The Kitchen God is a god in traditional Chinese culture. He usually sits on the family stove to supervise the good and evil in the world. It is said that the Kitchen God will report to the Jade Emperor every year on the 23rd or 24th night of the twelfth lunar month. People's words and deeds, including their good and evil, rich and poor, misfortune and so on.
There are different versions of the name and image of the Kitchen God. Some say that he is the incarnation of Huangdi or Yandi, some say that he is the son of Zhuanxu, some say that he is a beautiful woman or an old woman, and some say that he is a man named Zhuanxu. Businessman with a sheet.
In order to please the Kitchen God and let him say more good things and less bad things when he goes to heaven, people came up with various methods.
Some worship him with chewing gum or maltose, thinking that this will stick the Kitchen God's teeth, so that he can only speak sweet words; Some use yellow sheep as sacrifices, thinking that this can express respect and gratitude to the Kitchen God; some use paper horses or roosters as the Kitchen God's mount, and prepare some soybeans and hay as dry food for the Kitchen God and the horse.
People put the kitchen god statue on the top of the kitchen stove, and the side of the pot stove is facing the wall of the bellows. Most of the couplets on both sides read "Heaven brings good things, and the lower world keeps safe".
The Kitchen God will record everything he observes on the stove in the "good pot" and "evil pot", and then report to the Jade Emperor. According to the report of the Kitchen God, the Jade Emperor decided to reward and punish the family.
I think the Kitchen God is a very interesting deity. He is both the God of the kitchen and the supervisor of the world. He must be awed by people and bribed by people. He is a character full of contradictions and complexities.