3. Local Studies: Mainland China

Aijmer, Göran. "A Family Reunion: The Anthropology of Life, Death and New Year in Soochow." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 15(2005)2: 199-218.

Aijmer, Göran & Virgil K. Y. Ho. Cantonese Society in a Time of Change. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2000. [Note: See chapters 8 through 13 for information on ancestral cult, temples, and the revival of popular religion in Pearl River Delta villages.]

Aijmer, Göran. "Landscape and Mindscape in Southeastern China: the Management of Death in a Mountain Community." Journal of Ritual Studies 21.2 (2007): 32-45.

Aijmer, Göran. “Cold Food, Fire and Ancestral Production: Midspring Celebrations in Central China.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Third Series 20.3 (2010): 319-344.

Abstract: This article seeks to explain the traditional celebration of Cold Food and some other springtime customs in the mid-Yangzi basin in central China. In these rituals the ancestors and their influence in the production of new rice were highlighted while, at the same time, social reproduction through women was temporarily suspended. Female generative energy was not allowed to compete with the creative force of the ancestors in the fields. Cold Food is seen as a trope on seasonal agricultural tasks. The myth of moral constancy, which accompanied the festival, was on another deeper level an iconic exploration of the preparation of the agr icultural fields. Death was seen to propel life, ancestral energy being transfer red to the living through rice.

Andersen, Poul, "Taoist Ritual in the Shanghai Area." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.263-283.

Anderson, Samantha, "Gender and Ritual in South-East China." In: Arvind Sharma & Katherine K. Young [eds.], Annual Review of Women in World Religions, vol. VI. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002. Pp.122-207.

Arrault, Alain. "Analytic Essay on the Domestic Statuary of Central Hunan: The Cult to Divinities, Parents, and Masters." Journal of Chinese Religions 36 (2008): 1-53.

Baptandier, Brigitte, "Pratiques de la mémoire en Chine: le dieu des murs et des fossés de Puxi et Hanjiang." Genèses 23 (1996): 100-124.

Baptandier, Brigitte, "Entrer en montagne pour y rêver. Le mont des Pierres et des Bambous." Terrain 26(1996): 99-122.

Baptandier, Brigitte, "Lüshan Puppet Theatre in Fujian." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.243-256.

Baptandier, Brigitte, "Façonner la divinité en soi: À la recherche d'un lieu d'énonciation." Ethnologies 25(2003)1: 109-151. (Note: On female mediums [xiangu] in Fujian province.)

Bender, Mark, "A Description of Jiangjing (Telling Scriptures) Services in Jingjiang, China." Asian Folklore Studies 60(2001)1: 101-133.

Abstract: Jiangjing (telling scriptures) is a local style of oral prosimetric narrative performed in ritual contexts in the area of Jingjiang on the north bank of theYangzi River in Jiangsu Province, China. The style is a local expression of a once popular form of oral narrative known as baojuan ('precious scrolls' or 'precious volumes') that traditionally had associations with popular Buddhism and other beliefs. Jiangjing performances are recognized locally as having secular and sacred story repertories, performed by semi-professional storytellers at nighttime and daytime services, respectively. The storyteller is accompanied by a chorus of village elders who chime in at appropriate point sin the narration, a situation that raises interesting questions of performer/audience dynamics. This article includes a brief overview of jiangjing's history, its process of performance, a description of a child-protection ritual held in concert with a storytelling session, and a translation of a sample text of jiangjing. [Source of abstract: A&H Search]

Berezkin, Rostislav. “Scripture-telling (jiangjing) in the Zhangjiangang Area and the History of Chinese Storytelling.” Asia Major, Third Series, 24.1 (2011): 1-42.

Berndt, Andreas. "The Cult of the Longwang: Their Origin, Spread, and Regional Significance." In Chinese and European Perspectives on the Study of Chinese Popular Religions, edited by Philip Clart. Taipei: Boyang Publishing, 2012. Pp.61-94.

Abstract: This essay discusses the cult of the Chinese water deities called longwang (Dragon Kings or Dragon Princes). Deriving mainly from two sources - one the ancient Chinese belief in dragons itself, the other Indian snake deities called nagas or nagarajas that came to China along with Buddhism beginning in the first millennium - the cult became increasingly popular during the Tang and Song dynasties and can be found throughout the empire of the Ming and Qing dynasties. The essay focuses on how the expansion of the longwang cult can be explained. It argues that, despite historical developments, its expansion was mainly influenced by geographical factors like climate and topography. But these influences also modified the cult of the longwang: in late imperial China, instead of a homogeneous cult, a great variety of different forms of longwang worship existed. Local case studies from Qing dynasty Xuanhua (former Chaha’er), Changting (Fujian), Taigu (Shanxi), and Suzhou (Jiangsu) are introduced to illustrate these developments. (Source: book)

Billioud, Sébastien & Joël Thoraval. "Lijiao: The Return of Ceremonies Honouring Confucius in Mainland China." China Perspectives 2009/4: 82-100.

Brandl, Rudolf M., "Das nuo in Guichi (Anhui, China) 1994: Ein Feldforschungsbericht." In: Klaus Wolfgang Niemöller, Uwe Pätzold & Chung Kyo-chul [eds.], "Lux Oriente": Begegnungen der Kulturen in der Musikforschung: Festschrift Robert Günther zum 65. Geburtstag. Kassel: Gustav Bosse Verlag, 1995. Pp. 111-148.

Broadwin, Julie Ann, "Intertwining Threads: Silkworm Goddesses, Sericulture Workers and Reformers in Jiangnan, 1880-1930." Ph.D. dissertation, University of California-San Diego, 1999.

Bruun, Ole, Fengshui in China: Geomantic Divination Between State Orthodoxy and Popular Religion. Foreword by Stephan Feuchtwang. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2003.

Bujard, Marianne, " Le culte du Joyau de Chen: culte historique--culte vivant." Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie 10(1998): 131-181.

Bujard, Marianne & Christian Lamouroux, "La fête du Roi de la Médicine à Yaoxian (Shaanxi)." Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient 85(1998): 422-428.

Bujard, Marianne; Xi Ju. "The Heritage of the Temples, a Heritage in Stone: An Overview of Beijing’s Religious Epigraphy." China Perspectives 2007/4: 22-30.

Abstract: Out of the thousands of temples that still existed in Beijing before the 1950s, less than a dozen are nowadays active, the remaining ones having been either abandoned or destroyed. However, the commemorative inscriptions that were carved on stelae for centuries and that still remain on rubbings enable us to understand whole sections of the history of temples and of the religious life of the capital. [Source: journal]

Carlitz, Katherine, "Shrines, Governing-Class Identity, and the Cult of Widow Fidelity in Mid-Ming Jiangnan." Journal of Asian Studies 56 (1997) 3: 612-640.

Chan, Hok-lam. Legends of the Building of Old Peking. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press; Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2008.

Abstract: Legends of the Building of Old Peking examines a series of popular legends surrounding the building and rebuilding of the city that served as the capital of a succession of dynasties, including the Nazha or Nezha City legend of the Yuan (1279-1368) "Great Capital" and the Ming (1368-1644) "Northern Capital," and the Mongol legend of "siting by bowshot to locate the capital city" and its Chinese adaptations. These legends reveal a rich tapestry of religious and cultural traditions surrounding the majority Han and non-Han people's conceptions of the origins of their capital cities-legends that are distinct from imperial ideologies and dynastic traditions, and evolved under changing political and cultural circumstances. The book is a unique study of the historical origins of old Peking (spelled thus to distinguish it from modern Beijing) as well as the genesis and efflorescence of related popular culture in today's capital. [Source: publisher's website]

Chan, Selina Ching. “Temple-building and Heritage in China.” Ethnology 44.1 (2005): 65-79.

Abstract: Building Huang Da Xian temples in Jinhua, in the Lower Yangtze Delta, is a "heritage" process, an interpretation, manipulation, and invention of the past for present and future interests. Local memories of the saint Huang Da Xian were awakened by Hong Kong pilgrims, and the subsequent construction of temples enacted the politics of nationalism with a transnational connection. The process of remembering the saint and constructing temples creates, mediates, and invents relationships between the locals in Jinhua and Chinese living in mainland China and elsewhere. The multiple meanings of temple- building arc examined for mainland Chinese, Chinese in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and the nation state. While the mainlanders treat new temples as places to perform religious activities, attract tourists, and develop the local economy, temple construction for the overseas Chinese is a nostalgic search for authenticity and roots. The state has utilized Huang Da Xian as a symbol of nationalism to reinforce a Chinese identity among mainlanders and all other Chinese. [Source: journal]

Chan, Selina Ching & Graeme S. Lang. “Temple Construction and the Revival of Popular Religion in Jinhua.” China Information 21.1 (2007): 43-69.

Abstract: This article examines a case of temple construction that was initiated by officials and cadres rather than by locals. The temple construction and religious revival are analyzed in the light of complex dynamics between the cadres at the United Front, provincial office, municipal government, township office, and religious bureau, as well as between these cadres and the locals—the intellectuals, village elders, religious specialists, and villagers. For the cadres and officials, the temple was intended as local heritage to attract tourists and ultimately to boost the local economy. However, the temple did not draw sufficient visitors as planned, whether foreign or local. On the other hand, the popularity of the deity associated with the temple took off. We suggest that whether the villagers identify culturally with the temple and lend it their support is crucial in determining its success. The fate of the temple will hence depend ultimately on the ability of the management committee to mobilize and involve local networks in the temple's activities. [Source: journal]

Chau, Adam Yuet, "The Dragon King Valley: Popular Religion, Socialist State, and Agrarian Society in Shaanbei, North-Central China." Thesis (Ph.D.), Stanford University, 2001, 281p.

