Chenghuang Temple in Jinhua Area

City God is one of the Duke of Zhou and Ba Shen, which originated from the ancient water and city sacrifices. "City" originally refers to the dug-up high wall, and "shovel" originally refers to the moat without water. In order to protect the safety of the people in the city, ancient man-made cities built tall walls, towers, gates, moats and moats. They believe that everything closely related to people's life and production safety has gods, so cities and cities are deified as the protectors of cities. Taoism incorporated it into its own gods, calling it the god of protecting the country from evil spirits and taking charge of the dead in the underworld.

As early as the Zhou Dynasty, every time after a bumper harvest, on New Year's Eve, people wanted La Worship Ba Shen. The seventh god was the water god, and the water god was the city god.

Since the Three Kingdoms, there has been a Town God Temple among the people, and the earliest recorded Town God Temple was established by Sun Quan in Wuhu, Anhui in 239 AD. In the Sui Dynasty, it was already a custom to sacrifice animals to the city god. But at that time, the city god was just an abstract god with no specific name.

In the Tang Dynasty, the belief in the Town God was quite common, and many literati, such as Du Fu, Han Yu, Zhang Jiuling, Du Mu, Li Shangyin and others, wrote poems to worship the Town God. Because under the feudal autocracy at that time, people hoped that those officials could make decisions for the people and sympathize with their sufferings. Therefore, they have great respect for those officials who do good things for the people. After their death, they worship them as city gods. For example, Suzhou worships Spring, Hangzhou worships Wen Tianxiang, Shanghai worships Qin Yubo and Guilin worships Su Jian.

When Zhu Yuanzhang was emperor in the Ming Dynasty, he was very interested in Dacheng Huang. Because I was born in the land temple, I have great respect for the boss of the land god. In the second year of Hongwu in Ming Dynasty (A.D. 1369), Zhu Yuanzhang issued a letter to seal the world god. And strictly stipulates the level of the city god, * * * is divided into four levels: capital, government, state and county. So overnight, the city god temples all over the country have mushroomed. Zhu Yuanzhang said: "If we unite with the God of the Town God, people will know and be afraid. If people are afraid, they dare not do anything. " .

Throughout the evolutionary history of the city god, it is not difficult to find that the appearance of the city god is synchronous with the formation of the city. The city god changed from a natural god to a human god, from good to evil, from a hero serving the people to a "local official" serving the feudal ruling class, from being welcomed and loved by the people to being ridiculed and reviled by the people.