Fenxiang, dividing the incense, is the mechanism by which Chinese temple networks propagate and it produces a genuine genealogy. A new temple is established by taking ash from the censer of an existing one and installing it in the new burner, which makes the new foundation a daughter of the parent; the obligation is to return periodically with the image or the censer to renew the connection, a pilgrimage called jinxiang. Over centuries this has generated traceable networks radiating from Fujian to Taiwan, and from both to Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and the Chinese communities of North America and Europe. The Mazu network is the largest and best documented. It also became politically loaded: when Taiwanese Mazu temples resumed pilgrimages to the ancestral temple at Meizhou in Fujian from the late 1980s, the journeys carried unavoidable cross-strait political meaning, and both governments have taken an interest in who goes and what it is said to signify.