Clans and Spiritual Space: A Case Study of Guandi Temple in an Ancient Hakka Town in South China

Abstract

In China’s southeastern coastal Hakka settlements, folk temples have become centers of faith for township residents, many of whom establish spiritual connections to these sacred places through religious activities such as worship, rituals, and prayers. Using the Guandi Temple (located in Gongguan Township, Beihai, Guangxi) as an example, this chapter explores how the ‘spirit’ of a sacred place and memory of it shape residents’ sense of security and community from an architectural phenomenology. Our findings suggest that this mechanism occurs through three pathways: first, as a living world, the unique religious architectural space is integrated into residents’ daily life space; second, as an environmental atmosphere, it shapes the local, spiritual, and cultural space; and third, as a mythological narrative, the temple tells the history of the local community and transmits intergenerational memories. These three paths reinforce residents’ attachment to sacred places, enhancing their sense of security and community and, in turn, their spiritual well-being.

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Chapter 14
Clans andSpiritual Space: ACase Study
ofGuandi Temple inanAncient Hakka
Town inSouth China
LiaoYing andXuHuang
Abstract In China’s southeastern coastal Hakka settlements, folk temples have
become centers of faith for township residents, many of whom establish spiritual
connections to these sacred places through religious activities such as worship, ritu-
als, and prayers. Using the Guandi Temple (located in Gongguan Township, Beihai,
Guangxi) as an example, this chapter explores how the ‘spirit’ of a sacred place and
memory of it shape residents’ sense of security and community from an architec-
tural phenomenology. Our ndings suggest that this mechanism occurs through
three pathways: rst, as a living world, the unique religious architectural space is
integrated into residents’ daily life space; second, as an environmental atmosphere,
it shapes the local, spiritual, and cultural space; and third, as a mythological narra-
tive, the temple tells the history of the local community and transmits intergenera-
tional memories. These three paths reinforce residents’ attachment to sacred places,
enhancing their sense of security and community and, in turn, their spiritual
well-being.
Keywords Folk religions · Guandi Temple · Spirit of place · Place memory ·
Sense of community
Chinese folk religion has a long history of beliefs, rituals, and symbols (Assmann,
2015). People believe in folk gods to protect their families and resolve crises, and
express their respect and gratitude to them through rituals and prayers. Folk reli-
gions inuence the thought, emotion, and behavior of communities, and are an
important part of local traditional culture. This is because religion, as one of the
Author Note
Correspondence concerning this paper may be addressed to Xu Huang. Email: 09432@njnu.edu.cn
L. Ying · X. Huang (*)
School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University, Nanjing, China
e-mail: 09432@njnu.edu.cn
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
V. Counted etal. (eds.), Place, Spirituality, and Well-Being, Religion, Spirituality
and Health: A Social Scientic Approach 7, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-39582-6_14

244
social ideologies, builds a system of human norms and values through storytelling,
and it supports the maintenance of social order (Li etal., 2013).
However, unlike the world religions, which are popular and universal in nature,
Chinese folk religions have unique local characteristics and are rooted within a
certain geographical area, with local history and cultural traditions of their own. As
a result, Chinese folk religions do not have a unied divine order or singular set of
rituals (Zhou & Zhao, 1990). Folk religious worship is often closely related to the
construction of temples and local clans, which are social collectives formed on the
basis of blood ties, with the family as the constitutive unit (Li etal., 2013). Due to
the specicity of Chinese folk religions, folk temples—as material spaces for
prayers and rituals—are not purely religious spaces, but often serve other functions
of local cultural life as well. Therefore, in addition to folk religious consciousness,
the clan concept also plays an important role in the construction of spiritual space in
traditional Chinese township societies. In different economic, social, and cultural
contexts, folk religion, as one of the factors involved in the construction of local
culture, cultivates a sense of place in folk temples through the spirit of the temples
together with clan religious activities and collective and cultural memories (Lin
etal., 2020).
This chapter explores the spirit of place (genius loci) and sense of place in folk
temples from the perspective of architectural phenomenology using the case of
Guandi Temple in Gongguan Town, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. The
adoption of an architectural phenomenological perspective is partly due to the idea
that folk temples have received limited attention in the growing literature on archi-
tectural phenomenology (Seamon, 2000, 2018). More importantly, in research
related to the construction of a sense of place in temples, scholars often focus on the
emotional connection with place through religious practices and rituals (Counted &
Watts, 2019a, b; Counted & Zock, 2019), while neglecting the role of the inherent
qualities and functions of temple architecture in the construction of a sense of place
in daily life. Such qualities can help people naturally develop spiritual feelings
towards the place, without the need for formal religious practices and experiences.