Abstract: This dissertation is an ethnographic account of the revival and social organization of a popular religious temple in contemporary rural Shaanbei (northern Shaanxi Province), north-central China. Considered as "feudal superstition," the Black Dragon King Temple was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Soon after the reform era began in the early 1980s, however, villagers rebuilt the temple, expanded it, and made it into one of the most popular temples in Shaanbei. Based on a total of 18 months of fieldwork, this dissertation presents the story of the Black Dragon Temple as a case of popular religious revival. Three important conditions of possibilities lie behind popular religious revivals in Shaanbei. First, the social organization of popular religious activities replicates the principles and mechanisms of the organization of peasant secular life, which enabled quick revitalization of popular religion even after severe suppression. The temple association is examined as a key folk social institution staging much of Shaanbei folk culture. Second, village-level local activists seize upon temples and temple associations as valuable political, economic, and symbolic resource. The re-appearance of temples as sites of power generation and contestation is accompanied by the emergence of a new kind of local elite. The story of a temple boss and his legitimation strategies illustrates the shifting socio-political terrain in contemporary rural China. Third, shifting priorities compel the local state to regulate and even to profit from popular religion rather than suppress it, thus giving temples space to thrive. [Source: Dissertation Abstracts International]

Chau, Adam Yuet, "Popular Religion in Shaanbei, North-Central China." Journal of Chinese Religions 31(2003): 39-79.

Chau, Adam Yuet. "Hosting Funerals and Temple Festivals: Folk Event Productions in Rural China." Asian Anthropology 3(2004): 39-70.

Chau, Adam Yuet. "The Politics of Legitimation and the Revival of Popular Religion in Shaanbei, North-Central China." Modern China 31(2005)2: 236-278.

Abstract: From the early 1980s onward, popular religion has enjoyed a momentous revival in Shaanbei (northern Shaanxi province), as in many other parts of rural China. But despite its immense popularity, popular religion still carries with it an aura of illegality and illegitimacy. Not properly Daoism or Buddhism, which are among the officially recognized religions, popular religion in theory constitutes illegal, superstitious activities. This article addresses questions of the legality and legitimacy of popular religion by analyzing the case of the Black Dragon King Temple in Shaanbei and its temple boss. It examines how not just popular religiosity but the actions of local elites and local state agents have enabled the revival of popular religious activities, focusing particularly on the legitimation politics engaged in by temples and their leaders. [Source: journal]

Chau, Adam Yuet. Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in Contemporary China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006.

Abstract: Based on a total of 18 months of fieldwork in Shaanbei (northern Shaanxi province), this is the first book-length ethnographic case study of the revival of a popular religious temple in contemporary rural China.

The book reveals that "doing popular religion" is much more complex than praying to gods and burning incense. It examines the organizational and cultural logics that inform the staging of popular religious activities such as temple festivals. It also shows the politics behind the religious revival: the village-level local activists who seize upon temples and temple associations as a valuable political, economic, and symbolic resource, and the different local state agents who interact with temple associations and temple bosses. The study sheds unique light on shifting state-society relationships in the reform era, and is of interest to scholars and students in Asian Studies, the social sciences, and religious and ritual studies. [Source: publisher's website]

Chau, Adam Yuet. “Expanding the Space of Popular Religion: Local Temple Activism and the Politics of Legitimation in Contemporary Rural China.” In: Ashiwa, Yoshiko & David L. Wank [eds.], Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Pp. 211-240.

Chen, Gang, "The Old Tradition in a New Setting: A Preliminary Study of Mortuary Ritual in a Chinese Village." Journal of Ritual Studies 10(1996)2: 41-57.

Chen, Gang, "Death Rituals in a Chinese Village: An Old Tradition in Contemporary Social Context." Thesis (Ph.D.), The Ohio State University, 2000, 224p.

Abstract: Death rituals have played an important role in Chinese society for over two thousand years. Death rituals that followed the elaborated Confucian ritual canons were promoted by officials and elites in imperial China. However, after 1949, the traditional death rituals were branded as superstitious and relics of feudalistic society, and were officially banned. In the early 1980s, as China started its economic reform, the traditional death rituals were quickly revived in rural China. What has contributed to this revival? What do today's death rituals look like in rural China? What economic, political, and sociocultural changes that rural China has experienced in the last two decades are reflected in the ritual practice? This dissertation will address these questions.

The ethnographic data were collected in a village in Chongqing in southwestern China. The history of the village was investigated, and so was its contemporary way of life in terms of settlement patterns, demographics, kinship system, economic life, political activities, and religious rituals. After presenting the ethnographic setting, we center our attention on death rituals. The sequence of pre-burial, funeral, and post-burial rituals usually performed by the villagers is reconstructed. These rituals are discussed from a cultural perspective that looks into the symbolic and normative dimensions of Chinese death ritual. The symbolic dimension illustrates the worldview of practitioners, and reveals the meanings of rituals. The normative dimension focuses on social implications of rituals, social relationship of ritual participants, and current socio-cultural structure in the village.

It is shown that the basic pattern of traditional Chinese death rituals is well kept in this village, though the performance of many rituals is simplified. The practices of these rituals perpetuate the traditional Chinese cosmology of heaven, earth, otherworld, gods, ghosts, and ancestors, though many younger villagers seem no longer to believe in the existence of heaven and otherworld. This dissertation argues that the contemporary death rituals in the village can be understood as a modified version of the traditional pattern. Such a modification came about in order for the traditional beliefs and practices associated with death rituals to be continued in a changing sociocultural context. [Source: Dissertation Abstracts International]

Chen Yi-yuan, "The Drama of Redemption of Vows of the Living (Yangxi) in Sichuan: A Critical Review of Current Research." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.53-66.

Chenivesse, Sandrine, "Le mont Fengdu: lieu saint taoïste émergé de la géographie de l'au-delà." Sanjiao wenxian 1 (1997): 79-86.

Cheung, Neky Tak-Ching. Women’s Ritual in China: Jiezhu (Receiving Buddhist Prayer Beads) Performed by Menopausal Women in Ninghua, Western Fujian. Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2008.

Clark, Hugh. “The Religious Culture of Southern Fujian, 750-1450.” Asia Major 19.1-2 (2006): 211-240.

Clark, Hugh R. Portrait of a Community: Society, Culture, and the Structures of Kinship in the Mulan River Valley (Fujian) from the late Tang through the Song. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2007.

Abstract: Portrait of a Community: Society, Culture, and the Structures of Kinship in the Mulan River Valley (Fujian) from the late Tang through the Song is a study of emerging kinship structures as embedded in the social and cultural history of a river valley in central coastal Fujian province from the 9th through 13th centuries. Social chapters focus on establishment of elite kin groups, the structure and internal segmentation of those kin groups, and marriage patterns. Culture chapters cover the religious culture, the academic culture, and the culture of kinship. The thesis of this book is that cultural innovation often begins at a local level, and challenges current paradigm that distinguishes the link between locality and the elite in the Northern and Southern Song. [Source: publisher's website]

Clark, Hugh R. „On the Protection of Mariners: A Trajectory in the Cultic Traditions of Southern Fujian from the Early Song to the Early Qing.“ Minsu quyi/Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore 167 (2010): 65-121.

Cline, Erin M. “Female Spirit Mediums and Religious Authority in Contemporary Southeastern China.” Modern China 36.6 (2010): 520-555.

Abstract: Although studies of Chinese spirit mediums in Malaysia, Singapore, and Taiwan abound, there has been little work done on spirit mediums in mainland China today. Yet spirit mediums play an important role in religious life in southeastern China, and in some areas, spirit mediums are predominantly women. This phenomenon is significant not only because it allows women who are of relatively low status to hold positions of religious authority but also because female spirit mediums sometimes address community needs that are not addressed by other religious authorities.

 

Cooper, Gene. The Market and Temple Fairs of Rural China: Red Fire. London & New York: Routledge, 2012.

Abstract: During the early communist period of the 1950s, temple fairs in China were both suppressed and secularized. Temples were closed down by the secular regime and their activities classified as feudal superstition and this process only intensified during the Cultural Revolution when even the surviving secular fairs, devoted exclusively to trade with no religious content of any kind, were suppressed. However, once China embarked on its path of free market reform and openness, secular commodity exchange fairs were again authorized, and sometimes encouraged in the name of political economy as a means of stimulating rural commodity circulation and commerce. This book reveals how once these secular "temple-less temple fairs" were in place, they came to serve not only as venues for the proliferation of a great variety of popular cultural performance genres, but also as sites where a revival or recycling of popular religious symbols, already underway in many parts of China, found familiar and fertile ground in which to spread. Taking this shift in the Chinese state’s attitudes and policy towards temple fairs as its starting point, The Market and Temple Fairs of Rural China shows how state-led economic reforms in the early 1980s created a revival in secular commodity exchange fairs, which were granted both the geographic and metaphoric space to function. In turn, this book presents a comprehensive analysis of the temple fair phenomenon, examining its economic, popular cultural, popular religious and political dimensions and demonstrates the multifaceted significance of the fairs which have played a crucial role in expanding the boundaries of contemporary acceptable popular discourse and expression. (Source: publisher's website)

Csete, Anne, "The Li Mother Spirit and the Struggle for Hainan's Land and Legend." Late Imperial China 22(2001)2: 91-123.

David, Béatrice, "The Evacuation of Village Funerary Sites: One Traumatic Consequence of Development in China." China Perspectives 5 (1996): 20-26.

Davis, Edward L., "Arms and the Dao, 2: The Xu Brothers in Tea Country." In: Livia Kohn & Harold D. Roth [eds.], Daoist Identity: History, Lineage, and Ritual. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. Pp.149-164.

Dean, Kenneth, "Multiplicity and Individuation: The Temple Network of the Three in One Religion in Putian and Xianyou." In: Proceedings of the Conference on Temples and Popular Culture. Taipei: Center for Chinese Studies, 1995.

Dean, Kenneth, Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998.

Dean, Kenneth, "Transformation of the She (Altars of the Soil) in Fujian." Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie 10 (1998): 19-75.

