40-days of animacy in SE China and Asia
I just wrapped up a 40-day trip exploring animism in SE China and Asia a few weeks ago. It was intense and beautiful, and I’m happy to have journeyed.
Here are my main takeaways:
Human consciousness shapes the energetics of spaces; the inner and outer are not separate. Lands and places carry the emotional and somatic imprints of the past, and of those who live there now.
Devotional energy has a distinct texture and holding, felt in some temples and not others.
Ancestral halls are access points to realms beyond the veil. We can create bridges to the ancestral world through relationships fed and kept alive with our remembrance, honoring, and offerings.
Part of the potency 灵气 of a being (Mazu, Guanyin, God, nature, ancestor, etc.) is fed by the devotion of the people. The more devout, the more coherent a field - fed by gratitude, blessings, and prayers.
Rituals help create balance with the unseen realms. Yet there is a disconnect between ritual and embodied living.
Chinese animism is embedded in culture - fengshui, ancestral worship, I-ching, Qi, 5 elements – especially in rural areas, but lacks ecological reciprocity. Modern Chinese spirituality is mostly transactional – I give to get – and for most who’ve forgotten, money is the religion.
Many Eastern spirituality believe in fate and destiny – as lessons to learn and worked through by building good karma. Inherent in this is more acceptance and surrender. It expands my Western conditioning of seeing individual personality, family dynamics, and changing mindset and action as the only ways to change life circumstances.
Ok now, how did this all start?
After participating in an ancestral ritual at Susan Harper’s Mystery Depth – I was inspired and started becoming curious… what are my cultural ritual practices to relate with the unseen? I felt unanchored to relate without a deeper scaffolding.
My first two months in China gave me a taste. But the temples and ancestral halls did not hold the energetics, only the form.
So I wondered where could I go if the threads weren’t broken.
The answer was - Malaysia, for how well it’s preserved pre-cultural revolution traditions. (Some people joke Malay-Chinese are more Chinese than mainland Chinese - 这里比中国还中国.)
Penang
Penang was truly a time capsule and revealed Chinese culture with unbroken threads. After visiting the first temple, I knew I was onto something. The energetic fields at the temples were alive and held deep reverent energy, and maps to how devout people are – offerings and temple visits on the 1st and 15th of lunar months, frequent rituals, altars in front (Earth Spirit) and inside every Chinese home (Guanyin, Buddha, etc).
I also found out a sect of Daoism fled and established roots here due to political conflicts with the Chinese dynastic government, and still carries on its rituals.
I was so touched by the relationship the Malay-Chinese here had to roots and place. All my taxi drivers knew where their ancestors immigrated from, down to the name of the village. Each place of origin has a clan association and built exquisite clan houses to honor their roots. These also housed ancestral halls teeming with aliveness and seemed to connect beyond the veil. Perhaps because the relationship wasn’t broken, and is deeply fed and met with respect and offerings. When I visited one of the most famous Khoo Kongsi (Associations), my visceral physiological reaction was to kneel 跪下 and bow down 磕头 before the vastness of this ancestral energy that linked me to an ancient Chinese essence 中华精髓 – a commitment to family, clan, and remembrance of ancestors and the land of birth. A literal sense of - we thrive together, and we die together (i.e., community members were even buried together on purchased plots of land).
Ipoh
I also visited Ipoh. It used to be a bustling tin-mining town built by hardworking Chinese immigrants. It helped me see the gifts of the Chinese diaspora – the capacity to bear hardship, community support, and business-savvyness really helped them thrive in business. This seems to be true across SE Asia, and likely globally. I felt inspired and resonant… this is in my blood too.
Ipoh was energetically challenging. After switching Airbnbs 4x, I realized it’s likely the energy the land carries. I felt suffocated in my throat, tightness in my gut, and a twist in my solar plexus, the power center. Fear and powerlessness.
It had me curious what happened here? I later found out there is a talent drain problem due to a lack of economic opportunities and currency arbitrage, and also wonder if the heavy Muslim conservative influence plays a part.
After all that, it felt like time to leave Malaysia. A friend suggested Bali, and I’m so glad I went.
Bali
I had resisted Bali for its reputation as a hub for ungrounded and overly commercial New Age spirituality. But this time, I was taken by the magic of the land and Balinese culture.
The island is extremely nourishing. The energy was potent and supported expression, creativity, and beauty, and I felt a deep life force beneath flow through my body from underground volcanic heat and expansive surrounding oceans.
Also, the Balinese rituals imbued the island with energetic coherence, a huge reprieve for my extremely sensitive system.
The daily offering rituals of Canang Sari baskets and gama tirtha (water purification) create a direct relationship with the unseen. There are also larger rituals like Nyepi (New Year) and Galungan (ancestral return) that create bridges and clear the island of bad energy.
I was shocked to hear the locals speak of chakras, multiverses, and spirit entities as very matter-of-fact existences as they are built into their culture.
A taxi driver spoke of a friend getting lost in another dimension and unable to find his way home till the lure of gamelan music. He said, the time was different there – a few hours are days here.
The Balinese also had a close relationship with the elements, from returning the body to the elements in the burial process to the elemental Gods worshipped.
Balinese Hindu Animism is mystical, magical, and elemental. Part of my Soul felt met in this cultural landscape. I’ve vowed to return for a deeper dive.
Fujian
Then I was called back by life to return to China to Fujian, a SE Chinese province. It’s a region in China where folk culture is best preserved. I saw here the same practices that lived in Malaysia – land altars for the Earth Spirit and altars in homes. There are also village temples and a huge following for Mazu.
I visited Tulou homes, this circular architecture that housed villages of people (up to 900) for protection and community. These buildings cultivated a deep sense of community and resilience.
I found the Mazu temple to be the most potent in terms of fields, it felt maternal and caring – so much so that I was able to let go and release some emotional tension and tears. Her followers are also extremely devout – villages of people would make annual pilgrimages to Meizhou island carrying wooden sedan chairs and miniature statues of her for blessing and prayers.
Full Circle - Wuxi
As I returned to integrate this journey in my hometown, my family also started to reveal their belief in the world of the unseen. I was told most people have this worldview here and would hire mediums, fate readers, and local “shamans” to perform clearings, connect to the other side, and help avoid bad outcomes. So while it’s not visible in the temples or government-constructed ancestor halls, it lives in the people.
My grandmother also told me stories of the Cultural Revolution. The trauma endured – anything related to the old world was destroyed and forbidden from being practiced. It was an uprooting of thousands of years of ritual and practice, and forcing people into inner warring secrecy and lies. Then came capitalism, where money influenced decisions and fate. All of this helped me make sense of modern China.
Full Circle - Wuxi
It was beautiful to see how deeply seated the belief of the unseen is in Chinese culture, in mainland and Malaysia – the ancestral worship, Taoist rituals, offering to the spirit of the land, and more. It’s still deeply alive, even after the Cultural Revolution and modern capitalism. The same in Bali - the Canang Saris, nature offerings, and energetic rituals are deeply embedded in culture.
And at the same time, what I witnessed was often rituals cut off from ecology, belief without embodiment, and reverence without reciprocity and relationship. What’s missing is listening to the land as kin, recognizing the sentience in mountains, rivers, and stones, and an understanding that our actions affect the spirit world and the ecology.
What’s needed is a felt participatory ritual relationship with the environment and ecology around us.
If animism is normative consciousness, as our ancestors lived and embodied it, how do we as a collective, return to this way of seeing and living? These are the inquiries that pull my heartstrings, and answers to live into.
Till next time,
Abby
