A Tudigong (Chinese: 土地公; lit. 'Lord of the Land') is a kind of Chinese tutelary deity of a specific location. There are several Tudigongs corresponding to different geographical locations and sometimes multiple ones will be venerated together in certain regions.
They are tutelary (i.e. guardian or patron) deities of locations and the human communities who inhabit it in Chinese folk religion, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taoism. They are portrayed as old men with long beards.
Chinese temple architecture refer to a type of structures used as place of worship of Chinese Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, or Chinese folk religion, where people revere ethnic Chinese gods and ancestors. They can be classified as:
Gōng (宮), meaning "palace" is a term used for a templar complex of multiple buildings, while yuàn (院), meaning "institution," is a generic term meaning "sanctuary" or "shrine". Táng (堂) means courtyard or room, and ān (庵) means dome or nunnery.
A City God (Chinese: 城隍神; pinyin: Chénghuángshén; lit. 'god of the boundary'), is a tutelary deity in Chinese folk religion who is believed to protect the people and the affairs of the particular village, town or city of great dimension, and the corresponding location in the afterlife. City God cults appeared over two millennia ago, and originally involved worship of a protective deity of a town's walls and moats. Later, the term came to be applied to deified leaders from the town, who serve in authority over the souls of the deceased from that town, and intervene in the affairs of the living, in conjunction with other officials of the hierarchy of divine beings. City Gods are considered above tudigongs ('lords of local land'), which themselves are above landlord deities.