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an equally peculiar syntax and grammar made it difficult for Jiang and his colleagues to comprehend.
Jiang sinocentricly viewed this divergence from Han convention as a failing on the part of Yao ritual specialists. Somehow they had learned to use Chinese writing but had failed to grasp how the language worked. In so doing, Jiang assumed that there was an intrinsic connection between the Chinese script—in his understanding, a Han Chinese phenomenon/ invention—and Chinese language. What he did not take into account was the possibility that Yao employed Chinese script to represent their own semantic and syntactic necessities.30 It is also the case that many Yao documents are copies—or at least related versions—of sources that also appear in official compendia, such as the Daoist Canon (Daozang 
).
After seeing a Chinese couplet (duilian 
) hanging over a temple in a Yao village and said to have been written by the village headman (cunzhang 
), Jiang questioned whether Yao could even read, or grasp the meaning of, the words that they wrote.31 Unfortunately, he failed to explain in detail why he came to this conclusion. The couplet follows a standard format of parallel verse, with two corresponding seven character lines: “The three stars together shine, bringing peace to our residence. The five fortunes approach, blessing with goodness our home 
.”32 What about this couplet convinced Jiang that, even though Yao people could write, they were unable to understand the meaning of the characters?33 Is it because of where they hung it and that their choice of location did not follow Han conventions?34 From a Han perspective, such a couplet belongs more on a family home than on a temple, since it is more a prayer for family blessing. Perhaps, but following a convention is not the same as understanding the meaning of what is written.35
As Jiang noted, every Yao village he visited had a similar, simply constructed religious structure—the only white building in a village— which his Yao informants called “shrines” (ci 
) rather than “temples” (si 
).36 A shrine is generally a place for the worship of ancestors or important deceased heroes; thus, it is not so unusual that there would be a couplet ushering in blessings for the families living in the village.