Abstract: Par un examen des transformations du she (autel du sol) dans le district de Putian (Fujian), l'auteur se penche sur la création d'un espace sacré. Il examine d'abord les notions du she dans la région de Putian sous les Song, puis le développement d'une hiérarchie des temples en site propre dans la plaine irriguée. Il analyse ensuite les efforts de la cour au début des Ming pour standardiser les she et les rituels afférents. A ces efforts succédèrent les modifications locales quant à la théorie et la pratique du she. Un travail sur le terrain dans la région de Jiangkou lui permet de scruter les mutations du she à la fin des Ming et sous les Qing. Il étudie par ailleurs les attitudes vis-à-vis du she dans des ouvrages littéraires et dans des inscriptions sur pierre datant des Ming et des Qing dans la région de Putian, ainsi que les changements dans l'organisation du rituel au niveau des villages. Du milieu des Ming jusqu'aux Qing, une transition s'opère entre les formes d'organisation rituelle basée sur le lignage ou la parenté et des formes à bases territoriales. Les dernières pages contiennent une discussion sur le recouvrement de l'espace sacré au cours des quinze dernières années. Cette étude montre que les efforts, au début des Ming, pour institutionnaliser les structures et cérémonies rituelles au niveau inférieur du canton ont entraîné des conséquences imprévues. Le travail sur le terrain au Fujian durant ces derniers dix ans a fait apparaître des matériaux qui suggèrent que ces autels officiels se muèrent graduellement en une strate sous-jacente d'espace rituel de religion populaire. Les mesures prises périodiquement par l'État--jusqu'à l'époque contemporaine--pour affirmer sa suprématie par l'imposition d'un modèle standardisé et homologué d'espace rituel ont causé une tension insoluble entre l'État et les communautés rituelles locales en Asie orientale. [Source: article]

Dean, Kenneth, "China's Second Government: Regional Ritual Systems in Southeast China." In: Wang Ch'iu-kui, Chuang Ying-chang & Chen Chung-min [eds.], Shehui, minzu yu wenhua zhanyan guoji yantaohui lunwenji. Taipei: Hanxue Yanjiu Zhongxin, 2001. Pp.77-107.

Dean, Kenneth, "The Masked Exorcistic Theatre of Anhui and Jiangxi." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002 Pp.183-197.

Dean, Kenneth, "Local Communal Religion in Contemporary South-east China." The China Quarterly 174(2003): 338-358.

Dean, Kenneth & Zheng Zhenman [eds.], Epigraphical Materials on the History of Religion in Fujian: Xinghua Region/Fujian zongjiao beiming huibian (Xinghua fu fence). Fuzhou: Fujian Renmin Chubanshe, 1995.

Dean, Kenneth, "Lineage and Territorial Cults: Transformations and Interactions in the Irrigated Putian Plains." In: Lin Mei-rong [ed.], Xinyang, yishi yu shehui: Di san jie guoji Hanxue huiyi lunwenji (renleixue zu) = Belief, Ritual and Society: Papers from the Third International Conference on Sinology (Anthropology Section). Taipei: Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, 2003. Pp.87-129.

Dean, Kenneth. “Further Partings of the Way: The Chinese State and Daoist Ritual Traditions in Contemporary China.” In: Ashiwa, Yoshiko & David L. Wank [eds.], Making Religion, Making the State: The Politics of Religion in Modern China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009. Pp. 179-210.

Dean, Kenneth. "The Growth of Local Control over Cultural and Environmental Resources in Ming and Qing Coastal Fujian." In: The People and the Dao: New Studies in Chinese Religions in Honour in Prof. Daniel L. Overmyer, edited by Philip Clart & Paul Crowe. Sankt Augustin: Institut Monumenta Serica, 2009. Pp. 219-247.

Dean, Kenneth. “The Role of Temple Networks in the Construction of the Minnan Coastal ‘Empire:’ Transnational Spaces of the Overseas Xinghua Chinese.” In Chen Yiyuan [ed.]. 2009 Minnan wenhua guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwenji. Tainan: Guoli Chenggong Daxue Zhongwenxi / Jinmenxian Wenhuaju, 2009. Pp. 759-787.

Dean, Kenneth & Zheng Zhenman. Ritual Alliances of the Putian Plain. Volume One: Historical Introduction to the Return of the Gods. Volume Two: A Survey of Village Temples and Ritual Activities. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2010.

Abstract: Making ingenious use of a wide variety of sources, and old as well as modern technical resources, Kenneth Dean and Zheng Zhenman here set a new standard for an histoire totale for a coherently well-defined cultural region in China. At the same time it deals in-depth with the ongoing negotiation of modernity in Chinese village rituals. Over the past thirty years, local popular religion has been revived and re-invented in the villages of the irrigated alluvial plain of Putian, Fujian, China. Volume 1 provides a historical introduction to the formation of 153 regional ritual alliances made up of 724 villages. Early popular cults, Ming lineages, Qing multi-village alliances, late Qing spirit-medium associations, 20th century state attacks on local religion, and the role of Overseas Chinese and local communities in rebuilding the temple networks are discussed. Volume 2 surveys the current population, lineages, temples, gods, and annual rituals of these villages. Maps of each ritual alliance, the distribution of major cults and lineages, are included. (Source: publisher's website)

Dean, Kenneth. “The Return Visits of Overseas Chinese to Ancestral Villages in Putian, Fujian.” In: Tim Oakes & Donald S. Sutton [eds.], Faiths on Display: Religion, Tourism, and the Chinese State. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. Pp.235-263.

DeBernardi, Jean. “Commodifying Blessings: Celebrating the Double-Yang Festival in Penang, Malaysia, and Wudang Mountain, China.” In: Pattana Kitiarsa [ed.], Religious Commodifications in Asia: Marketing Gods. London: Routledge, 2008. Pp.49-67.

Dong Xiaoping, "The Dual Character of Chinese Folk Ideas about Resources: On Three Western Fujian Volumes in the Traditional Hakka Society Series." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.343-367.

Dorfman, Diane, "The Spirit of Reform: The Power of Belief in Northern China." Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 4(1996)2: 253-289.

Dott, Brian Russell, "Ascending Mount Tai: Social and Cultural Interactions in Eighteenth Century China." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1998.

Dott, Brian R. Identity Reflections: Pilgrimages to Mount Tai in Late Imperial China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, distributed by Harvard University Press, 2004.

Abstract: Mount Tai in northeastern China has long been a sacred site. Indeed, it epitomizes China's religious and social diversity. Throughout history, it has been a magnet for both women and men from all classes--emperors, aristocrats, officials, literati, and villagers. For much of the past millennium, however, the vast majority of pilgrims were illiterate peasants who came to pray for their deceased ancestors, as well as for sons, good fortune, and health.

Each of these social groups approached Mount Tai with different expectations. Each group's or individual's view of the world, interpersonal relationships, and ultimate goals or dreams--in a word, its identity--was reflected in its interactions with this sacred site. This book examines the behavior of those who made the pilgrimage to Mount Tai and their interpretations of its sacrality and history, as a means of better understanding their identities and mentalities. It is the first to trace the social landscape of Mount Tai, to examine the mindsets not just of prosperous, male literati but also of women and illiterate pilgrims, and to combine evidence from fiction, poetry, travel literature, and official records with the findings of studies of material culture and anthropology. [Source: publisher's website]

Dott, Brian R. “Spirit Money: Tourism and Pilgrimage on the Sacred Slopes of Mount Tai.” In: Tim Oakes & Donald S. Sutton [eds.], Faiths on Display: Religion, Tourism, and the Chinese State. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. Pp.27-49.

DuBois, Thomas, "The Sacred World of Cang County: Religious Belief, Organization and Practice in Rural North China During the Late Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries." Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Los Angeles, 2001.

Abstract: Since the late nineteenth century, the villages of Cang County, located in southern Hebei Province, have undergone enormous political, social, and economic change. Yet throughout this period, personal and public religious life have remained matters of highest importance. This dissertation combines traditional archival sources with the authorís fieldwork to outline the religious needs and devotion of the individual, the history of local religious institutions and networks, and interaction between religious organization and local society in Cang County during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The dissertation begins with an analysis of personal religious mentality, asking how the individual comes to know the sacred and what he or she comes to expect of it. An analysis of religious vows (yuan) in the city of Tianjin and in rural Cang County demonstrates the place of morality and devotion in an overtly functional ritual regimen. The place of spirit healers (xiangtou) in Cang County, and their interaction with other healers, particularly village doctors, demonstrates both the contingency of belief and the characteristic manner by which religious knowledge is spread through the medium of miracle tales.

Religious institutions generally did not demand exclusive belief or affiliation, and popular religiosity freely drew upon different sects and teachings as sources of inspiration. Formal teachings such as Buddhism made a great impact on local belief, but by the twentieth century, monks were few and their teaching nearly indistinguishable from local religiosity. Sectarian groups, long characterized as subversive and secret, also left an important mark on local religious life. Each teaching had distinct doctrine, organization and social appeal. Teachings such as Zailijiao were oriented towards the development and public expression of personal morality, particularly of the local mercantile elite. Yiguandao addressed millenarian longings, thus finding a ready audience during times of trial, particularly the Japanese occupation. Others, such as Tiandimen and Taishangmen were grounded in everyday ritual practice, and have thus retained their popular appeal throughout the period.

Outside of religious networks, the organization of local society shaped the diffusion and of religious knowledge. The concentration of religious resources (such as temples and specialists) within the village, influenced the votive lives of individual peasants. However, although the village supported these resources and expressed a sense of common welfare, the ritual use of these resources was primarily by the household. [Source: author.]

DuBois, Thomas, "Village Community and the Reconstruction of Religious Life in Rural North China." In: John Lagerwey [ed.], Religion and Chinese Society. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press / Paris: École française d'Extrême-Orient, 2004. Pp.837-868.

DuBois, Thomas David. The Sacred Village: Social Change and Religious Life in Rural North China. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press, 2005.

Abstract: Until recently, few villagers of rural North China ventured far from their homes. Their intensely local view of the world included knowledge of the immanent sacred realm, which derived from stories of divine revelations, cures, and miracles that circulated among neighboring villages. These stories gave direction to private devotion and served as a source of expert information on who the powerful deities were and what role they played in the human world. The structure of local society also shaped public devotion, as different groups expressed their economic and social concerns in organized worship. While some of these groups remained structurally intact in the face of historical change, others have changed dramatically, resulting in new patterns of religious organization and practice.

The Sacred Village introduces local religious life in Cang County, Hebei Province, as a lens through which to view the larger issue of how rural Chinese perspectives and behaviors were shaped by the sweeping social, political, and demographic changes of the last two centuries. Thomas DuBois combines new archival sources in Chinese and Japanese with his own fieldwork to produce a work that is compelling and intimate in detail. This dual approach also allows him to address the integration of external networks into local society and religious mentality and posit local society as a particular sphere in which the two are negotiated and transformed. [Source: publisher's website]

DuBois, Thomas David. “Local Religion and the Cultural Imaginary: the Development of Japanese Ethnography in Occupied Manchuria.” American Historical Review 111.1 (2006): 52-74.

