What kind of festival is A-Mazu?

The A-Ma Festival, according to legend, the 23rd day of the 3rd month and the 9th day of the 9th month of the lunar calendar are the birth day and the anniversary of the death of A-Ma, respectively. On each of these two days, tens of thousands of seafarers come to make pilgrimage to A-Ma. Currently, the festival includes worship of A-Ma, seminars on A-Ma culture, and handicraft exhibitions and sales - people can enjoy the characteristic folk songs and dances, and taste the Min cuisine.

Mazu is a Taoist sea goddess belief centered on the southeast coast of China, also known as the Heavenly Mother, Tin Hau, Tin Hau Niangiang, Tin Fei, Tin Fei Niang, Meizhou Niangma and so on. The two main guardian deities for A-Ma to inspect and listen to the world are the Thousand-Mile Eyes (also known as the Golden General), who holds a moon brow axe in his right hand and raises his left hand to his forehead to look into the distance, and the Shunfeng Ear (also known as the Water General), who holds a square heavenly painted halberd in his right hand and raises his left hand to the side of his ear to listen to the sound of the wind.

During the period when Zheng He traveled to the West during the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty, it was a peak in the spread of the Mazu faith overseas. In addition, with a large number of uninterrupted Chinese overseas immigration activities, the spread of Mazu faith was wider and deeper, spreading from Fujian to coastal provinces such as Zhejiang and Guangdong, and to Taiwan, the Ryukyus, Hong Kong, Macao, the Philippines, Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and other places; there are Tianhougong (Heavenly Queen's Palace) or Mazu temples distributed along the coasts of Shanghai and Nanjing, as well as in Shandong and Liaoning, and even Europe and the Americas have begun to have Mazu Temple.