Mazu was, by the tradition's own account, a real person: Lin Moniang, born on Meizhou island off Fujian around 960, a fisherman's daughter said to have fallen into trance while weaving and to have saved her father and brothers from a storm at sea in vision, dying young around 987. Successive dynasties granted her escalating titles, from Lady to Consort to Empress of Heaven, which is the ordinary mechanism by which local Chinese deities were absorbed into the state pantheon. Her cult travelled with Fujianese seafarers and traders and there are now thousands of temples across Taiwan, Fujian, Southeast Asia and the ports of the Chinese diaspora worldwide. The Dajia Mazu pilgrimage in Taiwan, a nine-day procession of some three hundred kilometres, draws hundreds of thousands of participants and is one of the largest religious events in the Chinese world; UNESCO inscribed Mazu belief and customs in 2009. Her image is instantly identifiable by the flat-topped imperial crown with its curtain of beads.