Locations: Various villages in Yunnan. China
Date: April/May 2005
Camera: Canon Ixus IZoom
Door Gods are Chinese decorations placed on doors of homes, temples, business premises and so on, to ward off evil spirits and bad luck. Wiki has a brief but good article on this subject. However these days things have changed a lot in China. As opposed to the traditional and still well-practiced tradition by Overseas Chinese of having righteous, well-known generals (who became deities later on) as Door Gods, China Chinese have a new hero- the People�s Liberation Army (PLA). As readers may know, the PLA is China�s unified military, the military arm of the Communist Party of China and the very same outfit that �liberated� China from the Kuomintang (Nationalists) in the 1950s. However, unlike the traditional Door Gods who are well-known personalities, the �new� Door God is an entity- an unknown soldier.
