Week 1: Beizhen Manchu Village

Dear all,

I'm glad to announce that our first week of fieldwork to Beizhen is over. Under the lead of Chenxuan Xu, Kevin Li, Andrew Wang, and Guoguang Bao, 14 members of us strengthen their knowledge on Chumaxian. Here is the conclusion of their experience:

The first stop was Faku and we met a female shaman lady Wu. She became a shaman at 44 in an traffic accident. But even before that she experienced unluckiness (her husband's disease, untreatable body issues, business failures, and nightmires due to her lack of awareness of the spirits, or her "Master", on her. She went to see her human master shaman, or Daxian(大神), and resolved by setting a Chumaxian altar at her home. Her master asked her to answer people's questions. Usually, people may quest about their educations like college admission results, marriage, Bazi(八字) to know the future, protect from unseen spirits, and monetary opportunities.

These questions are highly common to all Chumaxian shamans. However, uniquely, lady Wu learned from her Master to draw Daoist Fulu on a large canvas with her unique patterns and signs.

Lady Wu's Fulu

One of our member said "I have never seen this before as an Art Student and a Daoist." The regular Fulus are hand-sized. We can refer to the Chinese zombie movies. So how she knew this without any previous art experience? How did she learned this? We can't know and make inferences.

How she maintain her living through Chumaxian? The career of shamanic priests originated with human civilization. Scholars have been debating on the earliest stage of income methods of shamans. In modern society, shamanism is always misinterpreted as a barbarian cult. As a result, people are not holding a positive attitude towards Chumaxian. On the other hand, if the people could see the benefits, they will become the loyal clients of certain shamans. For instance, lady Wu has a Wechat Group of her clients who would like to spend for more than 10,000$ for important decisions. After they get good results, they would even provide a bonus. To be specific, most shamans' clients are aged groups, while young people would make Chumaxian a ceremonial culture rather than a religion. This significantly strengthen the discrepancy between the attitudes among different age groups, causing in danger of extinction.

What do you feel, think, and concern? You are welcome to ask any questions! Email adamchenxuan@gmail.com for more information! The pictures will be posted a few weeks later.