本文嘗試分析中國宗教實踐中「家戶」的概念及家戶型宗教服務供給者。首先，筆者介紹中國大陸近年來出現的一個新稱呼:I迷信專業戶」。這 是指那些依靠民間宗教掙錢的各種家戶型宗教服務供給者:巫神，陰陽先生，算命先生，火居道士，紙紮匠等。這輕蔑的稱呼卻把這些宗教專業者歸類成倍受讚美的「個體戶」而使之顯得合法。根據恢北的田野調查及各種文獻資料，本文闡述家戶型宗教服務供給者的經營手法及其相互合作的方式，凸顯家戶型宗教服務供給型態的歷史及結構優越性。

This article examines the role of the householder religious service
provider and the household idiom in the overall field of religious
practice in China. First I will look at the emergence of a new label, superstition
specialist households (mixin zhuanyehu), in the PRC, and attempt
to situate this emergence within the socio-economic and political context
of reform-era China. This label shows how the Chinese party-state now
conceptualizes ritual specialists such as spirit mediums -- yinyang masters,
fortune-tellers, and others who make a living in the popular religious
realm (including folk musicians and opera performers who perform at
temple festivals, temple caretakers, non-monastic Buddhist and Daoist ritualists,
votive offering manufacturers, etc.). Though sardonic and condemnatory
in tone, this appellation also puts these people in the larger category
of getihu (private business households), whose existence is not only
legitimate but even celebrated in reform-era China. I then present a couple
of vignettes from my ethnographic fieldwork in Shaanbei (north-central
China) to illustrate how householder religious service providers typically
work (one vignette on a spirit medium; the other on a yinyang master).
While operating upon very different principles yinyang masters
rely on esoteric knowledge and ritual orthopraxy, whereas spirit mediums
rely on deity power and efficacy -- both kinds of ritual specialist are religious
entrepreneurs taking full advantage of the “household idiom,” in
contradistinction to affiliation with formal institutions such as monasteries,
temples, or guilds. Next I look at what I call “ritual jamming,” referring to
the ad hoc coming together of householder ritualists to stage larger rituals in response to some clients’ more elaborate needs. I also examine the
household idiom and see what advantages it has over the corporatist
idiom in terms of ritual service provision at the grassroots level, as well as
its ability to weather political suppression. I conclude by offering some
speculative comments on the probable future of the household idiom in
Chinese religious culture.