The comparison shows that as the work of changing customs in rural areas continues to advance, village collective cemeteries and government-operated cemeteries are the direction of the evolution of burial space order, and village-level autonomous organizations and governments are

Figure 3 Xicun Collective Cemetery, Zhaoyuan City, Shandong Province

The spatial distribution of tombs in the collective cemetery in the village clearly shows that the tombs are organized in a space according to certain shape rules: the entire cemetery is located on the west side of the village, and the tombs follow the topography The slope is distributed in a stepped manner. The tombs are arranged vertically according to the order of generations, extending and spreading from high to low along the central axis, reflecting the sense of order and solemnity of the family's life extending into the future. When the author investigated, there were several rows of empty seats at the lowest point at the entrance to the cemetery. Villagers said that this was a preparation for the burial of villagers in the next one or two hundred years. Some elderly villagers said that every time they enter the cemetery, they feel a sense of awe for their deceased ancestors and deceased elderly people. At the same time, the burial state of these elderly people also serves as an example to them, that is, they let them know exactly where they are after their death. They will then be buried in a certain location within the cemetery. Although many young villagers go out to work, the collective cemetery has strengthened their sense of belonging to the village. Therefore, one villager said to the author: "Falled leaves must return to their roots and cannot be buried outside after death."

In addition, the size and grade of tombs only differ between the two generations of ancestors who founded the village and their descendants. The tombs of the first ancestor and the second ancestor who were divided into different branches are located at the highest point of the steps of the cemetery. The stone tablet is higher than the head and contains the most detailed life stories. The specifications and grades of the tombs of other descendants are very consistent, not as good as those of the first ancestor and the second ancestor.

(3) Graves gathered in cemeteries

Villages that gather graves in cemeteries are mostly located in suburban rural areas with a high degree of urban-rural integration, or in rural areas that have entered the focus of national funeral reform policies.

In the cases investigated by the author, villagers from He Village, Lishui Town, Nanhai District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province, and Dong Village, Liujiadian Town, Pinggu District, Beijing, both told the author that the deceased in the village were buried in the cemetery near the village, and Both of these villages are suburban villages with a high degree of urban-rural integration. Many villagers go out to work and can "leave their hometown without leaving their hometown". Although the villages in Yifeng County, Jiangxi Province are located in mountainous areas and are less radiated and driven by the city, due to the national funeral reform policy, several villages scattered in the mountains now bury their dead in the Nearby cemetery (Figure 4).

The cemeteries referred to by villagers in Hecun, Guangdong and xiaxia, Yifeng County , and Dongcun, Beijing, actually include two different types of cemeteries. Villagers in Hecun and Yifeng counties in Guangdong use cemeteries operated by the state with government finance; while villagers in Dongcun in Beijing use cemeteries operated by funeral companies through the market.

In terms of the spatial order of tombs, what the two types of cemeteries have in common is that the tomb groups are organized and integrated as a whole. Although their spatial configuration is orderly, they do not exhibit family ethical order. The difference is that the government-operated cemeteries demonstrate the public rationality in the government's thinking. Every life passed away is an abstract and commensurable numerical symbol, which is expressed in the spatial order of the tomb and the shape of the tomb. They are all the same, arranged in order according to the time of burial. The personality of the deceased and his position in the family are hidden in the spatial order of the tomb, and the homogeneity of the space in the cemetery is amplified. The cemeteries operated by the market demonstrate capital rationality. Graves in the cemetery have different shapes and orientations, and are clearly marked with prices. Every life from birth to death cannot escape the class system constructed by economic ability. After burial, The land seems to be free to choose, but in fact it is captured by the economic status of the deceased and his children during his lifetime. The space in the cemetery forms a serialized landscape according to market rules.

Figure 4 Rural Cemetery in Yifeng County, Jiangxi Province (part)

3. The formation logic of the spatial order of burials

The above three spatial orders of burials that have appeared in rural China are actually the result of Feng Shui politics and the political operations surrounding Feng Shui. Logic is closely related. Specifically, the three spatial orders of burials: "scattered style in the village", "gathered style in the collective cemetery in the village" and "gathered style in the cemetery" respectively correspond to "private negotiation of Feng Shui" and "ethics of Feng Shui". There are three types of Feng Shui political operation mechanisms: "Co-ordination" and "National and Market Allocation of Feng Shui".