DuBois, Thomas David. “Manchukuo’s Filial Sons: States, Sects and the Adaptation of Graveside Piety.” East Asian History 36 (2008): 3-27.

Emmons, Deirdre. Dieux de la Chine. Le panthéon populaire du Fujian de J.J.M. de Groot. Lyon: Musée d'histoire naturelle/Un, deux, ... quatre Editions, 2003.

Eng, Irene & Yi-min Lin, "Religious Festivities, Communal Rivalry, and Restructuring of Authority Relations in Rural Chaozhou, Southeast China." Journal of Asian Studies 61(2002)4: 1259-1285.

Entenmann, Robert E., "Catholics and Society in Eighteenth-Century Sichuan." In Daniel H. Bays [ed.], Christianity in China. From the Eighteenth Century to the Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Pp.8-23.

Fan Lizhu, "A Review of Minxiang: Civil Incense Worship in Liaoning, China by Ren Guangwei." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.297-309.

Fan Lizhu, "The Cult of the Silkworm Mother as a Core of Local Community Religion in a North China Village: Field Study in Zhiwuying, Boading, Hebei." The China Quarterly 174(2003): 373-394.

Fan Lizhu, James D. Whitehead & Evelyn Eaton Whitehead. "Fate and Fortune: Popular Religion and Moral Capital in Shenzhen." Journal of Chinese Religions 32(2004): 83-100.

Fan, Lizhu & James D. Whitehead. “Spirituality in a Modern Chinese Metropolis.” In Chinese Religious Life, edited by David A. Palmer, Glenn Shive, and Philip L. Wickeri. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp.13-29.

Fang Ling. "Inscription pour la stèle de restauration de la salle principale du palais de repos et de la scène d'opéra couverte du temple du roi des Remèdes (Pékin, Yaowang miao, 1806)." Sanjiao wenxian: Matériaux pour l'étude de la religion chinoise 4(2005): 82-90.

Fang Ling & Vincent Goossaert, "L'inscription pour le temple du roi des Remèdes (Pékin, Yaowang miao, 1596)." Sanjiao wenxian: Matériaux pour l'étude de la religion chinoise 3(1999): 159-167.

Faure, David, "State and Rituals in Modern China: Comments on the 'Civil Society' Debate." In: Wang Ch'iu-kui, Chuang Ying-chang & Chen Chung-min [eds.], Shehui, minzu yu wenhua zhanyan guoji yantaohui lunwenji. Taipei: Hanxue Yanjiu Zhongxin, 2001. Pp.509-536.

Feuchtwang, Stephan & Wang Mingming, Grassroots Charisma in China: Four Local Leaders in China. London: Routledge, 2001. Note: A comparative study of religion and local leadership in Meifa (Fujian) and Shiding (Taiwan).

Fisher, Gareth. "Universal Rescue: Re-making Post-Mao China in a Beijing Temple." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Virginia, 2006.

Abstract: Based on two years of ethnographic research at the Temple of Universal Rescue (Guangji Si) in Beijing, this dissertation examines both the content and process by which lay Buddhist practitioners create an alternative culture of meanings, relationships, and moralities to cope with a rapidly changing society. Specific focus is given to amateur lay preachers and their followers who convene in the temple's outer courtyard each week to combine Buddhist doctrine with other ideologies such as Mao Zedong thought. The goal of the preachers and their followers is to create a moral discourse which challenges the post-Mao Chinese state's narrative of progress through globalization and market reforms from which they have been both socially and economically marginalized.

Considering both historical and contemporary analogs to the practices of the lay practitioners and the amateur preachers around which they gather, the main body of the dissertation is organized around several cultural tropes through which the practitioners strive to inhabit their own universe of relationships and meanings. The last three chapters of the thesis examine how practitioners seek to apply this new framework to the moral reform of contemporary Chinese society which they understand as passing through a period of decline. The community of practitioners at the Temple of Universal Rescue is situated within a larger consideration of lay Buddhist revival in China as a whole. The dissertation concludes by considering how an imagined community of lay Buddhists provides a system of relationships, values, and exchange that takes its adherents beyond their immediate lives and concerns but that does not demand their adherence to an inflexible ideological system. This larger lay Buddhist community and the discourses it creates have the potential to challenge both popular and official understanding of self and personhood in globalizing post-Mao China, though this potential is limited by the difficulties faced by lay Buddhists in promoting their beliefs beyond the temple walls.

Fisher, Gareth. “Religion as Repertoire: Resourcing the Past in a Beijing Buddhist Temple.“ Modern China 38 (2012): 346-376.

Abstract: This article presents an ethnographic examination of a range of religious practices at the Buddhist Temple of Universal Rescue (Guangji si) in Beijing. Temple-goers engaged in both ritual practices in the temple’s inner courtyard and moralistic conversations in the outer courtyard draw on recycled fragments of China’s many “pasts” to form cultural repertoires. These repertoires provide the temple-goers with a cultural toolkit to enter into meaningful projects of self- and identity-making in an environment of rapid social change. Participants in different religious activities at the temple both add to and mobilize different elements in their repertoires as their life circumstances change. The example of the temple shows that, in the popular Chinese social arena, various past stages of China’s history, including phases in its modernization process, have neither been abandoned nor superseded but remain as cultural resources to be drawn from as needed. (Source: journal)

Flower, John, "Portraits of Belief: Constructions of Chinese Identity in the 'Two Worlds' of City and Countryside in Modern Sichuan Province." Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1997.

Flower, John & Pamela Leonard, "Defining Cultural Life in the Chinese Countryside: The Case of the Chuan Zhu Temple." In: Eduard B. Vermeer, Frank N. Pieke and Woei Lien Chong [eds.], Cooperative and Collective in China's Rural Development: Between State and Private Interests. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1998. Pp.273-290. (Note: On revival of the local Chuanzhu temple in a Sichuan village around 1992/93.)

Flower, John M., "A Road is Made: Roads, Temples, and Historical Memory in Ya'an County, Sichuan." Journal of Asian Studies 63(2004)3: 649-685.

Formoso, Bernard. "Ethnicity and Shared Meanings: A Case Study of the 'Orphaned Bones' Ritual in Mainland China and Overseas." American Anthropologist 111.4 (2009): 492–503.

Abstract: Several theories of ethnicity emphasize the analysis of intergroup relations. They neglect, however, the conflation of ideas and values structuring these relations—notably the cross-cultural aggregates of shared cultural meanings that underlie forms of cooperation and competition between interacting groups. In this article, I explore this kind of process through a multisite ethnography of the Xiu gugu (“refining of orphaned bones”), a ritual that the Chaozhou people of northeast Guangdong province, an ethnic subgroup of the Han, perform periodically. The celebration of this rite in Chaozhou is compared to versions resulting of the ritual in Malay Muslim and Thai Buddhist contexts. In the latter case, close conceptions of malevolent death underlie a fascinating interethnic cooperation, with most of the unfortunate dead whose bones are “refined” during the Chaozhou ritual being Thai.

Frick, Johann, Zwischen Himmel und Erde. Riten und Brauchtum in Nordwestchina. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 1995.

Frick, Johann, "Totenriten der Chinesen im Westtal von Sining (Provinz Tsinghai)." In: Johann Frick, Zwischen Himmel und Erde. Riten und Brauchtum in Nordwestchina. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 1995. Pp.111-223.

Frick, Johann, "Neujahrsbräuche im Westtale von Sining." In: Johann Frick, Zwischen Himmel und Erde. Riten und Brauchtum in Nordwestchina. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 1995. Pp.233-273.

Frick, Johann, "Wiederversöhnung des verletzten Erdgeistes: ein Brauch im chinesisch-tibetischen Grenzgebiet." In: Johann Frick, Zwischen Himmel und Erde. Riten und Brauchtum in Nordwestchina. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 1995. Pp.225-231.

Gaw, Albert C; Ding, Qin-zhang; Levine, Ruth E; Gaw, Hsiao-feng , "The Clinical Characteristics of Possession Disorder among 20 Chinese Patients in the Hebei Province of China." Psychiatric Services 49(1998)3: 360-365.

Abstract: OBJECTIVE: This paper describes the clinical characteristics of 20 hospitalized psychiatric patients in the Hebei province of China who believed they were possessed. METHODS: A structured interview focused on clinical characteristics associated with possession phenomena was developed and administered to 20 patients at eight hospitals in the province. All patients had been given the Chinese diagnosis of yi-ping (hysteria) by Chinese physicians before being recruited for the study. RESULTS: The subjects' mean age was 37 years. Most were women from rural areas with little education. Major events reported to precede possession included interpersonal conflicts, subjectively meaningful circumstances, illness, and death of an individual or dreaming of a deceased individual. Possessing agents were thought to be spirits of deceased individuals, deities, animals, and devils. Twenty percent of subjects reported multiple possessions. The initial experience of possession typically came on acutely and often became a chronic relapsing illness. Almost all subjects manifested the two symptoms of loss of control over their actions and acting differently. They frequently showed loss of awareness of surroundings, loss of personal identity, inability to distinguish reality from fantasy, change in tone of voice, and loss of perceived sensitivity to pain. CONCLUSIONS: Preliminary findings indicate that the disorder is a syndrome with distinct clinical characteristics that adheres most closely to the DSM-IV diagnosis of dissociative trance disorder under the category of dissociative disorder not otherwise specified. [Source of abstract: article.]

Gerritsen, Anne, "Visions of Local Culture: Tales of the Strange and Temple Inscriptions from Song-Yuan Jizhou." Journal of Chinese Religions 28(2000): 69-92.

Gerritsen, Anne Tjerkje, "Gods and Governors: Interpreting the Religious Realms in Ji'an (Jiangxi) during the Southern Song, Yuan, and Ming Dynasties." Thesis (Ph.D.), Harvard University, 2001, 349p.

Abstract: This dissertation examines the religiosity of the common people in Ji'an Prefecture (Jiangxi Province) during the Southern Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties. I use the term "religiosity" to refer to the multiple ways in which the people of Ji'an interpreted and manipulated the realm of higher forces that affected their lives and deaths. This religiosity is of particular interest because the sources demonstrate that many "social actors" on the local scene attached great importance to this religiosity. Many regional and national groups of "actors" represented in local society were interested in asserting their authority over the religiosity of commoners by suggesting their own interpretations of the religious realm. This dissertation chronicles two processes of change; the gradual change in the religiosity of the common people, and the changing ways of manipulating this religiosity and their different rates of success.