In this chapter, we consider the ways in which folk temples evoke a sense of place
and explore the implications of such for individual and community well-being.
Case Area andMethodology
Gongguan Town, Hakka Culture, andGuan Di Temple
Gongguan Town is an ancient town with a long history of pure Hakka dialect cul-
ture, located on the shore of Beibu Gulf. It comprises 23 village committees and one
neighborhood committee within an area of about 178.5 square kilometers. As of the
end of 2017, the resident population of Gongguan Town was 119,181. Most of the
residents are Hakka people, who have a strong clan consciousness and religious
L. Ying and X. Huang

245
beliefs in multiple deities, among which the Guan Di worship is the most promi-
nent. On the rst and 15th day of the Lunar New Year and the 24th day of the sixth
lunar month, every family goes to the temple to pray for blessings.
During certain festivals, people go to the temples to make offerings and burn
incense. People who migrated from Gongguan Town to distant places are unable to
worship Guan Di personally, but will ask relatives or acquaintances to help them
purchase offerings and bring them to the temples. On the 14th day of the ninth
month of the lunar calendar, there is a major festival for the whole town to worship
the gods and ancestors, and the town raises funds to slaughter pigs and sheep to
worship in the town’s temple. Guandi Temple in Gongguan Township is the object
of this study. It was built in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, and is more than
500 years old. The temple is located in the residential area at the center of
Gongguan Town.
Guandi Temple covers an area of about 1030 square meters, with two symmetri-
cal entrances. The temple is divided into two parts, the stage and the Wusheng
Palace. The Wusheng Palace consists of two halls, connected by a corridor, with a
total of 12 statues inside (see Fig.14.1).
Architectural Phenomenology andInsider-Outsider Perspective
The term spirit of place (genius loci) comes from the ancient Roman belief that each
individual has a soul (genius) and a guardian spirit (guaraian), which gives life to
places and determines their identity and essence (Delfgaauw, 1968). Unique identi-
ties emerge when people interact with the features of their natural and built environ-
ments in close, reciprocal ways (Norberg-Schulz, 1980). Architectural
phenomenology can, then, be dened as the phenomenological study of architec-
tural experiences and meanings that are constituted by the characteristics of the built
environment and human life that unfold within it (Norberg-Schulz, 1980). Through
architectural phenomenology, the spirit of place reects how people perceive the
relationship between themselves and places. Qualities and time transform the mean-
ing of natural places into the character of man-made places. This character is
expressed in the concrete architectural elements and landscape shapes on the one
hand, and in the atmosphere of the place on the other. In the book Place and
Placelessness (Relph, 1976), internal and external aspects of local identity are pro-
posed: the internal aspects are experienced through actual experiences and are part
of life, whereas the external aspects are seen from the perspective of a traveler who
views the place from a distance.
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246
Fig. 14.1 Floor plan of Guandi Temple, Gongguan Town, China
Study Design
Institutional ethics approval was granted by the Academic Ethics Committee in the
School of Geography, Nanjing Normal University. For the purpose of this study,
participatory observation from a rst-person perspective, as well as informal discus-
sions with ve local residents in Gongguan Town (age range: 25–65 years;
male=60%), were used to explore the phenomena of interest. This approach was
chosen because the ancestors of the rst author lived in the area, and therefore have
a rich understanding of the local culture and have had hands-on experience with the
religious rituals and cultural activities of Guandi Temple. Pseudonyms were used to
de-identify local residents mentioned in the interviews and other textual data col-
lected for this study. Furthermore, participatory observation was selected because,
as a local person or ‘insider,’ the investigator’s emotions resonate with the temple in
many ways. At the same time, however, the researcher is not a religious believer, has
left home for school, and is a sojourning ‘outsider.’ The researcher positions herself
in the so-called middle ground between the insider and the outsider (Relph, 1976),
where critical reection can take place. Participatory observation also serves the
purpose of being able to discern, in the process of participation, details of behavior
L. Ying and X. Huang

247
that cannot be verbally represented. Being able to grasp non-representational ele-
ments can contribute to developing an understanding of how a sense of place is
formed in a temple and what subtle elements contribute to this experience.
