Using the Six-Surnames Shrine in the Penglai Temple of the Anxi society in Singapore as a case study, this essay examines
the worship of these deities among Singapore Chinese. First, it outlines the historical process whereby individual migrants “took incense from the home shrine” across territorial boundaries (that is, took their deities with them), so that these deities “settled down”in a new place, establishing a distinctive form of worship distant from but nonetheless linked, through the deity, to the migrants’ancestral home. Second, it considers the significance of the worship of these “ancestral-home deities” (zushen) for the
social integration of Singapore Chinese. Finally, it traces how, in the course of social development and change, ancestral-home deities gradually evolved into symbolic markers linking overseas Chinese to their ancestral home, providing a focus for the expression of native place or
ancestral-home identity (zuji rentong). Thus, by encompassing historical memories of both the ancestral home and the site of overseas migration, worship of ancestral-home deities played an important role in the integration of Singapore Chinese and in the ongoing relationship between the overseas Chinese and their ancestral homes.