The remaking of a Tibetan mountain cult festival: the worship of landscape deities in the Rebgong Valley, Amdo

Abstract

Festivals in honor of mountain deities were revived across the Tibetan plateau in the 1980s, some years after the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) in the People's Republic of China. This article, primarily analyzes the development of one mountain festival in Amdo, Qinghai, focusing on the decades from its revival until today. During mountain deity festivals, primarily men from multiple villages, a range of religious specialists, and representatives of local authorities gather at a stone cairn on a mountain top, where a variety of rites, ceremonies, and games takes place. In the ‘old society’ the chieftain of a congregation of villages had an important role as patron, mediating between the deity, the deity's medium, religious specialists and villagers, while his function has diminished in the revived festival. Faced with major social-economic-political changes, while retaining and recreating many elements of tradition, striking transformations in the festival's structures of patronage, piety, and play have transformed its human network, its format, and its significance.