely limited, they have to rely on these bosses to some extent. When they happily receive wages from bosses, they also accept a status difference between their families and the wealthy families in the village.

Finally, there is an affectional concern when Buddha masters invite people to chant Buddhist scriptures, which reflects the binding force of society itself. The vigorous growth in demand for Buddha paper has generated a local market for ritual services. In this business of gifts, Buddha masters, as mediums between the supply and demand sides, are also points of conjunction between the rich and the poor in the village social network. The relationships of Buddha masters and the members of their scripture-chanting groups are not fixed. The masters decide the number and the people selected, according to the requirements of the Buddha paper. The most important element of these decisions is the family economic condition of the older people in the group, in addition to their health and temperament. Giving an opportunity of income to those familiar disadvantaged older people whom they see on a daily basis is an affection instinct of Buddha masters, who live in the same village. This is entirely different from charity. Rather, it allows older people in the village’s lower class to earn income with dignity.⁽¹⁴⁾ Those bosses who ask Buddha masters to convene people for Buddhist activities at their homes urge them to follow the convention of “helping for as long as possible.”⁽¹⁵⁾ As repayment, those who do good deeds (the bosses) receive acknowledgement of their dominant status from other villagers. This acknowledgement can even earn them large numbers of ballots in village elections.

The circulation of gifts is another important part of the supply of gifts for worshiping deities. In rural eastern Zhejiang, Buddha paper mainly circulates via networks of acquaintance within villages, the reason for which is to deal with the falsification of Buddha paper, by relying on trust among acquaintances. To villagers, the marks on Buddha paper are evidence of whether a bundle of raw yellow paper has gone through the “efficacy conferring” of scripture-chanting ceremonies. But if someone does not care about morality and conscience and prints those marks on Buddha paper without having it go through the scripture-chanting ceremonies, villagers will have no way to tell. The usual way to deal with such immoral behavior is to buy from familiar Buddha masters or older people who do scripture chanting. Of course, a better way is to invite people to recite scriptures at one’s own home, but in that case the expenditure is much higher, and no ordinary people can afford it.

In a network of friends and relatives where people are highly familiar with one another’s characters and temperaments, once a cheating provider was seen through, he would suffer a huge loss of affection. Not only would a channel of profit close to him, but he would also be blamed by public opinion and excluded from other contacts for a long time. For this reason, local Buddha paper trades tend to occur within village communities. Only very few villagers buy mass-produced and commercialized Buddha paper from temples. Meanwhile, villagers are willing to pay more to familiar older people for Buddha paper because buying it is not purely a commodity exchange. This activity contains elements of familial love and friendship and hidden shades of help and relief. It is a decent way to take care of older people.

The producers of Buddha paper are mainly disadvantaged older villagers. In contrast, the consumers are mainly rich and young people in the village. They buy Buddha paper only from older people in their own family or of their village, as gifts in the worship of deities, out of trust and affection. So the circulation of gifts in the worship of deities involves, on the one hand, villagers using their free time to produce and sell Buddha paper. On the other hand, in this process wealth flows to the disadvantaged and old-age groups in the village through networks of acquaintance, and excessive resources of rich families are redistributed among classes and families in the village. Through such resource-redistribution “destratification” (Gao Wanqin 2015), village society achieves internal integration to some extent, countering the trend of social differentiation.

In popular religion in rural China, people send gifts to deities to establish personalized, concrete human-deity relationships. They “pray to whoever is efficacious,” sending gifts to many deities, “fulfill whatever promises they have made” (Lin 2007, 7) to deities, and take the realization of their prayers as “manifestations of efficacy” of deities. For such protection and bestowals of deities, they must fulfill vows to thank these deities, called “gifts in turn.” In routinized local religion, sending gifts and sending return gifts have become one, flawlessly and with no way to separate them. Annual intervals link religious activities in different generations and different circumstances, forming an uninterrupted chain of sending gifts and sending return gifts and making vows and fulfilling prayers. Sending return gifts reflects one’s credit and integrity. Receiving the blessing of deities also means owing a debt to those deities. Intervals, anticipation, conscience, and affection in the reciprocity between humans and deities create the moral ground of local popular religion.

However, religious continuity created by the obligation to send return gifts is not enough to explain the flourishing of rural popular religion.

From the cases examined in this article, it appears that economic growth, social stratification, and at least the remains of an acquaintance society are also necessary conditions of this popular religion. Village society in eastern Zhejiang is experiencing drastic economic stratification and urbanization. Villagers of different classes are also seeking confirmation of their social status while trying to avoid risks and gain opportunities. Top-level families of these villages, who are the most sensitive to risk, have devoted a lot of resources to the faith consumption of popular religion in this social transition period, which has turned into a potlatch-style performance of economic power and a ritual of confirmation of economic stratification in front of deities. Through such displays, villagers are divided into different groups, of “having face” (you mianzi) or “having no face” (mei mianzi) and “having big face” (mianzi da) or “having small face” (mianzi xiao). Because of their different levels of devotion to deities, the people in these villages have different levels of intimacy with deities and hence different levels of power and blessings bestowed by deities. What is hiding behind faith consumption is a complicated symbolic mechanism. Social classes, with popular religion as the medium, have forged new power relations in the mundane world through face competition before deities. It is precisely intense competition over the construction of intimacy with deities that has become the essential driving force of the expansion of this popular religion. Such force is constantly produced in the stratification of the rural social structure and reproduced in the competition for and alternation of power.

