The pantheon · Folk Deities (民間信仰)
Menshen
門神 · Menshen (Wade-Giles: Men-shen)
Folk religion
The door gods, guardians pasted on the gate to turn away evil.
Paired guardian figures pasted on the two leaves of a front door, most often at the New Year, to keep malevolent spirits from crossing the threshold. Who the two guardians are has changed over time; the protective function has not.
- Portfolio
- Doorway protection · Warding off evil spirits · New Year guardianship
- Observance
- Door gods belong to the New Year. In the run-up to the Spring Festival, old, faded images are stripped off and fresh ones pasted on the front doors, part of the same house-cleaning and renewal that includes spring couplets (chunlian) and the upside-down fu character. Cheap woodblock prints from famous centres such as Yangliuqing near Tianjin and Taohuawu in Suzhou made the practice affordable to every household. Which figures appear, and whether they are pasted at all, varies by region, dialect group and family taste; a scholarly home and a shopkeeper's home might choose very different guardians.
How to recognise them
A mirror-image pair of armoured warriors, one on each door-leaf so they face each other, painted in bright New-Year colours. They are typically shown as fierce generals in full battle dress, gripping maces, halberds or swords, with bristling beards and wide glaring eyes meant to frighten off demons. One is often ruddy or golden-faced, the other dark, so the pair reads as a balanced guard on either side of the entrance.
The custom is ancient. An early legend, preserved in Wang Chong's first-century Lunheng, tells of two brothers, Shen Tu and Yu Lei, who lived on a vast peach tree on a mountain of ghosts. Their task was to inspect the spirits passing through; any that had done harm they bound with reed ropes and fed to tigers. People began painting the two brothers, or simply hanging peachwood boards, at their doors to borrow that guardianship — the distant ancestor of today's paper couplets.
The most famous door gods came later, from the legend of Emperor Taizong of Tang. Troubled by nightmares and the sounds of demons hurling bricks outside his chamber, the emperor was guarded through the night by two of his greatest generals, Qin Shubao and Yuchi Gong, who stood watch in full armour. The demons stayed away. Unwilling to keep his generals awake indefinitely, the emperor had their portraits painted on the palace doors instead — and the images worked as well as the men.
From the palace the practice spread to ordinary homes, and the cast of door gods multiplied. Martial guardians protect against ghosts and thieves; civil door gods, holding scrolls or ingots, express wishes for rank and prosperity; some households paste children or the immortals for luck and many sons. Which pair a family chooses says something about what it wants at the threshold. The one constant is the placement: always two, always facing each other, so no guardian ever turns his back on the door.
Nearby
Written from
- Lunheng (Balanced Discourses) — Wang Chong
- Chinese Gods: The Unseen World of Spirits and Demons — Keith Stevens, 1997
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