Tu'er Shen

Images of Hu Tianbao show him in an embrace with another man. The sense that the villagers must keep the reason for the temple secret in the story may relate to pressure from the central Chinese authorities to abandon the practice. Qing dynasty official Zhu Gui (1731-1807), a grain tax circuit intendant of Fujian in 1765, strove to standardize the morality of the people with a "Prohibition of Licentious Cults". One cult which he found particularly troublesome was the cult of Hu Tianbao. As he reports,

The image is of two men embracing one another; the face of one is somewhat hoary with age, the other tender and pale. [Their temple] is commonly called the small official temple. All those debauched and shameless rascals who on seeing youths or young men desire to have illicit intercourse with them pray for assistance from the plaster idol. Then they make plans to entice and obtain the objects of their desire. This is known as the secret assistance of Hu Tianbao. Afterwards they smear the idol's mouth with pork intestine and sugar in thanks.[4]

Although Tu'er Shen is popularly revered by some temples, some Taoist schools may have considered homosexuality as sexual misconduct through history, probably deeming it is outside marriage.[5] However, many Taoism scriptures do not mention anything against same-gender relations, mostly maintaining neutrality.[6]

The story may be an attempt to mythologize a system of male marriages in Fujian attested to by the scholar-bureaucrat Shen Defu and the writer Li Yu. The older man in the union would play the masculine role as a qixiong or "adoptive older brother", paying a "bride price" to the family of the younger man- it was said virgins fetched higher prices- who became the qidi, or "adoptive younger brother". Li Yu described the ceremony, "They do not skip the three cups of tea or the six wedding rituals- it is just like a proper marriage with a formal wedding."[7] The qidi then moved into the household of the qixiong, where he would be completely dependent on him, be treated as a son-in-law by the qixiongs parents, and possibly even help raise children adopted by the qixiong. These marriages could last as long as 20 years before both men were expected to marry women in order to procreate.[8]

Keith Stevens reports seeing images like these in Hokkien-speaking communities in Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand and Singapore.[9] Stevens refers to these images as 'brothers' or 'princes' and calls them Taibao (太保), which is probably a perversion of Tianbao. Stevens was usually told that the two figures in an embrace were brothers, and only in one temple in Fujian was he told that they were homosexuals.

The history of Hu Tianbao has been largely forgotten even by the temple keepers. However, there is a temple in Yonghe District, Taiwan that venerates Hu Tianbao in his traditional guise. The temple is known as the Hall of Martial Brilliance (威明堂).[10]