Zheng Hui, the Deified Chief Minister
Bai · deity · Bai traditional religion; continuing · deity
Zheng Hui was a Han Chinese official, magistrate of Xizhou, captured by Nanzhao in 756. Esteemed for his learning, he was made tutor to a succession of Nanzhao crown princes and rose to the highest ministerial office, Qingpingguan, becoming the principal architect of Nanzhao's realignment away from Tibet and back toward the Tang. After his death he entered the Bai benzhu pantheon as a deified ancestor and patron, exemplifying the way in which even outsiders who served the Erhai polities with distinction could be incorporated as tutelary lords of the community; he is regularly named among the ancestral and cultural-hero benzhu of the Dali region alongside the founder Xinuluo.
Domains
- statecraft and learning
- benzhu patronage
Powers
- to instruct rulers in statecraft and letters
- to protect the village as its patron lord
Epithets
- 清平官
Relations
- subordinate to: Xinuluo, Founder-King and Mountain Lord
Sources
- Charles Backus, The Nan-chao Kingdom and T'ang China's Southwestern Frontier (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
- Megan Bryson, Goddess on the Frontier: Religion, Ethnicity, and Gender in Southwest China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016).
- Liang Yongjia, Religious and Ethnic Revival in a Chinese Minority: The Bai People of Southwest China (London: Routledge, 2021).