ABSTRACT
To a resident the calendar of festivals presents four different possibilities of identification. There are days which local people assume are observed everywhere in China. Among these in Mountainstreet were the three principal points (yuan), on the fifteenth day of the first, seventh and tenth lunar months, when the three cosmological divisions were addressed as a set of offices to which the supreme god of heaven had appointed what were also called ‘gods of heaven’. A local temple is for the celebration and reverence of pan-Chinese dates as well as for local gods. Places are differentiated in the organisation of even the pan-Chinese rituals. Tudi Gong in Taiwan is paid particular attention by shop-keepers and others engaged in commerce. The Tudi Gong association of the eastern part of Mountainstreet was a feasting association whose costs excluded all but the wealthier shop-keepers.
