Wangye practices online: From burning effigy vessels to digital networks

This article explores the performance of a transnational network of Wangye practices, spirits, technologies, vessels, and Sinophone communities. The Wangye belief, a Fujianese popular religion performed in mainland China, Southeast Asia and Taiwan, remains widely performed. The article begins with an account of watching a YouTube recording of the live stream video of the Donggang Ying Wang religious festival in 2018. Culminating in the deity's sending off at the seaside and the burning of the NT$7 million Wangye's Boat, the video of the burning vessel remains archived online. Similarly in Malaysia, Yong Chuan Tian Temple performed the ‘Wangkang Ceremony’ in 2020, which also featured an elaborate construction of a vessel and its eventual burning. Streamed and recorded online, viewers can now witness the revelation of spirits through the conversion of material vessels into ash,smoke, and digital video. These digital enactments of religious vessels articulate a new religious re-composition that includes religious and non-religious social actors, machines, and gods, bringing old frontiers of nation and diaspora into contact.