The gods of Chinese folk religion are numerous, specialised and largely local, and many of them began as human beings. Mazu, the sea goddess whose cult spread from Fujian across the coast and the diaspora, is remembered as a girl who saved sailors; Guan Yu, honoured as a god of loyalty by soldiers, police and businessmen alike, was a general of the third century. Both received imperial titles, which is how the state historically absorbed local cults it approved of rather than banning them. Alongside these stand the earth god of a particular patch of ground, city gods, kitchen gods, gods of wealth, of examinations, of medicine, and of specific trades.
The relationship is transactional in a way that is often misread as cynical. A worshipper states a request, makes an offering, and returns to give thanks if it works, sometimes with an opera performed for the god. Divination blocks thrown on the temple floor give yes or no answers; numbered sticks shaken from a cylinder are matched to printed oracles. A god that does not deliver loses its following, and a god that does, gains one; efficacy, ling, is the working criterion.
Temples are built and run by neighbourhoods, lineages, guilds and merchant associations rather than by any church. There is no central authority, no ordination that covers the whole system, and no canon. Ritual specialists are hired: Taoist priests for major offering rites, Buddhist clergy for merit, spirit mediums, feng shui practitioners and diviners as needed.
Festivals are the visible core, the god's birthday procession, the incense-dividing pilgrimages that link daughter temples to a mother temple, lion and dragon dances, opera, firecrackers, feasting. These are simultaneously religious events, community organisation and local economy, and in Taiwan the largest Mazu pilgrimages mobilise hundreds of thousands of people over several days.