Chinese folk religion (also known as
Chinese popular religion) is the
religious tradition of the
Han Chinese, in which government officials and common people of China share religious practices and beliefs, including veneration of forces of nature and ancestors, exorcism of harmful forces, and a belief in the rational order of nature which can be influenced by human beings and their rulers. The
gods or
spirits (
shen) can be
nature deities,
city deities or
tutelary deities of other human groups,
national deities,
cultural heroes and
demigods,
ancestors and
progenitors, and deities of the kinship.
Stories regarding some of these gods are codified into the body of
Chinese mythology. By the eleventh century (
Song period) these practices had been blended with
Buddhist ideas of
karma (one's own doing) and rebirth, and
Taoist teachings about hierarchies of gods, to form the popular religious system which has lasted in many ways until the present day.