(Inner courtyard of Thien Hau Temple)Images found on the roof of the Saigon Thien Hau Temple:
Thien Hau/Mazu is a popular goddess among the Chinese living on the southeastern shore of China. She is worshiped along the Fujian and Guangdong coastline and the island of Hainan in China and also in Taiwan and Hong Kong. Temples dedicated to Mazu are also found among ethnic Chinese communities in Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Japan. One of the oldest Chinese temples in thee US is in fact a Mazu temple built in 1852 in San Francisco by Cantonese Chinese living in that area. Los Angeles now has a very active Mazu temple built by Teochew-Vietnamese Americans a few years back.
Here's s short entry I prepared for a mini-exhibition of Chinese deity images I put together at Pew-Ellison Library at Warren Wilson College a few months back:
Matriarch Ma (媽祖 Mazu)
Legend has it that Matriarch Ma lived in south China sometime around the 10th century. She was born as Lin Moniang (林默娘), daughter of a fishing family. According to popular folklores concerning Matriarch Ma, she was deified after meeting a tragic death while rescuing her father and brothers from drowning in the sea during one of their fishing trips. Against societal and parental expectations, Lin Moniang refused marriage and instead focused on spiritual development. The power of her spiritual practice made it possible for Lin Moniang to magically project herself to the exact location in the sea to rescue her drowning father and brothers. Although she succeeded in rescuing them, unfortunately she was so exhausted from the effort that she drowned in the sea and died. Lin Moniang’s miraculous feat and her filial dedication as a daughter (thus vindicating her earlier act of parental defiance) transformed her into a goddess. Her popularity eventually led her to being admitted into the official Daoist pantheon in the 15th century where she is formally honored as “Heavenly Empress Sagely Mother” (天后聖母 Tianhou Shengmu). In particular, her power to protect seafarers and travelers increased over the centuries and to this day she is an important deity on the southern coast of China, in Taiwan and Hong Kong and among overseas Chinese.
(The main Thien Hau/Mazu statue in the temple)Matriarch Ma’s iconography presents her as a Chinese empress, dressed in the imperial dragon brocade robes, seated on a throne in a formal position and holding an official placard denoting her rank as empress. She in sometimes depicted with a darkened face – alluding to the legend of her drowning and how when her body was finally washed ashore, her face had turned blue-black. There are about 1500 temples in 26 countries dedicated to Matriarch Ma.
(A temple-attendant chanting evening prayers)
(Incense urns where devotees can offer sticks of incense)
(Elaborately carved wooden votive-offerings)