Religiosity during the Southern Song dynasty is based on the availability and diversity of options. The importance of access to a range of options means that boundaries within which interpretations of the outer realm exist are constantly shifting, while the communities within which such interpretations exist are also fluid. The analysis of Yuan dynasty sources suggests a high degree of continuity between the Southern Song and Yuan. By the later Ming the diversity of options still exists, but the importance of an integrated community within which a tradition of practice is shared also begins to feature. I suggest that the emphasis on cohesion and small-scale integration in Ji'an does not appear in written sources until the middle of the Ming dynasty.

Throughout this period both representatives of the central government and local literati attempted to impose their own interpretations of the religious realm on local population. While government-based narratives of local religiosity change dramatically throughout this period, the effect of that change is much less noticeable on the local level. Analysis of literati narratives yield a more significant change. Throughout the Southern Song and Yuan dynasties literati use religion to give themselves a voice of authority in local society. This gradually diminishes during the Ming dynasty. [Source: Dissertation Abstracts International]

Gerritsen, Anne, "A Thirteenth-Century Cult in the Village of Ji'an (Jiangxi), or 'Fieldwork for Historians'." Journal of Song-Yuan Studies 33 (2003): 181-185. (Note: On the cult of Kang Wang.)

Gerritsen, Anne. "From Demon to Deity: Kang Wang in Thirteenth-Century Jizhou and Beyond." T'oung Pao 90 (2004)1-3: 1-31.

Gerritsen, Anne. Ji’an Literati and the Local in Song-Yuan-Ming China. Leiden: Brill, 2007.

Abstract: Drawing on largely local sources, including local gazetteers and literati inscriptions for religious sites, this book offers a comprehensive examination of what it means to be 'local' during the Southern Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties in Ji'an prefecture (Jiangxi). It argues that 'belonging locally' was important to Ji'an literati throughout this period. How they achieved that, however, changed significantly. Southern Song and Yuan literati wrote about religious sites from within their local communities, but their early Ming counterparts wrote about local temples from their posts at the capital, seeking to transform local sites from a distance. By the late Ming, temples had been superseded by other sites of local activism, including community compacts, lineage prefaces, and community covenants. [Source: publisher's website]

Glahn, Richard von, "The Sociology of Local Religion in the Lake Tai Basin." In: John Lagerwey [ed.], Religion and Chinese Society. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press / Paris: École française d'Extrême-Orient, 2004. Pp.773-815.

Goodrich, Anne S., "Miao Feng Shan." Asian Folklore Studies 57(1998)1: 87-97.

Goossaert, Vincent, "Les fêtes au temple du Pic de l'Est de Pékin sous les Mongols. Une source ancienne inédite." Sanjiao wenxian 1 (1997): 87-90.

Goossaert, Vincent; Fang Ling & Pierre Marsone, "Inscription de l'association pour célébrer les bureaux (Pékin, Dongyue Miao)." Sanjiao wenxian 1 (1997): 47-60.

Goossaert, Vincent, "Portrait épigraphique d'un culte. Inscription des dynasties Jin et Yuan de temples du Pic de l'Est." Sanjiao wenxian 2(1998): 41-83.

Goossaert, Vincent. "Daoism and Local Cults in Modern Suzhou: A Case Study of Qionglongshan." In Chinese and European Perspectives on the Study of Chinese Popular Religions, edited by Philip Clart. Taipei: Boyang Publishing, 2012. Pp.199-254.

Abstract: The richly documented life of Shi Daoyuan (1617-1678) provides a unique case study of the relationship between elite Daoist institutions and local cults, particularly spirit-medium cults. The article discusses current research on this topic before introducing Shi and the sources for his dealings with local cults, notably the Wutong. Shi was often called by members of the local elites in Suzhou to perform exorcisms. In this process, Shi not only employed martial gods from the classical Daoist thunder rites traditions, but also incorporated local gods into his pantheon. As a result, ambivalent gods such as the Wutong were to some extent tamed and made more acceptable. Such a process developed over the long term; present fieldwork shows that the Wutong are still partly marginal but have been nonetheless quite thoroughly integrated within mainstream Daoism. (Source: book)

Grootaers, W.A., Li Shih-yü & Wang Fu-shih, The Sanctuaries in a North China City. A Complete Survey of the Cultic Buildings in the City of Hsüan-hua (Chahar). Brussels: Institut Belge des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1995. (Mélanges chinois et bouddhiques, vol.XXVI).

Guo, Qitao. Ritual Opera and Mercantile Lineage: The Confucian Transformation of Popular Culture in Late Imperial Huizhou. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005.

Abstract: This book analyzes Confucian ideology as culture and culture as history by exploring the interplay between popular ritual performance of the opera Mulian and gentrified mercantile lineages in late imperial Huizhou. Mulian, originally a Buddhist tale featuring the monk Mulian's journey through the underworld to save his mother, underwent a Confucian transformation in the sixteenth century against a backdrop of vast socioeconomic, intellectual, cultural, and religious changes. The author shows how local elites appropriated the performance of Mulian, turning it into a powerful medium for conveying orthodox values and religious precepts and for negotiating local social and gender issues altered by the rising money economy. The sociocultural approach of this historical study lifts Mulian out of the exorcistic-dramatic-ethnographic milieu to which it is usually consigned. This new approach enables the author to develop an alternative interpretation of Chinese popular culture and the Confucian tradition, which in turn sheds significant new light upon the social history of late imperial China. [Source: publisher's website]

Guo, Qitao. “Genealogical Pedigree versus Godly Power: Cheng Minzheng and Lineage Politics in Mid-Ming Huizhou.” Late Imperial China 31.1 (2010): 28-61.

Abstract: This article focuses on power negotiations among prominent lineages in Huizhou prefecture during the mid Ming (1450–1550) as manifested through gentry compilation of regional genealogies and scripting of local liturgies. It enriches the current scholarship on Chinese lineage institutions and the mid-Ming rise of regional consciousness and local elite activism.

Gyss-Vermande, Caroline, "Petite chronique d'une première mission collective à Pékin, automne 1995." Sanjiao wenxian 1 (1997): 61-66.

Gyss-Vermande, Caroline, Alain Arrault, Vincent Goossaert, Fang Ling & Pierre Marsone, "Stèle commemorative pour la restauration des images saintes du temple du Pic de l'Est." Sanjiao wenxian 2(1998): 103-112.

Haar, Barend J. ter, "Buddhist Inspired Options: Aspects of Lay Religious Life in the Lower Yangzi from 1100 until 1340." T'oung Pao 87(2001): 92-152.

Haar, Barend J. ter. "The Non-Action Teachings and Christianity: Confusion and Similarities." In Chinese and European Perspectives on the Study of Chinese Popular Religions, edited by Philip Clart. Taipei: Boyang Publishing, 2012. Pp.295-328.

Abstract: Christianity entered China in the seventeenth and eighteenth century in two missions, one the better known Jesuit mission and the other less known and more localized, the Franciscan-Dominican mission. In northern Fujian both missions had to compete with an extremely popular new religious movement, known locally as the Old Official Vegetarians or Dragon Flower Gathering. Elsewhere this movement was known as the Non-Action or Great Vehicle Teachings. Christian authors wrote rather detailed polemical texts to distinguish themselves from this specific movement, showing that they were well aware of their competition. This article investigates three of these texts. In addition it shows why late Ming and Qing anti-Christian authors sometimes confused these different groups and thought of them as one single phenomenon, namely heretic groups or, to use the Western label, “sects.” (Source: book)

Han Min. "The Revival of Tradition in Northern Anhui: A Response to Social and Economic Change." In: Suenari Michio, J.S. Eades & Christian Daniels [eds.], Perspectives on Chinese Society: Anthropological Views from Japan. Canterbury: Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing, University of Kent, 1995. Pp.67-91.

Han, Seunghyun. “Shrine, Images, and Power: The Worship of Former Worthies in Early Nineteenth Century Suzhou.” T’oung Pao 95 (2009): 167-195.

Abstract: In the 1820s, the literati of Suzhou embarked on a project to build a shrine devoted to the worship of local former worthies and engraved almost six hundred portraits of the latter on the shrine's inner walls. Since the locality already had a paired shrine of eminent officials and local worthies, as had become the case across the empire since the mid-Ming period, why did they need to create a shrine of a similar nature? What was the cultural significance of introducing visual representations of the worthies in the worship? By analyzing the multiple layers of meaning surrounding this shrine-building activity, the present study attempts to illuminate an aspect of the changing state-elite relations in the early nineteenth century.

Hargett, James M. Stairway to Heaven: A Journey to the Summit of Mount Emei. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2006.

Abstract: A consideration of China's Mount Emei, long important in Chinese culture and history and of particular significance to Buddhists.

Located in a remote area of modern Sichuan province, Mount Emei is one of China's most famous mountains and has long been important to Buddhists. Stairway to Heaven looks at Emei's significance in Chinese history and literature while also addressing the issue of "sense of place" in Chinese culture.

Mount Emei's exquisite scenery and unique geographical features have inspired countless poets, writers, and artists. Since the early years of the Song dynasty (960&endash;1279), Emei has been best known as a site of Buddhist pilgrimage and worship. Today, several Buddhist temples still function on Emei, but the mountain also has become a scenic tourist destination, attracting more than a million visitors annually.

Author James M. Hargett takes readers on a journey to the mountain through the travel writings of the twelfth-century writer and official Fan Chengda (1126&endash;1193). Fan's diary and verse accounts of his climb to the summit of Mount Emei in 1177 are still among the most informative accounts of the mountain ever written. Through Fan's eyes, words, and footsteps&emdash;and with background information and commentary from Hargett&emdash;the reader will experience some of the ways Emei has been "constructed" by diverse human experience over the centuries. [Source: publisher's website]

Hayes, James. South China Village Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Hinsch, Bret. "Prehistoric Images of Women from the North China Region: The Origins of Chinese Goddess Worship?" Journal of Chinese Religions 32(2004): 47-82.