Results
Experiencing theTemple
The folk temple landscape is a unique cultural landscape in Chinese townships,
consisting of the temple architecture, its spatial composition, and the external envi-
ronment. Guandi Temple is embedded in the residential area in the center of
Gongguan Town, not only in terms of geographic space but also in terms of living
space. The building is mostly vermillion red with some sections painted bright yel-
low. The Wusheng Palace courtyard has a lush ancient tree; sunlight lters through
its branches and creates patterns on the ground below. The ancient tree, courtyard,
light, shadow, and distinctive folk temple architecture give people a sense of calm-
ness and peace. The symmetrical architecture of the central axis emphasizes the
hierarchical sense of order in the space, whereas exquisite murals and reliefs on the
theme of folk mythology add to the aesthetics of the temple. Brightly colored stat-
ues of gods beam the sacred atmosphere of the space, and the stone monuments on
both sides of the corridor record the rise and fall of past dynasties. An excerpt from
the rst author’s observational notes provides an illustration of the temple:
The leaves of the ancient trees form varying shades of green in the slanting sunlight, and the
light and shadows in the courtyard sway with the wind. The unique landscape of the folk
temple creates an atmosphere of tranquility and peace, where time seems to stand still and
people in the temples can naturally develop a sense of security. The wall at the entrance of
the Wusonggung Palace is inscribed with the elders of the family who donated money to
rebuild the temple, and the rich meaning of the temple is carried on by deep blood ties. The
hovering yellow incense provides the unique scent of the temple, the New Year wishes
recited by the elders during the family prayers linger in the ears, the brightly colored statues
are gazed upon, the legends of the past are imagined, and the pillars of light formed by the
sun and dust seem to connect to the distant past (see Fig.14.2).
Fig. 14.2 Guandi Temple landscape in Gongguan Township
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248
The public event space outside the Wusheng Palace is at and relatively open, and
was used as a cultural event space for residents to watch Cantonese opera during the
early days of economic reforms in China, around the end of the twentieth century
when the country opened to the rest of the world. Guandi Temple, as the material
space for the town’s residents to offer sacrices, pray, and watch Cantonese opera,
formed a complex cultural landscape; both the religious space for clan sacrices and
prayers, as well as the public space for cultural activities, were integrated into the
daily lives of the local people. With the passage of time, Cantonese opera has gradu-
ally declined and is no longer the main cultural activity of local residents. In normal
times, the stage is used as a public space for parking cars, playing chess, and com-
munal location for older adults to socialize. During major ancestor worship and
blessing festivals, the Guandi Temple ofcials invite Cantonese opera troupes to
perform on the stage, and it is sometimes used as a venue for other festivals and
celebrations.
Mythological Narratives
Religions use the myths and the stories behind them as the basis for their value
systems. Most of the stories and legends behind folk religions take the location of
temples as the background, and use the folk gods and ancestors who used to live
there as the main characters in the narratives. These folk tales and legends are often
connected to signicant events that happened in the past, and there is a ‘mutual
interpretation’ between local history and culture that provides a rationale for the
temple’s existence.
Mythological narratives give folk temples a unique character by, amongst other
factors, cultivating a sense of personal connection with the temple. Different regions
and cultural environments have shaped the stories and legends in different colors
and styles, the central idea of which, however, cannot be separated from the idea
that the gods help the ancestors, reveal spirits to eliminate disasters, and keep the
peace. For example, according to the elder who is in charge of religious affairs at the
temple, during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties there was an epidemic that
left almost every family in Gongguan Town bereaved. In an effort to resolve the
crisis, the local chief invited a feng shui master to build the Guandi Temple in the
town, so as to protect the people with the loyalty of Guan Di. After the Guandi
Temple was built, the epidemic in Gongguan Town was controlled and soon disap-
peared. Following the death of Bai Shiyi, a local hero who saved lives and helped
the wounded, the people of Gongguan Town honored him with the name of Bai
Shiyi Tai Sin, and the story of Bai Shiyi is used in the religious folk activities that
are held every year.
