Interview and writing: Sanjin.
*: 10 Point Portrait.
In the past two years, more and more people have turned to metaphysics for help.
In the process of ascending and going ashore, I choose incense. "People are wearing bracelets that have been bought in line for four hours at Lama Temple while begging for offers at Wat Pho. Carefully study the constellations, tarots, and the daily fortune calculated by the eight characters, the weekly fortune and the annual fortune, and you can be happy for a long time when you meet the "big luck", and you will come again when you meet the "big murderer".
Metaphysics, like a psychological diagnosis and treatment technique, settles every crumbling soul in modern society.
You may have heard from your relatives and friends that Mr. So-and-so on the next street is very smart, and you can go to him to settle any problems. Although we have been raised with a materialistic education, praying for good luck does not seem to be in conflict with this.
Photographer Jiang Leilei has such a feng shui gentleman who is said to be very "spiritual". When he was in junior high school, Jiang Leilei was taken by his family to worship his "godfather" in front of the feng shui master in a daze, and he didn't know until he graduated from college, the purpose of which was to bless him with academic progress.
In 2019, after obtaining the consent of his godfather, Jiang Leilei began to photograph his daily work as a feng shui master: they went to the mansions of rich families to see feng shui together, went into the mountains to see the yin mansions for entrepreneurs, saw temples run by family units, and had banquets under the statues of gods, and danced ballroom dances with the eldest sisters who served here for free at the temple gate.
Jiang Leilei's photographic works of traditional folk beliefs have been supported by the Magnum Photography Association. In the past 5 years, through more than 30,000 **, Jiang Leilei has established a closer relationship with this mysterious "godfather", and has also gained a new feeling for the spiritual beliefs of his parents and elders at home. He noticed that every Chinese New Year, his mother prayed for him longer and longer in front of the Buddha statue; He also understands the grandmother who used to be a goddess, even though the other party has long since died.
There are things that transcend superstition, for me it's affection, it's a strong bond between family."
The following is based on what he said.
There is a lot of photography in the article**, and the audio can show limited content, please read the article for the full content.
Ask the gods about something
When I first was taken by my parents to visit my godfather, I didn't expect that this person's career path would go from Hanzhong to Beijing to Macau, and even to Thailand. Every time he shows how much money he makes on a trip to his circle of friends, I wonder if I should change careers, don't worship my godfather, change my worship.
But as soon as I saw him give people fortune-telling practices, he had to chant a ** for more than ten minutes, and I felt that this job was really difficult to do. I can't memorize the texts since I was a child, and if you stumble and stumble on the reading, how embarrassing it is, others will think that your level is not good.
Most of the time, the situation that comes to him to see Feng Shui is sudden.
For example, I recently went with him to meet an old lady. The old lady's house downstairs also placed the god seat, before was a famous goddess nearby, not to do this line of work after feeling uncomfortable, so I asked my godfather to see if it was a problem with the placement of the god seat.
On the top floor of the Feng Shui Master's Godfather's house are many idols of gods. On that day, my godfather brought a big paper figure, which looked quite scary, the old lady sat in front of the window, the godfather burned incense in front of her, and the paper ashes floated all over the house, and the godfather muttered in his mouth, "God's hand will eliminate all diseases".
The "mounting" mentioned here should have been seen by everyone during the New Year, which is a kind of yellow paper, which is particularly light and thin. There is a custom that if the Chinese New Year's Eve is burned in front of the God of Wealth, and the paper ash flies high, it means that the fortune will be prosperous in the coming year.
In the end, the godfather burned the paper man. After the whole ceremony, the godfather said to the old lady, "You also have to go to the doctor and drink some medicine." "The subtext is that if you don't feel well, you should also pay more attention to your body.
The godfather reminded the old lady to pay too much attention to her body. Godfather is usually amiable, and he dresses more daily when he shows people Feng Shui, but he will bring a lot of bracelets and rings. Listen to him, these are worth a lot of money. During the shooting, I also met other feng shui masters with my godfather, and some of them were used to wearing Taoist clothes and looked very "professional".
The first two are other feng shui masters I have met, and the last one is a feng shui master godfather who is looking at a compass.
Feng Shui masters are also hierarchical. Some of them are apprenticed to Taoist priests in Taoist temples, and the other part belongs to the family inheritance, so they will call Taoist priests ** or ancestors, which can see a kind of rank. As for the level of technology, it is more reflected in the fee. If everyone thinks you are very smart, the money you charge will naturally be higher, and if you have just debuted, you will receive less money.
It's not as detached as everyone thinks, but rather worldly, after all, the people who come to them every day are also "laymen" - either hoping to satisfy their own desires or solve the difficulties in front of them.
People who go to the temple to pray for blessings will put money in the hands of the idols. Once, I accompanied my godfather to the mountains to show people the yin house. The other party gave his name, birthday, family situation, and appeal in advance. Then, the feng shui master will use the compass to explore on the spot, "looking for the dragon must look at the winding mountain, a heavy entanglement is a heavy pass", and the dragon hunting recipe said to see the mountain system and water system have something to do with this.
