A Study on the Cultural Symbols of Religious Folk Life – Taking the Character of "Baomazai" as an Example

For people in Taiwan, the word "Baomazai" has the characteristics of literal visualization. From interviews, we learned that most people would directly associate it with "a person riding a fast horse to deliver a message". Due to diverse performance such as TV program, Taiwanese Opera, Glove Puppet Show and other folk dramas, broadcasters in "local style" who wear bamboo hats and beat gongs along the streets to broadcast news are the vivid impression of concrete character that we have for Baomazai. Nowadays, the term "Baomazai" has also been extended to express the abstract meaning of " news broadcast". For example, it is used in website titles to indicate the announcement of the message. In addition, the "Baomazai", a pioneer in the Mazu Pilgrimage Procession activities of folk Mazu belief, not only explores the way and delivers messages, but also has its own established style impression and semiotic metaphor to advise people to do good. However, in academic research, there are research gaps and few studies on the relevant literature of Baomazai. Three research methods used for this study are as follows: 1. analyzing and summarizing literature (website, existing research paper); 2. structured interviews with 16 general public to understand the interpretation of the intuition of "Baomazai"; 3. semi-structured interview with 1 experts (Ya-po Chi, the scholar of cultural studies in Beigang Yunlin). Through the interview, we learned that "Baomazai", the pioneer of Mazu Pilgrimage Procession of Beigang Chaotian Temple, is the concrete character of religious activities. The character has equipment with cultural semiotics which combines three essentials as following: 1.symbol; 2.semiotics; 3. phonetic metaphor (homophone pun). Mazu’s four spirits of "satisfaction, kindness, gratitude, and cherishing blessings" and their visual symbols are conveyed. Research results: Based on the above summary and analysis, a metadata database of text and visual semantics of "Baomazai" was constructed to serve as a reference for designers, educators or future applications in various fields.