| Female worship is an ancient and widespread social cultural phenomenon in the process of human civilization. The traditional female worship in China involves various types, which is not only related to Confucianism, Buddhism, Taoism and other various religions, but also involves all the Chinese traditional culture types of specialized and regional culture. Since modern times, because the Chinese and Western cultures, the traditional and new cultures blunted constantly, social metabolism was quite fierce. A variety of traditional female worship inevitably was affected, which underwent a process of transformation. Therefore, it is a very important point that the social transformation of modern China is studied with the view from"traditional female worship".Compared to the Chinese traditional female worship in ancient times, the traditional female worship in modern China presented the overall trend of decline. This was closely related to its intrinsic and extrinsic components. On the one hand, science was promoted and superstition was opposed in modern China, the modern traditional female worship was under attack due to its superstition ingredients. Especially, the traditional goddess worship whose superstitious component hindered the development of modernization made it difficult to adapt to the trend of modern society, thus it gradually declined. On the other hand, democratic thoughts such as natural rights, gender equality and so on, made the degree of concern on the women's status increase unprecedentedly. As far as traditional female idol worship is concerned, though it had some rationality in the aspect of respecting women with high moral character and brilliant talent, chastity worship run counter to modern times. Therefore, the declining of traditional female worship was an inevitable trend.The traditional female worship is composed of materialized worship (goddess temples, female ancestral idols, goddess idols, female idols and so on) and symbol worship (worshipper's ideas, beliefs, rituals and so on ). The materialized worship is its shell, while the symbol worship is corn. When the traditional female worship was confronted with the transition of modernization, the overall decline began with the materialization worship, and gradually internalized.The declining performances of the traditional female worship in modern China were listed as follows: firstly, the space of worship reduced in modern times. Under the press of modernization development, the space of traditional female worship (temples and figures etc.) suffered transformation or devastating impact. From the perspective of physical space, the overall declining trend of traditional female worship was obvious, which showed the reducing of space and statues'numbers; From the perspective of spiritual space, the overall declining trend of traditional female worship was hidden, and with certain hysteresis quality. Secondly, its subjective carrier has changed in modern times. The worshippers, as the carriers of the traditional female worship, were mainly the carriers of symbol worship (ideas, beliefs etc.). Therefore, the changing trend of worshippers in modern times played a decisive role for the trend of traditional female worship. Modern worshippers which were diverse and complex situated in a turbulent modern society. Some worshippers stick to the traditional female worship, some were alienated form it because of their intellectual development, which became the important factor induced the decline of traditional female worship in modern China. In short, the declining performances of traditional female worship were very complicated, the degree of its declining varied from type and region and so on, and with obvious age mark.In the context of social transformation in modern China, though the traditional female worship showed an overall declining trend, it also committed to survival and development through self-renewal and external links. Therefore, the traditional female worship had a close relationship with many exterior social fields, such as economy, folk culture and religious belief. Because the traditional female worship was composed of positive factors and negative factors, it affected other areas of modern society with a double-edged view.Bixiayuanjun worship is the typical case of the traditional female worship. Its changes in modern society not only a variety of traditional expressions of worship continued, but also groundbroke formal research on the social culture investigations and folk beliefs of Bixiayuanjun worship. The folk beliefs and academic research were parallel and compatible, which was the modernization transition bearing the characteristics of the times of Bixiayuanjun worship in the Republic of China,In all, as a culture with abundant intension, the evolution of the traditional female worship was affected not only by external factors, but also by internal factors; it possessed universal characteristics of traditional female worship as well as of unique characteristics of the times; it had a positive impact on the modern social development as well as had a negative impact on modernization due to itself limitations. |