Godfather looks at the "dragon's lair" in the mountains. According to Godfather, looking at feng shui is generally to look at the big external environment first, "the front mountain and the back mountain, the left mountain and the right mountain, and the dragon's cave and the water", and then look at the microcosm, "dial the evil, absorb the water, and orient".
All in all, they have their own set of logic that has been handed down. When the dragon's lair is found, the yin house is placed here, which is equivalent to "the accumulation of ancestors can be transported to future generations through the dragon vein".
Mountains photographed from above. When he went to the mountain that day, he pointed to the distance, "This mountain is two dragons coiled together, that is the dragon's head, this is the dragon's tail", we walked around the mountain again, looked at the direction, and then he determined a location and told the other party that they could choose here. In less than two hours, the fee is 6888 yuan, and the customer does not feel expensive.
I have observed that there are two types of people who are looking for a feng shui master to look at feng shui. One is the wealthy, they care about feng shui and hope to pass on resources to the next generation through some methods. Those people have a very large house, and when they watched the feng shui master perform the ceremony, their expressions were very indifferent, and they did not doubt it, nor did they particularly care.
The other is people who live a very hard life, they want to change their fate, but it seems that what they can do is very limited, and they can only seek to change their lives by metaphysics.
Once, we went to the home of a very small woman, who kept staring at my godfather with her hands folded, as if staring at a Buddha statue, with a mixed expression of uneasiness and piety on her face. I don't remember exactly what happened to her, but I was touched by that expression.
Later, the godfather performed a series of rituals for her, rang the bell, and shook the hexagram, and the woman's expression was obviously much more relaxed.
"Feng Shui masters also have to worry about children's learning".
The last time I went back to my hometown to shoot my godfather, I accidentally talked about his children, and my godfather said to me: "My daughter is 15 years old, and it happens to be the year she was born, and you came to recognize the godfather." "I realized that we had known each other for 15 years.
I remember when I was in the third year of junior high school, after the Chinese New Year, my mother nagged me and said that I was going to meet someone. On the way there, I found out that my mother didn't know this person either, and she didn't even know that this person lived in **.
Along the way, as if undercover joints, we arrived at an urban village in the urban area of Hanzhong City. There was a shop selling paper wax mounts at the entrance of the village, and my mother mysteriously went up to the boss and asked, "Do you know that there is a fortune teller here?" ”
When we arrived at the door of my godfather's house, it was the godfather's mother who opened the door for us. I don't know if it's an industry discourse, we obviously haven't seen it, but she seems to know us and knows that we are coming, and warmly invites us to come in and sit.
At that time, their family was a self-built building, about five or six floors. There are some statues of gods in the room on the fifth floor, and there is a color TV, which is a Taoist propaganda film. They were chatting and I was watching TV all the time. Then he took us to the top floor, which was a triangular space with yellow incandescent lights that were a little dim. Because he burned paper and incense in it for a long time, the walls were all black, and the corners were full of statues of gods. During the ceremony, he lit a lot of frames, and then held them around me in a circle, chanting words in his mouth.
I didn't know how to photograph at the time, but this dizzying scene has always stuck in my mind. To be honest, I kind of wanted to laugh at the time, but I didn't think I could laugh, which seemed like a serious thing.
Basket throwing is a way for a person to communicate with the gods for instructions. Later, I learned that my mother took me to visit my godfather mainly so that I could make progress in my studies and be admitted to a good university. Similarly, godfathers have many godsons.
During the shooting, I felt that the godfather's family was no different from other ordinary families. They are very worried about their children's studies and don't want their children to be addicted to electronic products. The second child of his family has just entered kindergarten and is more naughty, and he is often seen at the dinner table with bitter words to let the children not be picky eaters.
When observing his daily life, I sometimes forget that he is a feng shui master and that he is also facing very real problems.
House of God-Men
During the process of photographing Feng Shui masters, I never expected to encounter any mysterious events. In life, I don't even watch horror movies, but I've been curious about traditional folk beliefs since I was a child.
For as long as I can remember, my grandmother has been a goddess. My parents were selling cold skins, and my sister and I lived with my grandparents for a few years. My grandparents' house was an earthen house, and there was a shrine in the middle of the hall, and I often watched my grandmother give people practices in the hall.
Those people are not all from the same village, and some people come from afar and bring chickens, pork, and white sugar to my grandmother to see feng shui. After asking each other their names, addresses, and birthdays, my grandmother lit incense in the hall and sang to the gods, which was particularly mysterious. Grandma told me not to sit in the middle of the hall and watch, it would block the way of the gods, but I was so curious that every time I sat in the corner and watched, my grandmother would not talk about me.
Grandma was illiterate and could not draw talismans, but always grandpa helped, and according to the different purposes to be achieved by the talisman, on a rectangular piece of yellow paper, with red ink, wrote the name of the priest and various patterns.
After I started filming this subject and chatting with my family, I realized that my grandfather, who was an intellectual, refused at first. Later, he found out that the matter seemed to be helpful to the person concerned, so he was willing to help.