(1) Private negotiation of Feng Shui

Private negotiation of Feng Shui mostly occurs in those rural areas where the aforementioned tombs are scattered in villages. In the private negotiation situation of Feng Shui, Feng Shui politics unfolds between private individuals. The so-called "private relationships" include two scenarios: one is between individual members within a family; the other is between village members belonging to different families. The consequences of private negotiation can be divided into two situations: one is to successfully occupy the feng shui resources; the other is to temporarily occupy the feng shui resources, but then disputes continue, and even the person is forced to withdraw from the state of possession of the feng shui resources.

In fact, whether private negotiations occur between individual members of a family or between village members belonging to different families, the occurrence of private negotiations is caused by Feng Shui masters, and Feng Shui disputes among villagers are nothing but Feng Shui masters. "proxy war".

Personal Feng Shui negotiations between individual members of the family are very common. If the Feng Shui master invited by the villagers happens to choose the burial site on the land contracted by a member of the family, the private negotiation process is absorbed within the family, and the negotiation cost is often zero. And if the Feng Shui master chooses the burial site on the land contracted by other village members or on the hilly forest land owned by the collective, whether the person involved can bury the deceased in the place designated by the Feng Shui master for a long time is related to the number of local Feng Shui masters.

If there is only one local Feng Shui master, all members of the village will bury the grave according to the same Feng Shui master's rules for determining the value of the space.The oligarchic status of Feng Shui masters, on the one hand, means the unification of Feng Shui judgment rules. Villagers only obey the relatively consistent Feng Shui order arrangements. Therefore, this Feng Shui order arrangement has an absoluteness similar to the "village consensus" and becomes a kind of Feng Shui. Force majeure public rules set by Mr. On the other hand, the arrangement of Feng Shui order in a limited space based on the same Feng Shui determination rules will cause the designated burial places to be highly concentrated towards a limited number of good Feng Shui places, resulting in the land in these few good Feng Shui places being The contractors could only silently endure the encroachment of other people's tombs on their land.

For example, in rural Fuchuan County, Guangxi, no matter which family's field the Feng Shui master uses compass to choose the burial place of the elderly, the deceased can be buried in the designated place by the Feng Shui master for a long time. There is no objection to the selected cemetery. Even if his family’s tomb occupies their own land, they can only accept it. Even if my contracted land is constantly being dug up for the tombs of other villagers because of its "good Feng Shui", which affects my daily production activities, I can only tolerate it. "Others think that the Feng Shui here is good, and I have no way to find others." (Hanamura 20130709 ). According to villagers, this unwritten rule transcends family names and fully embodies the principle of "the deceased is the most important".

In the countryside located on the Loess Plateau under Luliang County, Shanxi Province, the formation logic of the spatial order of the tombs is generally the same. Local people start "funerals" after they turn 70, and their children will spend thousands of dollars to ask the local Feng Shui master, known as "Yang Ye", to choose a burial place. According to villagers, local people can also successfully occupy the burial space marked as "good Feng Shui" according to the instructions of "Yang Ye". "No matter whose land it is, it will be the one you like." ( Tiancha Village 20150528 ). However, villagers who occupy other people's land to build tombs will buy gifts for the users of the land, which seems to be more humane than the behavior in rural areas of Guangxi.

However, if there are multiple Feng Shui masters in the local area and there are strong family forces within the village, private Feng Shui negotiations among villagers regarding the location of tombs will inevitably develop into Feng Shui disputes and become a "proxy war" between Feng Shui masters.

In Lian Village, Ningdu County, southern Jiangxi, the Feng Shui politics surrounding tombs often manifest themselves as Feng Shui disputes. "Every family in this village occupies a hilltop" and attaches great importance to the feng shui around the tomb. Under the guidance of multiple Feng Shui masters, each family launched an offensive and defensive battle to seize or defend Feng Shui resources. The mutual aggression among Feng Shui masters is reflected in what the villagers said: "If someone else wants to build a new grave there, he will not be allowed to do it because it will destroy the Feng Shui of my grave" (Liancun 20160716). Some villagers lamented: "Those Feng Shui masters are the hardest to talk to. You say this can't be done, and he says that can't be done. Among the Feng Shui masters, yours is against mine, and mine is against yours. They undermine each other just to make money." " (Liancun 20160715) Fengshui offensive and defensive battles in various families often occur during the Qingming Festival, because "normally people don't look at it and don't know about it. They discover it when they worship ancestors." (Liancun 20160715).

