Kitchen God
the most important of a plethora of Chinese domestic gods that protect the hearth and family
The kitchen deity – also known as the Stove God, named Zao Jun, Zao Shen, Zao kimjah, Cokimjah or Zhang Lang – is the most important of a plethora of Chinese domestic gods that protect the hearth and family. The Kitchen God is recognized in Chinese folk religion, Chinese mythology, and Taoism. He is also celebrated throughout the Sinosphere.
It is believed that on the twenty-third day of the twelfth lunisolar month, just before Chinese New Year, the Kitchen deity returns to Heaven to report the activities of every household over the past year to Yu Huang Da Di (Chinese: 玉皇大帝; pinyin: Yùhuángdàdì), the Jade Emperor. The Jade Emperor, emperor of the heavens, either rewards or punishes a family based on Zao Jun's yearly report.
Story
Zhang Lang
Though there are many stories on how Zao Jun became the Kitchen God, the most popular one dates back to around the 2nd century BC. Zao Jun was originally a mortal man living on earth whose name was Zhang Lang. He eventually became married to a virtuous woman but ended up falling in love with a younger woman. He left his wife to be with this younger woman and, as punishment for this adulterous act, the heavens afflicted him with ill fortune. He became blind, and his young lover abandoned him, leaving him to resort to begging to support himself.
Once, while begging for alms, he happened to cross the house of his former wife.
“Kitchen God” enters the record as the most important of a plethora of Chinese domestic gods that protect the hearth and family. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kitchen, most and important can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q249178. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kitchen God” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.