The Temple of the God of Grain at Jishan

In Shanxi the name Jiwang Temple does not belong to one building. It is the name of temples where Houji is honoured, and the province has more than one of them: the Jishan temple stands on West Street inside the county town, a second, in Wanrong county, is at Taizhao village in Nanzhang township, and a related temple, the Jiyi Temple, stands at Yangwang in Xinjiang county. The words are plain. Ji is millet, wang is lord, so the dedication is to the lord of millet, the figure whom Chinese tradition credits with the beginnings of grain farming. Jishan county's own name carries the same character.

A temple like this is usually read through its halls and its offerings, and the record here does not allow that. What it gives is a dedication and an address: Houji, and West Street inside the Jishan county town, with two neighbours named, the temple at Taizhao village in Wanrong and the Jiyi Temple at Yangwang in Xinjiang. The distribution is the fact worth keeping. A god honoured in several counties is a god whose worship was organised locally, every place keeping its own building while the name travelled between them. What was carried into the Jishan hall is not recorded; what the record keeps is the address.

The county belongs to Yuncheng, a basin the Chinese account describes as flat, mild in climate and a traditional agricultural region, and a temple to the lord of millet is the kind of building such a region puts on the main street of a county town. What farmers asked for is not recorded here, and it is better to say so than to fill the gap with harvest scenes. What can be said is structural: the dedication names grain, the address is the county seat's main street, and the god is shared with a village and with a neighbouring county. The temple is a statement about what the place lived on, made in its most public position.