The outcome of the Feng Shui offensive and defensive battle is ultimately determined by the strength of the family. Those who build a new tomb will have no choice but to move the tomb if they encounter the previous occupants of the hilltop who are "hard to talk to" and "have a large family". Some young villagers complained that Xin Feng Shui made it difficult for many deceased people to find a place to bury them: "After a family member passed away, the burial place was moved several times. There were disputes wherever they found it. There was no place to bury, and there was no place on the hill to choose from." ( Liancun 20160715)

dang However, if the first occupier of the hilltop is more reasonable, the person who builds the new grave can also discuss with him to temporarily bury the grave within the feng shui radiation range of the tomb controlled by the first occupier of the hilltop to avoid the situation of "having no place to bury when he dies" because of feng shui. The husband will not tell you the second candidate place for burial. However, the first occupier will also notify the person who builds the new tomb and must move the tomb within 3 years. There are even some pre-emptive occupiers who would rather pay some money to the builder of the new tomb and let him move the new tomb. If the two parties fail to reach a compromise after negotiations and the person who built the new grave still buries them secretly, or if the person who builds the new grave is unwilling to move the grave after three years, the preemptive occupier will force the grave to be dug, leading the dispute to violence.Around the two tombs, the descendants of both sides would gather to fight from the perspective of "protecting their predecessors" to "show that they have people."

(2) The ethical coordination of Feng Shui

The Feng Shui order that is concentrated in collective cemeteries in the village often appears in single-surname villages that retain the ability to take collective action. Its formation logic is the ethical coordination of Feng Shui. The so-called "ethical coordination of Feng Shui" is to unify the conflicting and fragmented Feng Shui discourses, coordinate the Feng Shui resources based on the overall ethical order of the village collective, and utilize and create Feng Shui resources.

Before the completion of the collective cemetery in the village in 2008, graves in Xicun, Zhaoyuan City were scattered all over the mountains and plains. “The planned graves were only limited to the third generation and would not exceed the fifth generation. Sweeping the tombs consumes time and energy” (Xicun 20190717). In order to change the fragmented spatial order of the tombs, the shrewd and capable village party secretary established a committee for the compilation and resettlement of the history of the Xigou branch of the Liu family, elected by 20 people from all the villagers. The village party secretary personally served as the chairman of the committee. Under the premise of fully considering the amount of funds and the village's collective economic foundation, the village committee decided to build a collective cemetery in the village, and the genealogy compilation committee was responsible for the preparatory work. In order to make the design style of the collective cemetery in the village meet the conceptual requirements of "both ancient and fashionable", the village party secretary led other village cadres to inspect the Confucius Temple, Forest of Steles, and the Forbidden City.

In terms of investment methods, investors invest in a gradient sequence such as 250 yuan for grandpa, 50 yuan for great-grandfather, and 30 yuan for great-grandfather. Therefore, the closer the tombs in the cemetery are to the upper level of the stairs, the older the ancestors are, and the more collective the nature of their construction. Since the village party secretary himself is familiar with Feng Shui, the construction of the collective cemetery in the village did not involve the planning and design of Feng Shui master , nor did he consult the opinions of so-called celebrities. The genealogy compilation committee determined the number of senior citizens and the land area of ​​the cemetery, and mobilized all members of the village collective to raise funds and labor. It took three years to complete the construction of the cemetery. During the Qingming Festival in 2008, Xicun held a burial ceremony for the deceased elderly people in the village. So far, the ancestors of all generations in Xicun have been buried at the same time and in the same style. The collective cemetery therefore plays a role in integrating the spatial order of the tombs.

Judging from the feng shui resources of the Xicun Collective Cemetery, there are roads, ditches, barren slopes, and a small amount of inferior secondary cultivated land. "Many ditches" is one of the most obvious terrain features in the area. The village party secretary took advantage of this natural terrain feature to make a big fuss, believing that "the ditch is used for drainage, the wind is above the water and the water is the source of life." Therefore, he "let nature take its course and God's will" and expanded the ditch. It is as deep as a lake, and the excavated soil is piled on the highest point of the barren slope to form an artificial mountain. This man-made mountain is named "Wulong Mountain". It is said that Wulong Mountain in West Village, Jinhua Mountain in Juxian County and Wuyun Mountain in the east have "three points and one line" to achieve axis unity and belong to the same Lingshan Mountain Range. The Xicun Collective Cemetery was built in the Feng Shui environment based on the situation, achieving the Feng Shui effect of "backing against the mountain and stepping on the bay" (Figure 5).

