ABSTRACT
This chapter maps the spread of Chinese temples, native-place, and clan associations from Southeast and South China into Southeast Asia from the 17th to the 21st century. One series of movements to be presented traces the rise and fall of the irrigation system of the Putian 莆田 alluvial plain, and the subsequent ecological decline of this system, leading to widespread migration to Southeast Asia by groups of Daoists, spirit mediums, fishermen, Buddhists, and Christian communities. Many of these migrants built the temples to the gods found in the Putian regional pantheon, and maintained ritual traditions from that area. Sources for the chapter include dated inscriptions gathered by W. Franke and his colleagues in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand, as well as scattered dated inscriptions from Myanmar, Vietnam, and the Philippines, as well as my own survey of Putian temples and inscriptions, and a more recent survey of 800 Chinese temples in Singapore. Key questions include how to display the spatial distribution of divergent dialect groups within the port cities of Southeast Asia, and how to represent multiple, overlapping, and evolving trade, religious, and kinship translocal networks and flows crossing this complex region.
