-125- Virtuous Women on the Move: Minnan Vegetarian Women (caigu) and Chinese Buddhism in Twentieth-Century Singapore * Show Ying Ruo ** Abstract This article focuses on a heretofore little-studied community of Chinese Buddhist women in Singapore, vegetarian women (caigu 菜姑) of China’s Minnan 閩南 region (Southern Fujian 福建), exploring their historical origins and social networks in the region. Drawing on ethnographic insights and written sources, this study presents a picture of a twentieth century transnational Buddhist network initiated and maintained by these women. The paper discusses how the fluidity of their Buddhist identities reveals transformations in regional Buddhist movements and their negotiations within that context. Such diverse images of female Chinese Buddhists allow us to reconsider the many historical faces of “traditional Buddhist women.” In this case, the Buddhist women’s active networks were not confined to the family, and they did not rely on men in socioeconomic endeavors. As an important female diasporic group in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, caigu often negotiated and integrated both their religious resources and dynamic roles across international locales. By establishing vegetarian halls, Buddhist temples, schools, and business networks, * Research for this article was supported by a Heritage Research Grant from the National Heritage Board, Singapore under a research project titled “Mapping Female Religious Heritage in Singapore: Chinese Female Temples as Sites of Regional Socio-Cultural Linkage (19th Century to the Present)” (R-395-000-067-490). ** Postdoctoral Fellow, Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore 華人宗教研究 第十七期 2021 年 1 月 頁 125～181 10.6720/SCR.201907_(17).0001