Introduction

This chapter examines the history and ritual events of migrants from the Xinghua region (Putian and Xianyou counties of Fujian, China) in Singapore and Indonesia, in order to explore the ways in which these migrantcommunities transformed their rituals, and in the process extended their rites beyond their own dialect boundaries, while also creating new gender roles and transforming social relations both in Southeast Asia and back in their home region of Putian, Fujian. The continuous reinvention and circulation of tradition has been a prominent feature of Chinese migrant communities in Southeast Asia for centuries. In order to bring out some of the effects of the mobility of migrants, ritual traditions, and ritual specialists, the chapter first outlines the socioeconomic and cultural historical backgrounds of the Chinese migration to Southeast Asia, through an overview of recent historiography and the analysis of local historical sources including temple and lineage records, stone inscriptions, and liturgical manuscripts. The next section of the chapter adopts a multi-sited anthropological method, examining ritual events in different parts of the Xinghua migration to Southeast Asia. Ritual traditions and ritual specialists (spirit mediums, Daoist masters, temple leaders, and members of the migrant ritual community) circulate between these sites, going back and forth from Sumatra to Singapore to Jakarta to Putian, even as these highly regionally specific ritual traditions begin to attract members of other dialect groups in Singapore.