The making of a local deity: the Patriarch of Sanping’s cult in post-Mao China, 1979–2015 Jack Meng-Tat Chia Department of History, National University of Singapore, Singapore ABSTRACT This article explores how local Chinese authorities employed various strategies to promote the Patriarch of Sanping’s cult in post-Mao China from 1979 to 2015. It argues that the cult of the Patriarch of Sanping became an invented tradition for expanded religious tourism in Pinghe County in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province. Local state agents employed various placemaking strategies to promote Sanping Monastery and endorse the deity’s efficacy, creating an opportunity for resources to be channeled from other parts of China, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities to develop Pinghe County. This study shows that, on the one hand, local state agents have propagated miracle tales to entice devotees to visit and make donations to this monastery while, on the other hand, they have courted scholars, journalists, and tour guides to generate attention and interest in the cult. Overall, this article demonstrates how local government placemaking and marketing strategies have contributed to the transformation of a Buddhist master from a local deity to a popular god in contemporary China. ARTICLE HISTORY Received 23 June 2021 Accepted 18 November 2021 KEYWORDS Patriarch of Sanping; Sanping Monastery; religious tourism; Pinghe; Fujian Introduction In the winter of 1979, the Sanping Monastery (Sanping si) in China’s Pinghe County in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, reopened its doors for the first time since the Cultural Revolution, which had lasted from 1966 until 1976. Devotees from China and overseas visited the monastery to pay homage to the Patriarch of Sanping (Sanping Zushi), a local Buddhist deity. During that year alone, the Sanping Monastery received approxi- mately 120,000 visitors and collected more than RMB 130,000 (approximately US$ 82,000 in 1979) in donations. New statues of the Patriarch of Sanping, together with his two attendants, were carved, consecrated, and installed in the monastery. 1 The deity and this monastery are named after the cult’s place of origin, Sanping, one of nine villages in Wenfeng township of Pinghe County (Figure 1). 2 The village is situ- ated in a rural mountainous region and is known today as a scenic attraction. Accord- ing to the 1994 Gazetteer of Pinghe County (Pinghe xian zhi), there are eight scenic locations in Sanping: the peak of the turtle and snake (guishe feng), tiger forest © 2022 BCAS, Inc. CONTACT Jack Meng-Tat Chia jackchia@nus.edu.sg 1 Sanping si zhi 2008, 17. 2 Sanping si zhi 2008, 63. CRITICAL ASIAN STUDIES 2022, VOL. 54, NO. 1, 86–104 https://doi.org/10.1080/14672715.2021.2009352