In addition to murals and relief carvings of dragons, phoenixes, cranes, unicorns,
and other beings, which symbolize good luck, good fortune, and warding off evil
spirits, there are often elements of Chinese mythology as well. Many mythological
themes are connected to Guandi Temple, such as the Eight Immortals crossing the
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249
sea, the Goddess of Mercy, the scriptures from the Western sky, and the Ox and the
Weaving Maiden (among others). These stories convey the spirit of the temple,
emphasize the karma of all things, reect the tolerance and compassion of the gods,
and advise people to do good.
The surreal power of folk temples is tied to how they stir emotions. The spirit of
the place stems from this power and the atmosphere of the place created by elements
within the landscape, such as objects, light, colors, and architectural styles. Although
mythological narratives give meaning to place, they also emphasize the sacred char-
acter of space, which naturally creates a sense of intimacy and sheltered security for
the people who live there. The spirit of place conveyed by folk temples is not the
top-down sense of oppression, constraint, and strong ritual of religious power, but
rather a combination of everyday, accessible architectural space that includes the
sky, ancient trees, sunlight, and gods. In other words, the spirit of place in folk
temples is intimately connected to the real world. In one interviewee’s words:
I used to play in the courtyard with my friends when I was growing up here, and then I went
out to work and live outside. Every year, on the rst and 15th day of the Chinese New Year,
I would come back to pray with my whole family (Liao, male, 45 years of age).
Place Memory
The local people, as a clan unit, go to Guandi Temple to pray for blessings on certain
holidays, and the memory of folk religious activities becomes part of the clan’s col-
lective memory, uniting family members and deepening clan identity. Activities per-
formed together with relatives tend to have stronger emotional experiences and
deeper memories than individual actions. Group activities and practices, such as
visiting the gods and performing rituals during major festivals, deepen people’s
sense of belonging and shape the group’s local identity. They also contribute to
cultivating people’s sense of place towards Guandi Temple. As another inter-
viewee shared:
Every time I come back, it’s a big family together. Usually we are busy, and we don’t live
in the same place. We worship and pray together, but also talk about the recent situation, see
how tall the children have grown, which one has graduated, and where he went to work
(Chen, male, 35 years of age).
The local memories of people vary by age. In order to understand the differences,
informal conversations were had with younger and older generations. For older
adults who have always lived in the town, their emotional attachment to Guandi
Temple is based on their fond memories of folk religious beliefs and local feelings,
and they have gone through the process of changing their identity from learners and
participants to organizers and inheritors of folk religious rituals. Some of our con-
versations with the local people suggested that it can take time for a person to fully
appreciate the importance of Guandi Temple in the former lives of their ancestors;
as they age, however, people grow in their understanding through the local
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250
memories that are passed on to them and constructed over time. They are the ones
who have the most affection for the Guandi Temple, and they are also the main body
of people who inherit the local culture. In the eyes of local elders, Guandi Temple,
as a spatial carrier of the clan’s collective memory and local cultural memory, is the
physical embodiment of deep history and culture, linking the past with the future.
Guandi Temple is a place where the current generation of older adults were born and
raised, a place where they share stories and memories of the past, and remains an
important part of their lives. A life course description along these lines emerged in
a conversation we had with one older adult, who stated:
When I was little, I used to run to the courtyard with my childhood friends to play, and the
architecture of the temple was quite special, so I had a deep impression when I was little.
We used to come to the temple not only to pay our respects to Guandi during the New Year
festival, but also to listen to Cantonese opera and watch movies in the courtyard. Now that
I’m old, I’ve become a storyteller, and when I come back here, I remember a lot of people
and things (Ou, male, 65 years of age).
In modern society, places are no longer closed and static, and the movement of
people leads to a continuous import and export of culture that fosters more open and
dynamic places (Cresswell, 2015). The traditional township boundaries that were
built by common ancestry and geography no longer exist. The younger generation
of individuals from Gongguan Town, many of whom are working and living outside
of the town, are inuenced by both urban and township cultures: they lived in the
Gongguan Town as children, grew up in Beihai City, enjoyed the modern material
life, and mostly return to Gongguan Town only on important holidays and New
Year’s Day. Their local memories of Guandi Temple are typically linked to religious
festivals and related cultural events within the town, rather than being integrated
into their daily lives. Younger individuals tend to be atheists and have grown up in a
modern, educated, science-oriented environment that respects but is generally
ambivalent towards folk religious beliefs. Young people who were born in Gongguan
Town often view the folk rituals of the New Year’s Festival as traditional local cul-
tural activities, and are able to gain a sense of community and belonging that brings
about a deeper sense of clan identity. To illustrate, one young man who lives
abroad stated:
I feel these rituals are quite magical, not that I believe in these things, but treating them as
traditional cultural activities of the New Year Festival adds a sense of ritual to the New Year,
and allows me to relive the unique culture of my hometown. The Guandi Temple is a place
where my native feelings can be laid to rest (Li, female, 25 years of age).
