The dramatic story of a girl who became a goddess
The Lady of Linshui—the goddess of women, childbirth, and childhood—is still venerated in south China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Her story evolved from the life of Chen Jinggu in the eighth century and blossomed in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) into vernacular short fiction, legends, plays, sutras, and stele inscriptions at temples where she is worshipped. The full-length novel The Lady of Linshui Pacifies Demons narrates Chen Jinggu’s lifelong struggle with and eventual triumph over her spirit double and rival, the White Snake demon. Among accounts of goddesses in late imperial China, this work is unique in its focus on the physical aspects of womanhood, especially the dangers of childbirth, and in its dramatization of the contradictory nature of Chinese divinities. This unabridged, annotated translation provides insights into late imperial Chinese religion, the lives of women, and the structure of families and local society.
The open access publication of this book was made possible by a grant from the James P. Geiss and Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation.
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Brigitte Baptandier is director of research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS), in the Laboratoire d’ethnologie et de sociologie comparative, at Université Paris X, Nanterre, where she teaches Chinese anthropology. She also teaches at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) in Paris. She is the author of The Lady of Linshui: A Chinese Female Cult (Stanford University Press, (2008).
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