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The Lady of Linshui: A Chinese Female Cult Brigitte Baptandier, trans. Kristin Ingrid Fryklund, Standford: Stanford University Press, 2008, 392 Pages
Lijun YUAN
The Lady of Linshui: A Chinese Female Cultis an amazing book written by Brigitte Baptandier, a French anthropologist and investigative scholar who analyzes the legend of a historical woman, Chen Jinggu (767-790). Chen Jinggu was canonized as a Just Lady in the Song Dynasty around 1250. According to the legend, Chen Jinggu fought an evil demon in mortal combat in which they both died. After her death, she became the divine protector of women and children.
The Lady of Linshui was originally published in French in 1988 under the title La Dame-du-bord-de-l'eau and translated by Kristin Ingrid Fryklund in 2008, but Baptandier rewrote the work, chapter by chapter and verified the accuracy of the English version: 'It is the same work, transformed from inside out"(xii).The book is based on the Chinese text, "Linshui Pingyao Zhuan." It analyzes the legends of the goddess Chen Jinggu through "Linshui Pingyao Zhuan," and explores the contemporary beliefs and practices in Taiwan and Fujian in mainland China, where the cult of the Lady of Linshui began and remains vital even today.
Brigitte Baptandier spent years examining the phenomenon of this female cult through the original eleventh century Chinese texts and her work provides new insight into Chinese representations of the feminine and the role of women in popular religion. The book is particularly important because of its unique focus on feminine divinity and the female divine community. Baptandier's profound and comprehensive understanding and unique analysis of this female cult make a significant contribution to the available sources for Chinese studies, folk culture, and gender studies. Several features of her analysis of the Chen Jinggu's cult deserve particular attention and appreciation.
First, the author obviously takes a different approach from others who study Chinese religious history such as Daoism and Buddhism. According to her, she "wanted to find a way to combine research on the texts with work on the ground" (2). Baptandier has a clear gender consciousness in her approach She notes that in the performance of the traditional ritual, which is active today, there is a disappearance of today's parity between men and women, due...