Ho Ts'ui-p'ing, "Ritual Literalized: A Critical Review of Ritual Studies on the National Minorities in Guangxi, Guizhou, Hunan and Sichuan." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.135-155.

Holm, David, "A Review of the Celebration of the Bodhisattva Ritual of the Vernacular Priests of the Zou Lineage in Poji Township, Zhenxiong County, Zhaotong Region, Yunnaan by Guo Siju and Wang Yong." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.109-116.

Holm, David, "A Review of the Yangxi of Guizhou: The Theatrical Troupe of the Deng Lineage in Dashang Village, Limu Township, Luodian by Huangfu Chongqing." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.117-127.

Holm, David, "A Review of the Celebration of the Bodhisattva Ritual of the Han Chinese in Poji Township, Zhenxiong County, Yunnan by Ma Chaokai." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.129-132.

Holm, David, "A Review of Pleasing the Nuo Gods in Cengong County, Guizhou." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.171-180.

Holm, David, "The Death of Tiaoxi (the 'Leaping Play'): Ritual Theatre in the Northwest of China." Modern Asian Studies 37(2003)4: 863-884.

Hsu Li-ling, "Three Books on the Duangong Ritual of Jiangbei County, Sichuan by Wang Yue." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.67-73.

Idema, Wilt L., "The Pilgrimage to Taishan in the Dramatic Literature of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries." Chinese Literature, Essays, Articles, Reviews 19 (1997): 23-57.

Ikels, Charlotte. "Serving the Ancestors, Serving the State: Filial Piety and Death Ritual in Contemporary Guangzhou." In: Charlotte Ikels [ed.], Filial Piety: Practice and Discourse in Contemporary East Asia. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Pp.88-105.

Jing, Anning, The Water God's Temple of the Guangsheng Monastery: Cosmic Function of Art, Ritual, and Theater. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2001.

Abstract: The 14th century dragon king temple in Southern Shanxi is the only known intact survivor of this ancient Water God institution once existing in every Chinese agricultural community. After describing the history, lay-out and mural paintings of the building, its original Yuan time mural paintings enable the author to depict the ritual of praying for rain, and the actual rain-making of the god. The meaning of the unique painting of a theatrical company is interpreted as to subject and its connections with the ritual of praying for rain. Rainmaking magic is compared with similar practices in other parts of the world (India), and thus suggests a common cosmological basis of Chinese and Indian cultures, and a common pattern of human behaviour and mode of thinking concerning human procreation and food production. (Source: publisher's catalogue)

Jing, Jun, The Temple of Memories: History, Power, and Morality in a Chinese Village. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996.

Jing, Jun, "Villages Dammed, Villages Repossessed: A Memorial Movement in Northwest China." American Ethnologist 26(1999)2: 324-343.

Jing, Jun, "Food, Nutrition, and Cultural Authority in a Gansu Village." In: Jing Jun [ed.], Feeding China's Little Emperors: Food, Children, and Social Change. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Pp. 135-159

Abstract: Interview & fieldwork data collected since 1989 in Dachuan village, Gansu province, People's Republic of China, are drawn on to explore child feeding practices among contemporary parents, who are more prosperous, have smaller families, & enjoy greater access to more & varied foods than did their predecessors. It is shown how local discourse on child nutrition & health has been shaped by three forms of "cultural authority": (1) the government, with its support of scientific research on nutrition & public health campaigns; (2) religion, including the family's use of traditional food therapies, medicines, & deity worship; & (3) the market, in terms of TV advertising & the retail food industry. Conflicts among these three sources of cultural authority are identified, & implications for child nutrition & health are discussed. (source: Sociofile, K. Hyatt Stewart)

Jing, Jun, "Male Ancestors and Female Deities: Finding Memories of Trauma in a Chinese Village." In: Michael S. Roth & Charles G. Salas [eds.], Disturbing Remains: Memory, History, and Crisis in the Twentieth Century. Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2001. Pp.207-226.

Jing, Jun, "Knowledge, Organization, and Symbolic Capital: Two Temples to Confucius in Gansu." In: Wilson, Thomas A. [ed.], On Sacred Grounds: Culture, Society, Politics, and the Formation of the Cult of Confucius. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, distributed by Harvard University Press, 2002. Harvard East Asian Monographs, 217. Pp.335-375.

Jing Jun, "Dams and Dreams: A Return-to-Homeland Movement in Northwest China." In: Charles Stafford [ed.], Living with Separation in China: Anthropological Accounts. London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003. Pp.113-129. [Note: On dislocations from ancestral lands caused by dam building projects.]

Jing, Jun. "Meal Rotation and Filial Piety." In: Charlotte Ikels [ed.], Filial Piety: Practice and Discourse in Contemporary East Asia. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Pp.53-62.

Johnson, David, "Confucian Elements in the Great Temple Festivals of Southeastern Shansi in Late Imperial Times." T'oung Pao 83 (1997) 1-3: 126-161.

Johnson, David, "A 'Lantern Festival' Ritual in Southwest Shanxi." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.287-295.

Johnson, David. Spectacle and Sacrifice: The Ritual Foundations of Village Life in North China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2010.

Abstract: This book is about the ritual world of a group of rural settlements in Shanxi province in pre-1949 North China. Temple festivals, with their giant processions, elaborate rituals, and operas, were the most important influence on the symbolic universe of ordinary villagers and demonstrate their remarkable capacity for religious and artistic creation. The great festivals described in this book were their supreme collective achievements and were carried out virtually without assistance from local officials or educated elites, clerical or lay. Chinese culture was a performance culture, and ritual was the highest form of performance. Village ritual life everywhere in pre-revolutionary China was complex, conservative, and extraordinarily diverse. Festivals and their associated rituals and operas provided the emotional and intellectual materials out of which ordinary people constructed their ideas about the world of men and the realm of the gods. It is, David Johnson argues, impossible to form an adequate idea of traditional Chinese society without a thorough understanding of village ritual. Newly discovered liturgical manuscripts allow him to reconstruct North Chinese temple festivals in unprecedented detail and prove that they are sharply different from the Daoist- and Buddhist-based communal rituals of South China. [Source: publisher's website]

Jones, Stephen. Plucking the Winds: Lives of Village Musicians in Old and New China. Leiden: CHIME, 2004.

Abstract: This book tells the story of 20th-century China through the eyes of village musicians in north China. Based on extensive fieldwork since 1989, it portrays the lives of several generations of members of an amateur ritual association in South Gaoluo, a village not far from Beijing. The musicians perform solemn chants and music for wind and percussion instruments, serving funerals and Chinese New Year rituals. The reader learns how they have managed to maintain their local ritual traditions amidst massacre, invasion, civil war, famine, political campaigns, theft, destruction, banditry, and religious rivalry (from a Catholic community in the early 1930s).

The book looks beyond cosy and rosy images of modernizing ideology to the realities of local survival, and shows the astonishing resilience and stoic humanity of the musicians and their fellow villagers under all kinds of onslaughts. In a community whose history might seem to have been erased under Maoism, the account becomes a kind of detective story. It also features the author's relationship with the musicians and provides a lively impression of the "spit and sawdust" which are the tribulations and delights of fieldwork in rural China. The account is further enlivened by a CD and many photographs. [Source: publisher]

Jones, Stephen. “Turning a Blind Ear: Bards of Shaanbei.” Chinoperl 27 (2007): 174–208.

Abstract: This article introduces the blind bards of Shaanbei, contrasting the new stories of the Party's model bard Han Qixiang, and the official teams, with the persistent practice of traditional stories, based in ritual practice and healing, among the majority. Since the 1980s, sighted bards have encroached on the blindmen's 'food-bowl', and TV and pop music have dented the bards' popularity. [Source: author]

Jones, Stephen. Ritual and Music of North China: Shawm Bands in Shanxi. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.

Abstract: The rich local traditions of musical life in rural China are still little known. Music-making in village society is largely ceremonial, and shawm bands account for a significant part of such music. This is the first major ethnographic study of Chinese shawm bands in their ceremonial and social context. Based in a poor county in Shanxi province in northwestern China, Stephen Jones describes the painful maintenance of ceremonial and its music there under Maoism, its revival with the market reforms of the 1980s and its modification under the assault of pop music since the 1990s. Part One of the text explains the social and historical background by outlining the lives of shawm band musicians in modern times. Part Two looks at the main performing contexts of funerals and temple fairs, whilst Part Three discusses musical features such as instruments, scales, and repertories.

Jones, Stephen. Ritual and Music of North China, Volume 2: Shaanbei. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009.

Abstract: This second volume of Stephen Jones' work on ritual and musical life in north China, again with an accompanying DVD, gives an impression of music-making in daily life in the poor mountainous region of Shaanbei, northwest China. It conveys some of the diverse musical activities there around 2000, from the barrage of pop music blaring from speakers in the bustling county-towns to the life-cycle and calendrical ceremonies of poor mountain villages. Based on the practice of grass-roots music-making in daily life, not merely on official images, the main theme is the painful maintenance of ritual and its music under Maoism, its revival with the market reforms of the 1980s, and its modification under the assaults of TV, pop music, and migration since the 1990s.

The text is in four parts. Part One gives background to the area and music-making in society. Parts Two and Three discuss the lives of bards and shawm bands respectively, describing modifications in their ceremonial activities through the twentieth century. Part Four acclimatizes us to the modern world with glimpses of various types of musical life in Yulin city, the regional capital, illustrating the contrast with the surrounding countryside.

The 44-minute DVD, with its informative commentary, is intended both to illuminate the text and to stand on its own. It shows bards performing at a temple fair and to bless a family in distress, and shawm bands performing at a wedding, at funerals, and a shop opening - including their pop repertory with the 'big band'. Also featuring as part of these events are opera troupes, geomancers, and performing beggars; by contrast, the film shows a glimpse of the official image of Shaanbei culture as presented by a state ensemble in the regional capital. [Source: publisher's website]

Jones, Stephen. In Search of the Folk Daoists of North China. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2010.