Figure 5 The Feng Shui pattern of the Xicun Collective Cemetery in Zhaoyuan City, Shandong Province

It can be seen that the Feng Shui politics of Xicun are completely under the control of the village collective, especially the village party secretary. Relying on sufficient collective economic funds, the village collective actively utilizes, creates and integrates the feng shui resources of the village. In order for the collective cemetery to inspire the villagers' sense of belonging and awe for the village's history and past lives, a solar-powered Buddhist chanting machine was installed in the cemetery to recite Buddhist scriptures day and night. At the same time, a sign with the words "Indifferent" written on it was placed at the entrance of the cemetery. "Awe" and "Humility" stone pillars, as well as a 20-ton stone tablet with the word "Yi" written on it. According to the interpretation of the village party secretary, the word "Yi" means "a comfortable life without fighting against the world, without fighting for status or money, being strong without desires, and having no desires after entering heaven. The living must fulfill the dead's comfortable life, without fighting for anything." The gravel floor laid at the beginning of the cemetery steps shows a Bagua pattern. The village party secretary's interpretation of this pattern is: "Bagua represents the universe. The universe is so big, do you still care about selfishness? Your own interests are nothing."” (Xicun 20190722) The collective cemetery has been transformed into a governance resource that shapes the collective ethical order, and Feng Shui has also been coordinated and organized according to the rules of the ethical order under the guidance of the village collective headed by the village party secretary, and has been universally applied. Ethical interpretation of the whole village.

Although villagers are not buried in the collective cemetery for free, they only pay a symbolic 700 yuan for a cemetery. The style of the West Village. After water is coordinated and allocated by the village collective, it is no longer a "private Feng Shui" guided by Feng Shui masters for scattered individuals, but becomes a "public Feng Shui" that is of village public nature and complies with village social ethics. The answer of the village party secretary to the question of "Feng Shui" well confirms the political and economic attributes of "public Feng Shui": "If the villagers feel comfortable after seeing it, it means it is good Feng Shui; if the public likes it, it means it is good Feng Shui." "

(3) The market and national configuration of Feng Shui

In suburban rural areas with a high degree of urban-rural integration, the spatial order of burials in cemeteries is common because the villages are located close to towns with dense administrative resources and abundant market resources. . And for rural areas that have entered the national funeral reform policy, their tombs The order of burial space is more related to the direct intervention of government power. Whether it is a cemetery operated by the government or a cemetery run by the market, the order of burial space is no longer determined by private negotiations under the guidance of Feng Shui masters, nor is it mobilized by village collectives. Villagers are no longer allowed to dig new graves in the village, but move old graves and use new graves in the cemetery according to the country's or market's interpretation of feng shui. , making the tombs form a new order that reflects the country's public rationality or capital rationality.

In short, the market allocation of Feng Shui is a allocation method that uses capital as a lever to determine the advantages and disadvantages of the Feng Shui of the location of the cemetery and its specifications. The size of the burial space is directly proportional to the amount of funds paid by the deceased or the person who buried him. The order of the burial space under the operation of the market mechanism is actually the order of capital. The embodiment of social class order. Take Hecun, Nanhai District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province as an example. Nowadays, villagers go to the "Yong'an Garden" cemetery in their township to buy a cemetery. According to villagers, the cemetery there costs at least 30,000 to 50,000 yuan. Funeral parlors also provide ash buildings similar to cemeteries. The price of an ashes space is 2,000 yuan. Children who really do not have money to buy a burial place for their parents can only scatter the ashes of their parents. The profit-seeking tendency of the market causes Feng Shui resources to be allocated according to market purchasing power, so that high-quality Feng Shui resources flow to the owners of capital and exclude disadvantaged groups with market purchasing power.

The national allocation of Feng Shui is a kind of bottom-line approach. The allocation method is based on the principle of security, and grave spaces are generally provided to villagers free of charge. Although the government also borrows Feng Shui ideas to select and site cemeteries. When building a cemetery, for example, the ancestral tomb mountain was requisitioned and built against the mountain, but in terms of distribution, efforts were made to unify the shape of the tombs and expand the number of tombs that could be accommodated on the same level, in order to minimize the feng shui differences within the cemetery, whether in Dongcun, Beijing. The cemeteries used by villagers are still many in Yifeng County, Jiangxi Province. The characteristic of all of them is the strong homogeneity of the spatial landscape in the park, while the "private" outside the cemetery. The reason why "Feng Shui" can be absorbed by the "public Feng Shui" in the cemetery is that the state performs and transforms the Feng Shui discourse. For example, in the process of funeral reform, the government will publicize to the villagers "let the ancestors live in a good place". And compared with the scattered burial corresponding to "private feng shui", it shows that the latter "is not good for the ancestors to be buried in the ground, and is overgrown with snakes, insects, rats, ants, and weeds, and It’s hard to find the road”, and added that “it will be better to do business in the future by moving to Feng Shui” and so on (Yifeng County 20191208).

It can be seen from this that the market and the country’s configuration of the spatial order of tombs cannot completely bypass Feng Shui. On the contrary, in the construction of the cemetery, the formation of the spatial order of these two sets of tombs has absorbed a large amount of Feng Shui discourse and Feng Shui ideas originating from civil society. Therefore, the formation logic of the spatial order of cemetery tombs can be summarized as the "market and state configuration of Feng Shui", which is accompanied by the reinterpretation of Feng Shui by the market and the state through the use of Feng Shui discourse.

4. The Uniqueness of Feng Shui Politics

The above has analyzed the three types of Feng Shui political operation mechanisms: "Personal Negotiation of Feng Shui", "Ethical Coordination of Feng Shui" and "National and Market Configuration of Feng Shui". It can be found that "Feng Shui" is a A political field, in which different individuals, collective actors or public power subjects can make use of their different resources in different structural positions, and under the influence of different interests, desires and intentions, have an impact on the society as a kind of political field. Feng resources of cultural codes are decoded differently. The politics of Feng Shui is essentially a game and struggle process around the right to interpret, and the space for the game and struggle for interpretation rights comes from the unique political nature closely related to the scarce subject matter of "Feng Shui".

(1) The ambiguity in the identification of feng shui resources

feng shui resources have obvious symbolic meaning, and objective scientific principles and subjective beliefs and feelings are intertwined with each other. The location, time, terrain, orientation, water and soil distribution and other scene elements that first exist in daily production and life are originally ordinary and ordinary. The analysis and interpretation of Feng Shui discourse is the process of deconstruction and reconstruction of daily production and life scenes. . In this process, each element in the scene is stripped out one by one, and then spliced ​​one by one and integrated into a set of interrelated mapping systems, establishing a causal relationship with the situation of the people in the scene. From this, the situation of the people in the scene can be reduced to a set of environmental theory explanation systems.

Only those scene elements that can affect the improvement or deterioration of the situation of the people in the scene can be called "feng shui resources", otherwise it is just "feng shui". What elements in daily production and life scenes are causally related to the situation of the people in the scene? This is the problem that the identification of feng shui resources has to deal with. However, the identification of feng shui resources is based on a mapping system in which various elements are interrelated, which means that the "identification" that is subordinate to the analysis logic must be extracted from the causal chains that are involved or even nested to play a major role. scene elements, and at the same time define the functions of the scene elements. Functional definition itself is a process of giving symbolic meaning. The determination of functions and the evaluation of the energy exerted by elements in the system are inevitably subjective and arbitrary.

Therefore, the selection and identification of feng shui resources shows the characteristics of "benevolent people have different views on benevolence, and the wise have wisdom", and the identification results of feng shui resources are often specious. Behind the identification of feng shui resources is the operation of knowledge power. The ambiguity in the identification of geomantic resources has just prepared the battlefield for the intellectual power struggle surrounding geomantic resources.

(2) The depth of the meaning of Feng Shui

Scene elements that were originally in a blurry state of perspective, once selected as "Feng Shui resources", are infused with magical power that affects the fate of the people in the scene. What the author calls "people in the scene" is a concept that is both static and moving, dead and alive. It refers to the past, present and future of actors who are in a state of living in this world, and it also refers to a person who is in a state of death but is believed to be in another way. The past, present and future of actors whose forms exist in mysterious time and space can even include the future of actors who have not yet survived but are about to be born into the world.

Feng Shui knits these "people in the scene" that span multiple generations and span multiple time and space dimensions into a seemingly visible but actually invisible natural energy field. With Feng Shui as the intermediary, the "people in the scene" feel the extension of the life of their relatives, regard their relatives as the origin of their lives, and regard the two as the continuation of one life. Through Feng Shui, the "people in the scene" feel that the lives of their ancestors continue to live in their own bodies and in the bodies of their fellow humans. Relying on the role of Feng Shui, protecting ancestors, blessing future generations, and allowing the lives of ancestors to continue to survive and expand among descendants are the basic values ​​recognized by "people in the scene" in this world.

