Xunzhou and Wuzhou Prefectures, on the middle reaches of the Xijiang (West) River in Guangxi Province, have the greatest concentration of temples to the God of the Three Realms. From Ming to Qing, the images of the god in this region underwent a transformation and process of sedimentation from a water or snake deity and the ancestor of the Yao people, into a local protective deity and the ancestor of the Feng lineage, and eventually into a deity recorded in the state register of sacrifice. The transformation in representations of the deity reflects the process of incorporation of the region into state orthodoxy. The changes in symbolic representations that follow political and economic changes thus reflect the cultural processes undergone by local society.
