The Lady of Linshui Pacifies Demons
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The Lady of Linshui—the goddess of women, childbirth, and childhood—is still venerated in south China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia. Her story evolved from the life of Chen Jinggu in the eighth century and blossomed in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) into vernacular short fiction, legends, plays, sutras, and stele inscriptions at temples where she is worshipped. The full-length novel The Lady of Linshui Pacifies Demons narrates Chen Jinggu's lifelong struggle with and eventual triumph over her spirit double and rival, the White Snake demon. Among accounts of goddesses in late imperial China, this work is unique in its focus on the physical aspects of womanhood, especially the dangers of childbirth, and in its dramatization of the contradictory nature of Chinese divinities. This unabridged, annotated translation provides insights into late imperial Chinese religion, the lives of women, and the structure of families and local society.
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Kristin Ingrid Fryklund is the translator of The Lady of Linshui: A Chinese Female Cult. Mark Edward Lewis is Kwoh-Ting Li Professor in Chinese Culture at Stanford University and author of China's Cosmopolitan Empire: The Tang Dynasty. Brigitte Baptandier is director of research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique at Université Paris X, Nanterre and author of an ethnographic study, translated into English as The Lady of Linshui: A Chinese Female Cult.