Therefore, although "Feng Shui" on the surface is just the extraction, organization and symbolic marking of natural geographical elements, its energy can affect the blessings and dangers in multiple dimensions of time and space; although the main actor of "Looking at Feng Shui" is only For people living in this world, Feng Shui is deeply related to the settlement of their life meaning, and also affects the past, present and future life settlements of many family members who are closely related to their lives. The meaning of Feng Shui transcends individuals, time and space, life and death, and matter and spirit. The depth of Feng Shui reflects the depth of the meaning of life of the villagers.

(3) The externality and exclusivity of the possession of Feng water resources

The so-called externality of the possession of Feng water resources, that is, the state of possession of Feng water resources does not only mean the occupation of the space itself where the Feng water resources are located, but also means the occupation of the space outside the space. The surrounding space has radiation and ripple effects. Because Feng Shui is an energy field, it is a "surface" concept rather than a "point" concept. However, it is obviously impossible to objectively measure the extent of the energy field coverage of its feng shui resources.

The more critical point is that the external utility of Feng Shui resources is also susceptible to changes due to interference from the external environment, and even in turn affects the function and quality of Feng Shui resources themselves. Since the externality of Feng Shui resources is extremely fragile, and there is a high degree of dependence between Feng Shui resources and the external environment, "exclusivity" is embedded in the externality of Feng Shui resources, which increases the "zero-sum game" in Feng Shui politics. color.

The externality and exclusivity of Feng Shui resource possession, as well as the ambiguity of spatial boundaries, have led to a large number of Feng Shui disputes. For example, in Lian Village, Ningdu County, southern Jiangxi, the tombs are not necessarily built within the same group of the deceased. There are many tombs across villages and groups, because "Feng Shui masters walk everywhere in the mountains and build them wherever they see them." (Lian Village 20160714 ). No one can tell clearly how far away the new tomb should be from the existing tomb so as not to "obstruct the dragon's veins": "Some say it's not even 1 kilometer away, and some say it's very close and don't say anything. If If it were an independent hilltop and not a mass grave, you wouldn't be allowed to build it at a distance. There is only one tomb, but you are not allowed to build it. It has been built for hundreds of years by a very high-ranking person, and other tombs are not allowed to be built next to them. Even the descendants of the old tomb owner are not allowed to build it. Dig that grave." (Liancun 20160714) "The old grave of the past, I think. Once he occupies the mountain, he owns it, but he doesn’t care about the trees, but he can’t build a tomb next to it. There are many descendants of the old tomb, and it’s difficult for the descendants of the new tomb to resist.” (Liancun 20160718) The “Lin clan” in Huacun, Fuchuan County, Guangxi "Rules" clearly stipulates: "For example, newly buried people, left and right It must be one foot away from the ancestor, and it must be five feet away from the ancestor in front and back, measured from the top of the old and new graves, and based on the ruler recorded in the genealogy." (Hanamura 20130712) By drawing clear spatial boundaries, the family order disciplines the feng shui resources. The externality and exclusivity of possession also inhibit Feng Shui disputes.

(4) The dominance of Feng Shui interpreters

The key link in transforming "Feng Shui" into "Feng Shui resources" lies in the determination of the relationship, meaning giving and function disclosure of the various elements of "Feng Shui", that is, the interpretation of "Feng Shui" . In other words, there is a distance of "interpretation and interpretation" between "Feng Shui" and the villagers. It is through explanation and interpretation that "Feng Shui" has the possibility to integrate into the production and life of villagers, and to connect with the "people in the scene". If there is no interpreter, "Feng Shui" is just the inherent space and accidental things in the natural environment, and has nothing to do with the production life and life status of the "people in the scene".

's explanation and interpretation of "Feng Shui" did not come out of thin air, but was issued by a subject who has the right to speak about Feng Shui. This subject can be called a "feng shui interpreter". The depth of the meaning of feng shui makes "people in the scene" seek feng shui interpreters. However, the ambiguity of the identification of feng shui resources, as well as the externality and exclusivity of the possession of feng shui resources, are all handed over. The Feng Shui interpreter makes the final decision. Therefore, the uniqueness of the above three levels of Feng Shui politics ultimately points to the dominance of the Feng Shui interpreter, making the Feng Shui interpreter the actual controller behind all Feng Shui politics and the presentation of the tomb space order.