In the process of transmitting cultural memories intergenerationally, family elders,
who are familiar with the local history and culture and have rich collective memo-
ries, hold the right to speak, tell the younger generation stories about the place,
teach the rituals and rituals of festivals, and enable the younger generation to inherit
the culture of their ancestors through participation in the clan’s religious activities.
One of the older adults from the town provided insight into this, stating:
You young people can’t appreciate the importance of this temple to you now, and many of
the rituals and ceremonies are unclear, but when you have a family and grandchildren, you
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251
will nd that this temple has been deeply rooted within you, and you will then realize the
signicance of these religious and cultural activities (Wu, female, 60 years of age).
Discussion
Genius Loci, Spirit ofPlace, andWell-Being
Based on our ndings, we submit that the conceptualization of light, matter, mate-
rial, order, and time in relation to sacred spaces (e.g., Belakehal et al., 2016;
Norberg-Schulz, 1980) is insufcient for fully understanding the spirit of place in
folk temples. We propose three additions. First, everyday life is inseparably tethered
to folk temples. That is, folk temples bring together the divine world and everyday
life, delineating the center, meaning, and intention of human action. This conceptu-
alization implies that place is not a physical environment independent of the people
with which it is associated; rather, it is inseparable from the commonly overlooked
experiential condition of place (Counted etal., 2021). This phenomenon is complex,
dynamic, and incorporates locality and its generative processes (Seamon, 2013).
This lived locality also means that place actually exists in and is constituted through
the interrelationship of life and place. To ignore the way of life of place is to ignore
the life of place and may even lead to a fragmented understanding. Therefore, as
Malpas (2012) says, it is important to take care of our own lives and our places.
Second, the physical body has a role in shaping a sense of place. To more deeply
understand the meaning of living in place, a growing number of phenomenologists
are discussing and emphasizing the signicance of embodied experience: a body
that simultaneously experiences, acts, and speaks to the world, and which is directly
present in a given situation (Casey, 2009; Donohoe, 2014; Seamon, 2013). With
regard to lived place, phenomenologists recognize that the lived body is a funda-
mental constituent of the experience and sense of place because “the lived body
belongs to and helps to constitute place” and because “place belongs to and depends
on the lived body” (Casey, 2009, p.327). Through bodily action and dialogue with
the world, an individual or group has a rich, diverse, local life, and a local identity
is born. In short, the body and place are “alive to each other” (Casey, 2009, p.327).
Third, mythic storytelling—a kind of collective narrative in the form of fairy
tales, legends, or parables—also plays an important role in shaping a sense of place.
The emphasis on narrative derives from the perspective that place is a dynamic and
relational concept (Counted etal., 2020). It is only through some form of narrative
structure that the action-oriented dynamics of place can be articulated. Moreover,
the unity of belonging to place and to human life seems to be best expressed through
the unity that characterizes collective narratives, in which different elements are
preserved in a continuous and evolving interrelationship. The relationship of narra-
tive to place is perhaps most evident when the place has a history, both cultural and
personal—a history that is often central to the identity of those places. It may even
14 Clans and Spiritual Space: A Case Study of Guandi Temple in an Ancient Hakka…

252
be said that historically signicant places are constituted by the narratives that
belong to them.
Clearly, Guandi Temple has a narrative structure—a structure that derives from
the activities that take place there and from its sociocultural signicance. In the
Hakka conception, mythological narratives are always embedded in places, imply-
ing not only that narratives play an important role in the constitution of places but
also that narratives themselves are essentially spatialized and localized. Therefore,
every place can also be understood from the perspective of narrative. The narrative
structure of a place is particularly important for Hakka people. The ‘hometown’
where the Hakka live, the ‘hometown’ they belong to, and the ‘hometown’ they
identify with is a narrated landscape: a myth that is not imposed, but a story that
carries the memory of the clan in its historical features and contours. In this way,
Guandi Temple, as a historical and cultural heritage site, forms a series of close con-
nections with the local people. This interpretation of history can provide members
of the clan with a sense of security and belonging. This connection to spiritual space
can support individual well-being, particularly when people are confronted with
adversity.
