Tu'er Shen

Tu'er Shen (Chinese: 兔兒神, The Leveret Spirit) or Tu Shen (Chinese: 兔神, The Rabbit God), is a Chinese deity who manages love and sex between homosexual people. His name literally means "rabbit deity". His adherents refer to him as Ta Yeh (Chinese: 大爺, The Master).[1]

In a folk tale from 17th century Fujian, a soldier is in love with a provincial official, and spies on him to see him naked. The official has the soldier tortured and killed, but he returns from the dead in the form of a leveret (a rabbit in its first year) in the dream of a village elder. The leveret demands that local men build a temple to him where they can burn incense in the interest of "affairs of men". The story ends:

According to the customs of Fujian province, it is acceptable for a man and boy to form a bond [qi] and to speak to each other as if to brothers. Hearing the villager relate the dream, the other villagers strove to contribute money to erect the temple. They kept silent about this secret vow, which they quickly and eagerly fulfilled. Others begged to know their reason for building the temple, but they did not find out. They all went there to pray.[2]

Legends

According to What the Master Would Not Discuss (Chinese: 子不語), written by Yuan Mei (Chinese: 袁枚) during the Qing dynasty, Tu'er Shen was a man named Hu Tianbao (胡天保) who fell in love with a very handsome imperial inspector of Fujian Province. One day he was caught peeping on the inspector through a bathroom wall, at which point he confessed his reluctant affections for the other man. The imperial inspector had Hu Tianbao sentenced to death by beating. One month after Hu Tianbao's death, he appeared to a man from his hometown in a dream, claiming that since his crime was one of love, the underworld officials decided to right the injustice by appointing him the god and safeguarder of homosexual affections.[3]

After his dream the man erected a shrine to Hu Tianbao, which became very popular in Fujian, so much so that in late Qing times, the cult of Hu Tianbao was targeted for extermination by the Qing government.

The deity can be seen as an alternative to Yue Lao, the matchmaker god, for heterosexual relations.

Cults

A slang term for homosexuals in late imperial China was "rabbits"[4] which is why Hu Tianbao is referred to as the rabbit deity, though in fact he has nothing to do with rabbits and should not be confused with Tu'er Ye, the rabbit on the moon.

Government suppression

Images of Hu Tianbao show him in an embrace with another man. The sense that the villagers must keep the reason for the temple secret in the story may relate to pressure from the central Chinese authorities to abandon the practice. Qing dynasty official Zhu Gui (1731-1807), a grain tax circuit intendant of Fujian in 1765, strove to standardize the morality of the people with a "Prohibition of Licentious Cults". One cult which he found particularly troublesome was the cult of Hu Tianbao. As he reports,

The image is of two men embracing one another; the face of one is somewhat hoary with age, the other tender and pale. [Their temple] is commonly called the small official temple. All those debauched and shameless rascals who on seeing youths or young men desire to have illicit intercourse with them pray for assistance from the plaster idol. Then they make plans to entice and obtain the objects of their desire. This is known as the secret assistance of Hu Tianbao. Afterwards they smear the idol's mouth with pork intestine and sugar in thanks.[5]

Modern interpretations

Although Tu'er Shen is popularly revered by some temples, some Taoist schools may have considered homosexuality as sexual misconduct through history, probably deeming it is outside marriage.[6] However, many Taoism scriptures do not mention anything against same-gender relations, mostly maintaining neutrality.[7]

The story may be an attempt to mythologize a system of male marriages in Fujian attested to by the scholar-bureaucrat Shen Defu and the writer Li Yu. The older man in the union would play the masculine role as a qixiong or "adoptive older brother", paying a "bride price" to the family of the younger man- it was said virgins fetched higher prices- who became the qidi, or "adoptive younger brother". Li Yu described the ceremony, "They do not skip the three cups of tea or the six wedding rituals- it is just like a proper marriage with a formal wedding."[8] The qidi then moved into the household of the qixiong, where he would be completely dependent on him, be treated as a son-in-law by the qixiongs parents, and possibly even help raise children adopted by the qixiong. These marriages could last as long as 20 years before both men were expected to marry women in order to procreate.[9]

Keith Stevens reports seeing images like these in Hokkien-speaking communities in Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.[10] Stevens refers to these images as 'brothers' or 'princes' and calls them Taibao (太保), which is probably a perversion of Tianbao. Stevens was usually told that the two figures in an embrace were brothers, and only in one temple in Fujian was he told that they were homosexuals.

The history of Hu Tianbao has been largely forgotten even by the temple keepers. However, there is a temple in Yonghe District, Taiwan that venerates Hu Tianbao in his traditional guise. The temple is known as the Hall of Martial Brilliance (威明堂).[11]

Revival
External video
Report by BBC News Chinese on the Tu'er Shen Temple in Taiwan, Youtube video

In 2006, a Taoist priest by the name of Lu Wei-ming founded a temple for Tu'er Shen in Yonghe District in the New Taipei City in Taiwan.[12] Roughly 9,000 gay pilgrims visit the temple each year praying to find a suitable partner.[13] The temple also performs a love ceremony for gay couples[14] at the world's only religious shrine for homosexuals.[15] As of 2020, the temple remains the only extant shrine to the deity.

Depiction in media works
  • He is the main character of a 2010 Taiwanese drama, "The Rabbit God's Matchmaking".
  • In Andrew Thomas Huang's short film, "Kiss of the Rabbit God", Tu'er Shen seduces a restaurant worker.[16]

See also

References

Citations
  1. http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2007/10/21/2003384192
  2. Hinsch 1990, p. 133
  3. Szonyi 1998, pp. 1–25
  4. Kang, Wenqing (2009). Obsession: Male Same-Sex Relations in China, 1900–1950. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. pp. 19, 37-38. ISBN 9789622099814.
  5. Szonyi 1998, pp. 1–25
  6. 太上老君戒經 [Supreme Laozi's Scripture]. Zhengtong daozang 正統道藏 [Zhengtong Daoist Canon].
  7. 雲笈七籤.說戒部 [Yunji Qiqian. Precepts]. Zhengtong daozang 正統道藏 [Zhengtong Daoist Canon]. Volumes 38-40.
  8. Hinsch 1990, p. 127
  9. Hinsch 1990, pp. 131–132
  10. Steven, Keith (2002). "The wrestling princes". Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. 42: 431–434.
  11. 威明堂兔兒神殿. weimingtang.url.tw.
  12. Gold, Michael (2015-01-25). "Praying for a soul mate at Rabbit Temple". The Star Online. Retrieved 2019-02-06.
  13. Gold, Michael (2016-02-02). "Taiwan's Wei-Ming 'Rabbit' Temple Draws Gay Community". HuffPost. Retrieved 2019-02-06.
  14. Stevenson, Alexander (2015-01-22). "Thousands Of Gay Pilgrims Trek To Taiwan To Pray For Love At "Rabbit" Temple". LOGO News. Retrieved 2019-02-06.
  15. Gold, Michael (2015-01-19). "Taiwan's gays pray for soul mates at 'Rabbit' temple". Reuters. Retrieved 2019-02-06.
  16. Kiss of the Rabbit God - NOWNESS, Vimeo

Bibliography
  • Hinsch, Bret (1990). Passions of the cut sleeve: the male homosexual tradition in China. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520078697.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Szonyi, Michael (June 1998). "The Cult of Hu Tianbao and the Eighteenth-Century Discourse of Homosexuality". Late Imperial China. 19 (1): 1–25. doi:10.1353/late.1998.0004.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Zhang, Junfang, ed. (c. 1029). Zhengtong daozang 正統道藏 [Zhengtong Daoist Canon].
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