On the surface, it seems that the Feng Shui interpreter is just an agent of the villagers' wishes. However, there is a high degree of information asymmetry in the field of Feng Shui. The villagers' ability to identify is often very low. The consequences of controlling the Feng Shui resources are full of uncertainty and unpredictability. The "principal-agent" relationship with the Feng Shui interpreter may be reversed. If the Feng Shui interpreter has profit-seeking motives, it is very likely that he will adopt the behavior of "supply inducing demand", so that the villagers will eventually become the agents of the Feng Shui interpreter to seek their own interests. Feng Shui disputes among villagers are essentially conflicts between different Feng Shui interpreters. "Agent war", but the villagers have almost no room for bargaining in the process of receiving "Feng Shui services".

5. Society, market and state in the spatial order of tombs

In the ecological environment shaped by the uniqueness of Feng Shui politics mentioned above, Feng Shui masters, village-level autonomous organizations, the market and the state have all participated in the game of interpretation rights of Feng Shui. and in contention. If the spatial order of tombs is just the result of Feng Shui politics, then we can find from the comparison of the spatial order of tombs in different villages that the country, market and society have different interpretation strategies of Feng Shui discourse, as well as the different impacts on village governance ( Table 1).

Table 1 The spatial order of tombs and society, the market, and the state

The "society" mentioned here includes two states: one is a highly decentralized and mobile small-scale peasant society, showing a lack of endogenous organizational capabilities; The small-scale peasant society organized by collective economy and family ethics shows a third social unifying force that is neither administrative nor market.

In the former social state, scattered small farmers lead to scattered interests. This dispersion is condensed in the spatial order of tombs, which is the one after another Feng Shui disputes among scattered "private Feng Shui", just like the spatial distribution of scattered villages. state. Under the Feng Shui master's interpretation of Feng Shui, the politics of Feng Shui mainly revolve around the personal negotiation of Feng Shui. A Feng Shui master in an oligarchic state will cause certain lands in a specific space to be continuously encroached upon by other people's tombs. The existence of multiple Feng Shui masters will turn private negotiations into a competition between the strength of the respective families of both parties, which is actually a competition for the ability to use violence. Under such a violent order, villagers with weak family power may face the dilemma of having nowhere to bury their children. It is the overall power of the family, not the tomb owner's personal position in the village, country, or market, that locates the location of the tomb.

In contrast, in the latter social state, the village is a single-surname village with collective action capabilities. The meaning of life of the villagers is organized into the sequence of family ethics. The various feng shui resources possessed by the village environment also follow the village The ethical rules are integrated and coordinated to form a "public feng shui" that can be shared by members of the village. Village-level autonomous organizations monopolize the right to interpret "public feng shui."The ethical rules and family order revealed by the organization and specifications of the collective cemetery in the village have brought a sense of certainty to the villagers' sense of life, especially eliminating the uneasiness of the elderly. It is the overall order of the family, rather than the individual will of the family members, that determines the location and specifications of each tomb. In other words, it is the individual's status in the family system, rather than the individual's personal status in the country or market, that determines the specific positioning of the grave space and its specifications and grades.

Compared with the spatial order of tombs scattered in villages, although the graves in the cemetery are in the same organized state as the collective cemetery, the presentation of ethical order in the cemetery is fragmented. The spatial order of burials in the cemetery does not reflect the status of the deceased in the family. Specifically, cemeteries operated by the market reflect the economic level of the deceased and his family members through the specifications and grades of individual graves. Cemeteries operated by the government only express homogeneous citizenship through homogeneous space and homogeneous tombs, flattening the differences between the deceased in terms of family power, family status, family capital, etc. Different from "public feng shui" that obeys the family order and is limited to the village community, "public feng shui" under the interpretation of the market and the government obeys the deethicalized capital order and the depersonalized citizen order respectively.

In summary, scattered Feng Shui interpreters in a decentralized society will amplify the externality and exclusive role of Feng Shui politics in Feng Shui politics, causing village governance to have to deal with the problems of weakening the interests of the weak and conflicting confrontations that exist in the spatial order of tombs. The village community society organized according to family ethics identifies, integrates and recreates feng shui resources according to the needs of ethical rules, and makes ethical interpretations of feng shui resources. Since Feng Shui resources are comprehensively used by village-level autonomous organizations, villagers' interests are integrated into the spatial configuration of the collective cemetery. Ethical rules effectively regulate the externality and exclusivity of Feng Shui resources, and the depth of Feng Shui's meaning is highlighted to the maximum extent. Market-operated cemeteries, on the other hand, integrate Feng Shui discourse with the order of capital, reshape the externality and exclusivity of Feng Shui resources through the logic of capital, and link the depth of Feng Shui meaning with the degree of capital ownership, which has a profound impact on the economy. The weak constitute exclusion. Although the government-operated cemeteries were influenced by folk Feng Shui discourse when they were first built, after the cemetery was built, they tried to use Feng Shui discourse to guide villagers to move their graves, and tried their best to eliminate Feng Shui politics in the cemetery and eliminate the differences in Feng Shui. The sequence is blocked from the cemetery.