Place Memory, Sense ofCommunity, andWell-Being
Memory is an important link that sustains the emotional connection between people
and place, with potential implications for one’s sense of community. Local memory
is the key to an individual’s emotional connection to a place, and can inuence a
person’s understanding of community. At the same time, place is an index of mem-
ory. When people revisit a place, memories associated with it are often brought to
consciousness. In this sense, place memory constructs the meaning of place, mak-
ing meaningless spaces into meaningful places. For the residents of Gongguan
Town, Guandi Temple is a place that ‘holds’ the time-updated memory of past and
present experiences of the cultural collective. This local memory creates a common
symbolic and emotional identity that transcends time and space.
If locality requires memory, and memory is written over place, then individual
and collective memory need to be considered in light of the connection between
memory and place. People often have the impression that memory is a private box
of souvenirs. People usually do not think of memory as something that connects self
and others, or something that can be easily shared. Locals in Gongguan Town often
have shared memories regarding Guandi Temple. The reason for this is that it is
customary for a person to enter the temple accompanied by at least one other indi-
vidual. As the saying goes in Gongguan Town, ‘one person does not enter a temple,
and two people do not look at a well.’ Just as individual memory is connected to
place and body, collective memory also requires place. Guandi Temple, as the core
cultural landscape that is central to collective memory within the Gongguan Town,
plays an important role in uniting local people and strengthening individual identity.
Of course, the transmission of collective memory also requires its connection to
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Fig. 14.3 Mechanism of constructing well-being by folk temples
individual bodily memory. As the local people shape new collective memories in
rituals year after year, they are also recalling their shared cultural memories. In the
process,collective memories of ancestors are passed on and gain new relevance,
thus connecting the past with the present. Transmission of collective memory also
reinforces an individual’s attachment to other local people and the community more
broadly.
Considering the spirit of place in conjunction with place memory, we propose a
mechanism to promote spiritual well-being that consists of two main aspects: rst,
the direct spiritual sensing of sacred space by individuals through embodied experi-
ence; and second, the sense of community generated by the combination of indi-
vidual and collective memories that are rooted in a specic place (see Fig.14.3). On
the one hand, folk temple architecture creates a unique environmental atmosphere
and mythological narrative; it constructs the local spirit of folk temples through
individual embodied experience, linking deities, ancestors, and places. This point
enriches existing literature on the spirit of place. For example, the standard model
on the spirit of place emphasizes the direct and complex experience of place that
people are able to have after a certain amount of time; however, beyond the standard
model, there are strong emotions of spiritual dimensions that arise without pro-
longed experience, the most representative of which is people’s deep experience of
sacred space, such as the sense of reverence and trust in sacred places (Tuan, 1977).
This sense of trust can give individuals a sense of spiritual security. On the other
hand, people create, accumulate, and transmit local memories, both individual and
collective, through religious activities and practices that often occur in religious
places. Memories of older members of the family and people from other states are
the key to retaining collective memory, which is transmitted through generations.
This shared consciousness contributes to fostering and strengthening people’s sense
of belonging and community togetherness.
Conclusion
Using Guandi Temple in Gongguan Town as a case example, this chapter examined
the spirit of place (genius loci) and sense of place in folk temples from the perspec-
tive of architectural phenomenology. There are three key ndings that emerged
about the place spirit of Guandi Temple: rst, the temple serves as a living world
14 Clans and Spiritual Space: A Case Study of Guandi Temple in an Ancient Hakka…

254
that integrates sacred materials into the living space of local residents; second, the
temple shapes the architectural atmosphere of local, spiritual, and cultural spaces;
and third, the temple is a spatial setting that maintains a sense of sacredness and
local integrity. This is particularly important because the temple and its mythologi-
cal stories are aligned with people’s real needs for space, and at the same time are
‘mutually interpreted’ by local historical and cultural traditions. This interpretation
of history can provide local people with a sense of place and communal belonging,
with subsequent benets for individual well-being.
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