Hanlu Temple · A temple you can walk into
Kitchen God Hall
West of Mazu Hall, facing the Earth God across the courtyard. The only deity here with an annual performance review.
In the hall
Red robe, black gauze hat, a tablet held in both hands — the posture of an official about to speak to a superior.
The hall is deliberately plain. In a real house this god gets a paper print beside the stove, not a building.
Who is this
Zaowang, also Siming, keeps the household's hearth and its record of good and bad. Once a year he goes up to report on the family.
That report is the whole point of the cult. Everything else — the offerings, the timing, the couplet — is arranged around it.
In a real temple
On the twenty-third day of the twelfth lunar month (the twenty-fourth in much of the south), he leaves. People offer malt sugar, sticky and sweet, to seal his mouth with good words. He returns on New Year's Eve.
The couplet beside his shrine is almost always the same: "Say good things in heaven, bring peace below." Separate halls for him are rare — this is a household god, and the household is where he belongs.
Written in English for readers outside China; the Chinese version is longer. All eight lots of this hall are in the lot library.