Later, I saw my godfather draw talismans. After I went to school, I learned some scientific principles, but I was still at an ignorant age, and the fact that my grandmother was a goddess became embarrassing and embarrassing. The people in the village would laugh at me about my grandmother, and my classmates at the time thought I was weird.
After leaving my grandparents, I have been living with my parents, but this life is not stable.
Basically, all the people who go out to work in our hometown are selling liangpi, and almost all the two- and three-story self-built houses in the village are built by the liangpi business, and my mother often says that I was raised by liangpi.
At that time, urban construction was in full swing, sometimes in the event of demolition, no matter how good the business was before, I had to change places, I changed a total of 9 schools in the nine years of compulsory education, and followed my parents to Beijing, Taiyuan, Inner Mongolia, Zhejiang, and Xi'an. No matter how close the relationship was at any school, I didn't dare tell my friends about my grandmother.
I don't know if it was because of the influence of my grandmother, or because these memories of "migration" made my parents feel that their fate was difficult to grasp, they were very keen to pray to the gods and worship the Buddha, and poured out their anxiety about uncertainty and their expectations for a better life in front of the statues.
My mother often told me what her fortune teller told her when she was young under the overpass outside the Lama Temple in Beijing: "You can't make money when you're young, and you won't get rich until you're middle-aged." ”
I guess my mother was also unbelieving when she was young, but unfortunately, life confirmed her prophecy. In recent years, whenever I tell her, "You're in your sixties, it's time to rest," she would tell the story and say, "When I was young, I couldn't make money, but now I'm old and I can't afford to rest." ”
At first, I was disgusted that my mother made wishes for me in the temple year after year, but over the years she made her wishes for me longer and longer, and as I grew older, she wished more and more for me. I have come to understand that this is a way for parents who only have a junior high school education to show their love.
Every New Year's Day, my mother would go to the temple early in the morning to ask for a red cloth strip and tell me to put it up. I left my hometown to go to university and went to work in Beijing, and this red cloth became a very warm thing for me. Now, I tie strips of red cloth to my plants. It has transcended the so-called superstition, for me it is a family affection, a strong relational bond.
I also started to think about my grandmother a lot, and I often saw images of me with her, and I regretted not talking to her much at that time. Whether as a creator or as her grandson, I want to follow her, explore her, and document her. But I knew I wouldn't see her again.
In 2019, I contacted my godfather, who I hadn't been in contact with since graduating from college, and began a long, continuous shoot. It is not only to get a subject to shoot, but also to make up for past regrets.
Is there a god there?
Just like my grandmother taught me not to sit in the middle of the hall, I was worried about whether my actions would violate some taboos at the beginning of the shoot.
Every time I go to the temple and raise my camera, a staff member comes over and says, "You can't take pictures." Even if the staff didn't stop me, some enthusiastic passers-by would tell me, "Why are you still taking pictures!" "Others said they couldn't shoot Buddha statues, they couldn't use flashing lights, or they had to hide in corners.
I had to ask my godfather, "Can I shoot it?" ”
The godfather waved his hand: "You can shoot, shoot as you like." As soon as he said that, the staff stopped me. I realized that there was no clear rule that told us not to shoot.
A local temple in Hanzhong. Some of the local temples in Hanzhong were built by the villagers themselves, and some were built in caves deep in the mountains, and my godfather happened to know these temple builders, so my filming work has been going smoothly all along.
Some temples are built in caves.
The slogan on the wall of the family-style temple: The statue of the god expresses the characters with the custom of garden color carving, and the creativity breaks through the convention.
I am still in awe of this matter, and I bow before every shooting, which is equivalent to saying hello: I want to shoot you. After the shooting, I will say goodbye again: thank you.
An old lady dozing off beside the idol. Once, I followed my godfather to a temple to participate in a festival celebration, and the people who built the temple held a banquet in the temple and beckoned my godfather and his brothers to drink and eat together. There were two tables in the house where the statues were placed, and there were three or four more tables in the square, and the surrounding villagers, the old men and women who volunteered to help in the temple, all came, and everyone was very happy.
That scene touched me a lot, because most of the time we see people kneeling in front of the Buddha statues, and they are not only sitting, but also drinking.
Banquet in the temple. Another time, we went to another temple, and there was a TV next to the statue, and everyone was sitting around the fire, watching TV, and some people were asleep on the mat in front of the statue. Those people live with the idol all year round, wear ordinary clothes, and live their daily life, as if the idol has become a part of life.
Since then, I thought, in awe, who could shoot. Later, I danced ballroom dancing with the eldest sisters who came to help at the temple gate.
Now, I've been shooting for five years, and I always feel that there is something missing, but my photographing of this feng shui master godfather will continue.
People always ask me, do you believe this? Some time ago, I saw an instruction manual for pediatric antipyretics, which may be used to illustrate my current understanding
Antipyretics such as acetaminophen and ibuprofen are not effective in preventing febrile seizures. The purpose of fever reduction is to reduce the irritability and discomfort caused by fever in children, and to reduce parents' nervousness or fear of fever in children. ”
We don't know if there was a god at the moment of kneeling before the statue, but there were many people who were comforted in that moment, and before and after that, there was a day to live hard.