Made in Macao | The everywhere groundskeeper god

Jenny Lao-Phillips

Last Sunday, Macao was filled with noises and people on the streets. Of course, we are used to having our streets filled on weekends, but this Sunday it was not just tourists and Catholics going to churches who were out on the street. There was a charity walk of some kind around Sai Van, and more importantly (or noisily) there were sounds of drums and gongs from trucks with lion dancers driving around town. There must have been some special occasion. A stroll around town reminded me that it was the second day of the second month of the lunar year, the birthday of the land god, also known as the groundskeeper or the god of luck and virtue.

The big celebration of the groundskeeper god’s birthday is not merely a religious festival. It has been a long practiced annual tradition in this city, and has lately been listed as an example of intangible cultural heritage of Macao.  The day-long celebration includes performances such as lion dances and Chinese opera ending with a huge dinner held on the streets around the two large temples for the groundskeeper god, one at Bairro Horta da Mitra and the other at Largo Pagode do Patane.

It is also a day of sharing. For the whole day, everyone from the neighborhood hangs out around the temple, mingling or preparing for the day in the morning, enjoying the performances together and sharing dinner on the streets. More than just enjoying the day together, I presume the costly celebration is also a joint contribution from the neighborhood. This is shown from the boards outside the temple with long lists of names and amount of money donated by each person, from hundreds to thousands.

Although not a public holiday like the Buddha’s birthday, the groundskeeper god is perhaps worshipped by more people in Macao. Aside from the two old temples dedicated to the god where the celebrations are held, there are another eight to ten smaller temples around town which are always filled with incense, demonstrating the high traffic of worship there.

The worship of the land god is not only in the temples. Almost all shops have an altar for the groundskeeper god. We can see them everywhere – the small red plates, usually with some Chinese inscription placed on the ground outside the shops, with an incense holder and sometimes also two small glasses and a plate of fruits in front, representing the altars for the land god. Some people also have an altar for the groundskeeper outside their apartment too. Conversations with a few local shop owners showed that many of them are not Taoist, but they still keep an altar outside their shops as a tradition for luck and prosperity.

But what does the groundskeeper god have to do with prosperity? Out of curiosity, I read different stories about the god, and the most widely circulated story tells that he was a chief finance official named Zhang, serving the emperor in the Zhou dynasty. Being a just and virtuous civil servant, people loved him, and he brought peace and prosperity to the country.

After he passed away, he was succeeded by a greedy, corrupt, evil miser who caused a lot of suffering to his people, and many went from prosperity to poverty. One day, a victim of poverty used four large rocks as walls to build a small temple to pray to Zhang, and legend has it that his prayers were heard and he started to prosper. Soon, everyone started praying to Zhang, who then became the groundskeeper god. So, while he is known as a land god, he has also been known to bring luck and prosperity to his worshippers.