From the perspective of governance effects, the spatial order of burials controlled by decentralized society and the market will lead to social fractures and exclude the weak in society. The society organized by family ethics and the order of the tomb space under the control of the state can ensure that "the dead have a burial", making the tombs have a certain social welfare nature, and effectively eliminate the "inviting sir, looking at Feng Shui, The necessity of choosing a cemetery has played a role in getting rid of the "old funeral customs". It’s just that the former is supported by the collective economy and can highlight the depth of Feng Shui, and the symbolic meaning of tombs is richer; the latter relies on government finance, and the symbolic meaning of tombs is relatively suppressed to the bottom line. Although from the perspective of social subjectivity and rural revitalization, the former model is more worthy of encouragement; but from the reality that the vast majority of the rural labor force in the country has emigrated and village society is only in a state of maintenance, the latter model is more worthy of encouragement. Suitable for replication and promotion.

6. Conclusion

Feng shui politics, in a sense, is the politics of the "dead"; the order of the tomb space is also the order of the "dead". However, the depth of the meaning of Feng Shui enables the spatial order of tombs to connect multiple generations, making Feng Shui politics transcend the boundary between life and death, making "death" a state that can have an impact on "life." Therefore, the management of tombs that symbolize death can also be understood as a social undertaking that serves the people's "livelihood" because it involves the major issue of how the living can better settle the meaning of life and use it to guide their current lives.

Judging from the comparison of the spatial order of various types of tombs in this study, the old funeral customs of "inviting sir, looking at Feng Shui, and choosing a cemetery" generally exist in small-scale peasant societies that are not effectively organized and in market spaces controlled by capital. Under the interpretation of Feng Shui by Feng Shui masters and the market, Feng Shui resources are often imprinted with family power and economic class status, and are gathered to a few people in society, causing the inequality of the current society to be transmitted to the world after death. The control of Feng Shui interpretation rights by village-level autonomous organizations and governments helps redistribute Feng Shui resources, suppressing the externality and exclusivity of Feng Shui resources and allowing them to be shared by most people within a certain social range. When the level of leaders of Feng Shui politics rose from individuals to village collectives and the national level, the old funeral custom of "inviting sir, looking at Feng Shui, and choosing a cemetery" naturally disappeared.

For single-surname villages that retain the ability to take collective action, village-level autonomous organizations should be supported to spontaneously build and operate collective cemeteries with the help of endogenous order, so that the meaning of life of individual villagers can find a place in the life flow of the family for generations. Location. For villages with declining clan culture and lack of endogenous organizational capabilities, local governments should assist village committees to reasonably borrow folk Feng Shui discourse to mobilize and organize villagers to move graves in an orderly manner and use government-operated cemeteries.

Based on the analysis of this study, it can be judged that as the work of changing customs in rural areas continues to be promoted, collective cemeteries in villages and cemeteries operated by the government are the direction of the evolution of the burial space order, while village-level autonomous organizations and the government are the most appropriate Feng Shui political guidance who.

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Feng-shui politics: Society, market and state in the spatial order of Chinese rural tombs

FENG Chuan

(School of Politics and Public Administration, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430071, China)

Abstract: "Feng-shui" is a set of rules that endow each element in the space with a sequence of values ​​and a sequence of causal mapping. According to the "feng-shui" rules, those elements that are considered to be high in the value sequence, occupy a superior position in the causal mapping sequence, and affect and maintain the good situation of people in the scene can be called "feng-shui". The power allocation and power game around these "feng-shui resources" are " feng-shui politics". The appearance of the spatial order of the tombs in the village is the result of feng-shui politics. The three spatial orders of tombs, "scattered patterns in the village", "collective patterns in the collective cemetery in the village" and "collective patterns in the cemetery", correspond to "private negotiation of feng-shui", "ethical coordination of feng-shui" and "feng-shui". The three types of feng-shui political operation mechanisms. By comparison, it is found that when the work of changing customs in rural areas continues to advance, collective cemeteries in villages and government-run cemeteries are the direction of the evolution of tomb space order, and village-level autonomous organizations and governments are the most appropriate political leaders of geomantic feng-shui.

Keywords:Feng-shui politics; Tomb spatial order; Funeral reform; Changing customs