Abstract: The living practice of Daoist ritual is still only a small part of Daoist studies. Most of this work focuses on the southeast, with the vast area of north China often assumed to be a tabula rasa for local lay liturgical traditions. This book, based on fieldwork, challenges this assumption. With case studies on parts of Hebei, Shanxi, Shaanxi, and Gansu provinces, Stephen Jones describes ritual sequences within funerals and temple fairs, offering details on occupational hereditary lay Daoists, temple-dwelling priests, and even amateur ritual groups. Stressing performance, Jones observes the changing ritual scene in this poor countryside, both since the 1980s and through all the tribulations of twentieth-century warfare and political campaigns. The whole vocabulary of north Chinese Daoists differs significantly from that of the southeast, which has so far dominated our image. Largely unstudied by scholars of religion, folk Daoist ritual in north China has been a constant theme of music scholars within China. Stephen Jones places lay Daoists within the wider context of folk religious practices - including those of lay Buddhists, sectarians, and spirit mediums. This book opens up a new field for scholars of religion, ritual, music, and modern Chinese society. [Source: publisher's website]

Jones, Stephen. “Revival in Crisis: Amateur Ritual Associations in Hebei.” In: Adam Yuet Chau [ed.], Religion in Contemporary China: Revitalization and Innovation. London: Routledge, 2011. Pp. 154-181.

Jones, Stephen. "Yinyang: Household Daoists of North China and Their Rituals." Daoism: Religion, History and Society 3 (2011): 83–144.

Abstract: The documenting of Daoist ritual in modern China is still only a small part of Daoist studies; most such work has focused on the southeast, for which we now have a substantial body of fieldwork on local lay traditions. In north China, meanwhile, the only outposts of Daoism generally assumed to survive are the major Quanzhen temples. My recent book, based on fieldwork, challenges this assumption that north China is virtually a tabula rasa for folk ritual, showing that local, lay, nominally Zhengyi, traditions remained active through the 20th century there too. Focusing on ritual sequences (mainly for funerals and temple fairs), I deduce that the typical performers in north China, as for the south, were, and are, lay hereditary family groups; further, both Zhengyi and Quanzhen priests from the many small local temples until the 1950s were likely to perform forrituals among the folks. I note the common use of the term yinyang to describe lay Daoists, positing a “yinyang corridor” right along the north of north China. The article focuses on the lay household traditions of north Shanxi, with outlines of ritual performers and descriptions of ritual sequences in the northeast of one county, Yanggao. In many areas of north China the jiao offering ritual, supposedly a staple of Daoist ritual, is unknown. Indeed, the whole vocabulary of north Chinese Daoists is significantly different from that of the southeast, which has so far dominated our image of Daoist ritual. The main proposal is that there is still plenty of folk Daoist activity in north China.(Source: journal)

Kang Xiaofei, "In the Name of the Buddha: the Cult of the Fox at a Sacred Site in Contemporary Northern Shaanxi." Minsu quyi, no.138 (2002): 67-110.

Kang, Xiaofei. The Cult of the Fox: Power, Gender, and Popular Religion in Late Imperial and Modern China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.

Abstract: For more than five centuries the shamanistic fox cult has attracted large portions of the Chinese population and appealed to a wide range of social classes. Deemed illicit by imperial rulers and clerics and officially banned by republican and communist leaders, the fox cult has managed to survive and flourish in individual homes and community shrines throughout northern China. In this new work, the first to examine the fox cult as a vibrant popular religion, Xiaofei Kang explores the manifold meanings of the fox spirit in Chinese society. Kang describes various cult practices, activities of worship, and the exorcising of fox spirits to reveal how the Chinese people constructed their cultural and social values outside the gaze of official power and morality.

Kang's book uncovers and reinterprets a wealth of anecdotal historical texts and works of popular literature and draws on her own ethnographic research. She considers how the fox cult operated on the margins of Chinese society as well as the fox's place in the popular imagination. As a symbol, fox spirits have long been marginal and variable creatures with the ability to freely change their gender and age, appearing as both evil and benign. The Chinese people, as Kang demonstrates, have drawn on and manipulated the various meanings of the fox spirit to cope with and give order to the changes in their personal lives and in society.

Kang also pays close attention to the ways in which gender was used to construct religious power in Chinese society. Gendered interpretations of the fox were used to define the official and unofficial, private and public, and moral and immoral in religious practices. Kang's analysis of the history of the fox cult addresses central questions in the study of Chinese religion and society, including the dynamic between cultural unity and variation and the relationships of various social groups to popular religion. [Source: publisher's website.]

Kang Xiaofei. "Two Temples, Three Religions, and a Tourist Attraction: Contesting Sacred Space on China's Ethnic Frontier." Modern China 35 (2009): 227-255.

Kang Xiaofei. "Rural Women, Old Age, and Temple Work: A Case from Northwestern Sichuan." China Perspectives 2009/4: 42-52.

Abstract: This article examines the interface of religion, gender, and old age in contemporary China through the case of a group of rural Han elder women and their community temple in northwestern Sichuan. Without access to monastic resources and charismatic leadership, the women have made the temple a gendered ritual space of their own to obtain social company, spiritual comfort, and moral capital for themselves and their families. Neither victims of feudal superstition nor obstacles to modernisation, they are a dynamic transformative force in contemporary rural China.

Katz, Paul R., "Plague God Cults in Late Imperial Chekiang: A Case Study of Marshal Wen." In: Proceedings of the Conference on Temples and Popular Culture. Taipei: Center for Chinese Studies, 1995.

Katz, Paul R., Demon Hordes and Burning Boats. The Cult of Marshal Wen in Late Imperial Chekiang. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1995.

Katz, Paul R., Images of the Immortal: The Cult of Lü Dongbin at the Palace of Eternal Joy. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1999.

Katz, Paul R., "Recent Developments in the Study of Chinese Ritual Dramas: An Assessment of Xu Hongtu's Research on Zhejiang." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.199-229.

Katz, Paul R. "Festivals and the Recreation of Identity in South China: A Case Study of Processions and Explsion Rites in Pucheng, Zhejiang." Journal of Ritual Studies 19(2005)1: 67-85.

Katz, Paul R. "Festivals and the Recreation of Identity in South China: A Case Study of Processions and Expulsion Rites in Pucheng, Zhejiang." In Asian Ritual Systems: Syncretisms and Ruptures, edited by Pamela J. Stewart & Andrew Strathern. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press, 2007. Pp.153-182.

Kipnis, Andrew B., Producing Guanxi: Sentiment, Self, and Subculture in a North China Village. Durham: Duke University Press, 1997.

Kleeman, Terry F., "Sources for Religious Practice in Zitong: The Local Side of a National Cult." Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie 10(1998): 341-355.

Ku, Hok Bun, Moral Politics in a South Chinese Village: Responsibility, Reciprocity, and Resistance. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. (Note: Deals with a Hakka village near Meizhou, Guangdong province. See chapter 8 on the revival of local temple cults and the rebuilding of an ancestral hall.)

Kuah Khun Eng, "Rebuilding Their Ancestral Villages: The Moral Economy of the Singapore Chinese." In: Wang Gungwu & John Wong [eds.], China's Political Economy. Singapore: University of Singapore Press & World Scientific, 1998. Pp.249-275.

Kuah, Khun Eng , "The Singapore-Anxi Connection: Ancestor Worship as Moral-Cultural Capital." In: Leo Douw, Cen Huang & Michael R. Godley [eds.], Qiaoxiang Ties: Interdisciplinary Approaches to 'Cultural Capitalism' in South China. London: Kegan Paul International in association with International Institute for Asian Studies, 1999. Pp.143-157.

Kuah Khun Eng, "The Changing Moral Economy of Ancestor Worship in a Chinese Emigrant District." Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry 23(1999)1: 99-132. [Note: On "reciprocal influences between Anxi County Fujianese, whose families and clans have migrated to Singapore, and their ancestral villages in Fujian, China." (from the article's abstract)]

Kuah Khun Eng, Rebuilding the Ancestral Village: Singaporeans in China. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000. (Note: On Anxi county, Fujian province)

Kuah-Pearce Khun Eng. "The Worship of Qingshui Zushi and Religious Revivalism in South China." In: Tan Chee-Beng [ed.], Southern Fujian: Reproduction of Traditions in Post-Mao China. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2006. Pp.121-144.

Lagerwey, John, "Dingguang Gufo: Oral and Written Sources in the Study of a Saint." Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie 10(1998): 77-129.

Abstract: Saint bouddhique du dixième siècle presque inconnu en dehors de la région hakka dans le sud-est de la Chine, Dingguang gufo fait l'objet, dans toute cette région, de cycles de légendes liés aux sites sacrés ainsi qu'aux pèlerinages. Les sources historiques du onzième au treizième siècles en font à la fois un héros civilisateur et la réincarnation du Bouddha du passé (Dipamkara). Les monographies locales permettent aussi bien de suivre le développement géographique du culte que d'en comprendre le lien intime entre les gestes du saint et le paysage. Cependant, seuls l'enquête de terrain et la collecte de traditions orales donnent accès à la sociologie du culte et au phénomène de sa localisation. Cet essai se veut donc démonstration de l'indispensable alliance entre l'histoire et l'anthropologie pour l'étude de la société chinoise et de ses dieux. [Source: article]

Lagerwey, John, "A Year in the Life of a Mingqi Saint." Minsu quyi no.117 (1999): 329-370.

Lagerwey, John, "Du caractère rationnel de la religion locale en Chine." Bulletin de l'École française d'Extrême-Orient 87(2000)1: 301-315.

Abstract: La thèse soutenue dans cet article est que le comportement religieux chinois, tel qu'on l'observe à l'échelon local, suppose un système symbolique commun qui est « approprié à la situation socioéconomique ». Basé sur un travail de terrain dans les parties habitées par les Hakka du Nord-Est de la province de Guangdong, il examine une vallée « idéal-typique » coupée par une rivière qui divise un village monolignager d'un village plurilignager. Il y a une « logique profonde de l'occupation lignagère de l'espace », qui est fondamentalement monopolistique et conduit, si le lignage arrive à ses fins, d'un ancêtre fondateur unique à un lignage dominant qui a chassé tous les rivaux de l'écosystème que constitue la vallée. C'est dans ce contexte que le souci intense, lors de la construction d'une maison ou d'une tombe, de la captation symbolique du pouvoir spirituel du paysage au moyen de la géomancie prend tout son sens. Si les ancêtres représentent le lignage comme entité « publique », sociale, ce sont les dieux qui représentent la vallée comme un tout, c'est-à-dire comme un écosystème social partagé. Les dieux les plus importants sont les dieux villageois du sol, qui protègent le village des envahisseurs surnaturels. Il arrive souvent que des villages, représentés par leurs dieux du sol, appartiennent à des alliances plus larges formées autour de divinités hébergées dans des temples. Les processions à travers le territoire du dieu font partie intégrante des célébrations communautaires. Les démons, enfin, sont des puissances spirituelles qui, contrairement aux dieux, ne sont pas attachées à un lieu précis et doivent être régulièrement « invitées », nourries, et chassées en des lieux rituels en aval du village. Cet espace religieux surpeuplé reflétait un espace socioéconomique surpeuplé, situation qui engendrait « une approche stratégique et opportuniste de la survie »."