In holistically examining human-deity gift exchange in rural eastern Zhejiang, it is not difficult to see two endless successions in the process: first, “efficacious power”⁽¹⁶⁾ is able to circulate in this world and the divine world through the circle of efficacy conferred by mediums – who are manifestations of efficacy – conferring efficacy again…; second, excessive wealth circulates between the rich and the poor in village through the circle of rich people buying Buddha paper, poor people chanting Buddhist scriptures, rich people continuing to buy Buddha paper… The efficacious power of gifts reaches deities in the wreathing smoke of burning paper money and returns to villages in the loud sound of reading in daily religious activities. Many villagers pray to deities to ask for wealth. Deities’ “manifestation of efficacy” means the concentration of wealth in the hands of a small number of people, making them rich. In contrast to “conferring efficacy,” rich people, when buying the “efficacious power” of gifts, redistribute excessive wealth to disadvantaged groups in the village through the network of acquaintance, which is permeated with affection and trust. In this circle, villagers initiate personal actions because of practical appeals to pray for blessings and the fending off of misfortune. However, with gifts to worship deities as media, society has realized wealth redistribution and resource flow between the rich and the poor. The results of the entire circle are that middle- and lower-class families have gained income to improve their livelihoods and that the dominant position of upper-class families is acknowledged because of their generous devotion.

Here the advantage of the gift paradigm’s holistic view emerges. In the cases in this article, if we were to start with the composition of the groups that practice popular religious activities and the organization of rituals, following traditional approaches of the sociology of religion, the provider of ritual services would be the focus of attention and we would assume that the villagers were reinforcing the organization of popular religion. As a matter of fact, however, these groups are not Christian fellowships or sects. They are more like collective collaborative enterprises, coordinated by an interest mechanism. Their meetings are not held so that members can experience doctrines or holy sentiments. Various scripture-chanting groups have no systematic connections. Rather than saying that they are religious organizations, it is better to say that they are economic organizations. Only their production and selling process are special, both of which are based on the popular beliefs, moral system, and ethical concepts of certain regions. If the perspective of the function of religion or the psychological motives and spiritual activities in religious behaviors were to guide our approach, then the focus of our research would be those who demand popular religion and we would therefore notice the actuality, utility, and privatization of popular religion. Also, the centrifugal tendency of the community is increasing and the public nature of popular religion is declining (He Qianqian and Gui 2015). However, in the holistic view of the gift paradigm, we see a coordination mechanism behind the circle of “efficacy.” Individualized and privatized behaviors of worshiping deities maintain the cohesion of the village via this subtle mechanism. The coordination among them not only is embodied in wealth redistribution but also reinforces the concepts, morality, and affection that villagers share.

In their writings, Marcel Mauss and Pierre Bourdieu have entirely different approaches to the reading of gift exchange. The former is concerned with how society continues and the construction of solidarity ties. The latter is interested in the symbolic operation of power – that is, how capital is turned into symbolic capital and “legitimized” in gift exchange. For this reason, Bourdieu is especially concerned about the “strategy of action” in intervals of gift exchange (2003, 152). Liu Yonghua (2010) calls these two [men’s approaches] the “society paradigm” and the “power paradigm.”⁽¹⁷⁾

The interesting thing about the human-deity gift exchange in rural eastern Zhejiang that this article presents is that it has both competition of symbolic capital over intimacy with deities, through faith consumption, and social integration achieved by wealth redistribution among classes, via the production and circulation of gifts and via status confirmation. Power competition and social solidarity – these two mechanisms work together in the daily practice of Chinese popular religion and shape an arena of difference sequences⁽¹⁸⁾ of village power and status that centers on deities. Villagers understand and accept their positions in the relational sequence of this symbolic order⁽¹⁹⁾ and strive to keep the sequence balanced. If we do not understand the relationship of gift exchange and power, it is very difficult to interpret the internal mechanism responsible for the flourishing of popular religious activities in rural eastern Zhejiang. Human-deity exchange contains a power order and reproduces village social relations. What is behind gift competition is the creation of symbolic capital and status identity. The limitation of power analysis, however, is that its focus on competition strategy overshadows moral concepts and the affectional experiences of the actors in the process of exchange, which are precisely what separate gift exchange from material exchange. Also because of these factors, gift competition in these villages has led only to differences in the degree of intimacy in village circles, not to the breakdown of modern society. Power is acknowledged not just because of concern or interest but rather because of the conscience and morality that hide behind benefit exchange. In other words, morality justifies power. However, strategy alone cannot explain the operations of power and solidarity in villages.