The Stove God Who Reports to Heaven

The Kitchen God (Zao Jun, the Stove God) is among the most widely worshipped of Chinese domestic deities, the god of the hearth who resides in the kitchen of every household and watches over the family through the year. His role is that of a resident inspector: at year's end, traditionally on the twenty-third or twenty-fourth of the twelfth lunar month, he ascends to Heaven to make his annual report to the Jade Emperor on the conduct of the household, whose fortunes for the coming year hang on what he says.

Families accordingly see him off with ceremony, offering sweet, sticky foods and, in a widespread custom, smearing the mouth of his paper image with honey or sugar, half in reverence and half so that he will speak only sweet words above (or find his lips too stuck to speak ill), then burning the old image to send him up in the smoke and pasting a fresh one above the stove to welcome him back at New Year. The custom remains a familiar part of the run-up to the Lunar New Year.