The basic thesis of this essay is that Chinese religious behaviour as observed on the local level involves a symbolic system common to all that is "appropriate to the socio-economic context." Based on fieldwork in the Hakka parts of north-eastern Guangdong, the article examines an "ideal-type" valley bisected by a river which divides a uni-lineage from a multi-lineage "village". There is an "inner logic of the lineage occupation of space", a logic which is essentially monopolistic and leads, if the lineage is successful, from a single founding ancestor to a fully articulated major lineage which has driven all rivals from the valley ecosystem. It is in this context that the intense concern, when building a house or a tomb, with symbolic capture of the spiritual power of the landscape by means of geomancy makes sense. If the ancestors represent the lineage as a "public", social entity, it is the gods who represent the valley as a whole, that is, as a shared social ecosystem. The most important are the village earth gods, who protect the village against supernatural invaders. Not infrequently, villages represented by their earth gods will belong to larger alliances built up around gods housed in temples. Processions throughout the god's territory are a standard part of communal celebrations. Demons, finally, are spiritual forces who, unlike gods, are not tied to a fixed place and must be regularly "invited", fed, and driven away at ritual sites downstream from the village. This overcrowed religious space reflected an overcrowded socio-economic space, a situation that engendered "a strategic, opportunistic approach to survival".

Lagerwey, John, "Popular Ritual Specialists in West Central Fujian." In: Wang Ch'iu-kui, Chuang Ying-chang & Chen Chung-min [eds.], Shehui, minzu yu wenhua zhanyan guoji yantaohui lunwenji. Taipei: Hanxue Yanjiu Zhongxin, 2001. Pp.435-507.

Lagerwey, John, "The Altar of Celebration Ritual in Lushan County, Sichuan." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.75-79.

Lagerwey, John, "Duangong Ritual and Ritual Theatre in the Chongqing Area: A Survey of the Work of Hu Tiancheng." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.81-107.

Lagerwey, John, "Of Gods and Ancestors: the Ten-Village Rotation of Pingyuan Shan." Minsu quyi, no.137 (2002): 61-139. (Note: Pingyuan Shan is located in Changting County, Fujian)

Lagerwey, John. "The History and Sociology of Religion in Changting County, Fujian." In: The People and the Dao: New Studies in Chinese Religions in Honour in Prof. Daniel L. Overmyer, edited by Philip Clart & Paul Crowe. Sankt Augustin: Institut Monumenta Serica, 2009. Pp. 189-218.

Lagerwey, John. “Village Religion in Huizhou: A Preliminary Assessment.” Min-su ch’ü-i / Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore 174 (2011): 305-357.

Lang, Graeme & Lars Ragvald, "Spirit-Writing and the Development of Chinese Cults." Sociology of Religion 59(1998)4: 309-328.

Lang, Graeme; Selina Ching Chan, Lars Ragvald. The Return of the Refugee God: Wong Tai Sin in China. CSRCS Occasional Paper No.8. Hong Kong: Centre for the Study of Religion and Chinese Society (Chung Chi College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong), 2002.

Lang, Graeme; Selina Chan & Lars Ragvald. "Temples and the Religious Economy." In: Fenggang Yang & Joseph B. Tamney [eds.], State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies. Leiden: Brill, 2005. Pp.149-180. [Note: Case-examples are Wong Tai Sin/Huang Daxian temples in Zhejiang and Guangdong.]

Law Pui-lam. "The Revival of Folk Religion and Gender Relationships in Rural China: A Preliminary Observation." Asian Folklore Studies 64(2005)1: 89-109. [Note: On revival of religious practices in the Pearl River Delta.]

Le Mentec, Katiana. "Barrage des Trois Gorges: les cultes et le patrimoine au coeur des enjeux: étude sur les vestiges culturels et la religion populaire locale dans le xian de Yunyang (municipalité de Chongqing)." Perspectives chinoises 94 (2006): 2-12.

Le Mentec, Katiana; Brown, Peter, tr. "The Three Gorges Dam Project: Religious Practices and Heritage Conservation: a Study of Cultural Remains and Local Popular Religion in the xian of Yunyang (Municipality of Chongqing)." China Perspectives 65 (2006): 2-13. [Note: A German translation of this article appeared in China heute 25(2006)4-5: 154-163.]

Li Feng-mao, "A Review of Ye Mingsheng's Study of the Lüshan Sect in Longyan, Fujian and Its Rituals." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.257-262.

Lin, Fu-shih, "Chinese Shamans and Shamanism in the Chiang-nan Area During the Six Dynasties Period (3rd to 6th Century A.D.)." Ph.D. dissertation, Princeton University, 1994.

Litzinger, Charles A., "Rural Religion and Village Organization in North China: The Catholic Challenge in the Late Nineteenth Century." In Daniel H. Bays [ed.], Christianity in China. From the Eighteenth Century to the Present. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Pp.41-52.

Liu, Kwang-Ching, "Religion and Politics in the White Lotus Rebellion of 1796 in Hubei." In: Kwang-Ching Liu and Richard Shek [eds.], Heterodoxy in Late Imperial China. Honolulu : University of Hawai'i Press, 2004. Pp.281-320.

Liu Tik-sang, "Ritual, Context, and Identity: The Lingmu Ritual of the Liangshan Yi People in Sichuan." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.157-169.

Liu, Xuan: Monica McGarrity; Li Yiming. “The Influence of Traditional Buddhist Wildlife Release on Biological Invasions.” Conservation Letters 5.2 (2012): 107-114.

Abstract: An understanding of anthropogenic factors influencing wildlife invasions is crucial to development of comprehensive prevention and management strategies. However, little attention has been paid to the role religious practice plays in biological invasions. The tradition of wildlife release is prevalent in many areas around the world where Asian religions are influential and is hypothesized to promote species invasions, although quantitative evidence is lacking. We used an information-theoretic approach to evaluate the influence of Buddhist wildlife release events on establishment of feral populations of American bullfrogs ( Lithobates catesbeianus) in Yunnan province, southwestern China, from 2008 to 2009. We identified frequency of release events and lentic water conditions as factors that promote establishment of bullfrog populations, whereas hunting activity likely helps to prevent establishment. Our study provides the first quantitative evidence that religious release is an important pathway for wildlife invasions and has implications for prevention and management on a global scale. (Source: journal)

Liu, Zhiwei, "Beyond the Imperial Metaphor: a Local History of the Beidi (Northern Emperor) Cult in the Pearl River Delta." Chinese Studies in History 35(2001)1: 12-30.

Lo, Roger Shih-Chieh. “Local Politics and the Canonization of a God: Lord Yang (Yang fujun) in Late Qing Wenzhou (840-67).” Late Imperial China 33.1 (2012): 89-121.

Abstract: In early February 1855, a group of “local bandits” led by Qu Zhenhan occupied Yueqing city of Wenzhou prefecture for a week. According to Qing officials’ report, this incident was suppressed by the divine manifestation of Lord Yang, a popular local deity in Wenzhou. Instead of focusing on how Qing authority regained control over local society, this article takes advantage of the local materials available in Wenzhou to explore the following two questions: How does a local deity function politically in local society? What is the role of popular religion in local politics and even national politics in late Qing China? This local history study sheds light on the significance of popular religion in Chinese political culture. (Source: journal)

Luo, Chia-Li, "Coastal Culture and Religion in Early China: A Study through Comparison with the Central Plain Region." Thesis (Ph.D.), Indiana University, 1999.

Abstract: This dissertation identifies and introduces the culture of the coastal region in early China from the Neolithic through the early historic period, with a focus on its religious aspect. In analyzing the religious tradition of the coastal region, the author also compares it with that of contemporaneous central plains region, conventionally known as mainstream Chinese religion. The primary purpose of the dissertation is to challenge the conventional view of a homogenous early Chinese culture, explore the cultural and religious plurality of early China, and provide a more solid basis for discourses on the origins of Chinese religions.

The first half of the dissertation includes a survey of related fields and an introduction to the recently identified coastal culture in early China. The survey covers the fields of the Wu-Yue culture, the Hundred Yue culture, and the Yi culture—all located within or linked with the coastal culture. It provides a summary of the archaeological research in the past few decades and a critical review of the common agendas of the fields. It is then followed by an introduction to the recent scholarship that establishes the identification of an early coastal culture, and a discussion of the physical features of the culture.

The second half of the dissertation focuses on the religious aspect of the coastal culture, comparing it with that of the central plains culture. It includes two parts, the first part studies the cemetery layouts of both cultures, establishing the regionality of the central plains religious tradition (which is centered on lineage hierarchy and commonly considered as the “pan-Chinese” tradition) and the separate identity of the coastal religious culture. The second part aims to reconstruct the actual content of coastal religion, comparing it with an analysis of the religious paradigm of the central plains region. The dissertation concludes that the coastal religious tradition was fundamentally different from the central plains tradition, as shown in various aspects including the structure of the pantheon, the location of worship sites, and the views concerning the destiny of the dead and the relationship between the dead and the living. (Source: Dissertation Abstracts International)

Marsone, Pierre, Alain Arrault, Alix Feng & Vincent Goossaert, "Inscription de la bonne association du sanctuaire stationnal du Pic de l'Est (Pékin, Dongyue Miao, 1560)." Sanjiao wenxian 1 (1997): 25-32.

Marsone, Pierre, "L'épigraphie religieuse de Xi'an. Situation actuelle et documents inédits." Sanjiao wenxian 2(1998): 113-144.

McLaren, Anne & Chen Qinjian, "The Oral and Ritual Culture of Chinese Women: Bridal Lamentations of Nanhui." Asian Folklore Studies 59(2000)2: 205-238.

McLaren, