Customer Reviews

The Origin of Chinese Deities

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Anyone who as visited Taiwan or China has encountered highly decorated temples that may be Buddhist, Taoist, or even related to some of the older religious strands. Since those from Western cultures, have very little backgrounds in these religious traditions, one mainly can look with wonder rather than with real appreciation. Moreover, as beautiful as these temples are, their dense symbology cries out for a deeper understanding to appreciate the ornate artwork that tells many, many stories. Although this book attempts to bridge that gap, it only makes a few tenuous footsteps, and badly at that. Although the author has picked some of the more important deities, there is almost no organization, nor even underlying thread to the book. Given the millenia of artwork to draw upon, the illustrations are poor examples and often badly reproduced. This is a real shame, because it then makes it quite hard to link up many of these deities with the images one might see in temples or artwork. Another problem with the deities is that although they are often based on historical characters, there are many conflicting stories and legends. Instead of trying to make sense of these parallel narratives, the author strings together several of these stories, leaving one to wonder how to make sense of it all. Alas the author gets an A for effort but D for execution.

In a way this is a good lithel book. At least it was the only one a found on the subject when á was in China. The storyes are godd but sometimes ther inturpitation is to simple and in the spirit of communisum. This is not folklore!!