Family Rituals in the Hungry Ghost Festival: Spirituality and Multiplex Beliefs in China

ABSTRACT

This article explores why individuals in China undertake numerous tasks for souls and spirits whether or not they believe that these beings exist. We shift away from Eurocentric approaches to studying religion which have been centered around conceptualizing belief as cognitive assent to a theological or cosmological statement. Instead, we outline a multiplex structure of beliefs sustaining religious and spiritual action. Using the case of the Hungry Ghost festival, which approximately 378 million people in mainland China engage in annually, we present field observations of a village in China as well as 59 interviews with its residents. Participants offer items to the souls of their deceased parents and grandparents, along with non‐family spirits, propelled by four types of beliefs: acceptance of cosmological postulates on existence, relational commitments to certain family ties, experiential knowledge derived from personal encounters, and the expectation that particular actions are instrumental in bringing about a desired end. Participants weave their own multiplex structures of belief as composites of habits and knowledge validated by experience. When the ontology of a spiritual practice acknowledges the social reality of the family line as much as the material actuality of a corpse, family members can behave toward the deceased as social entities without endorsing the existence of spirits and souls. Our findings situate spiritual activities in their relational settings and hold insights for why people engage in their practices of spirituality in China.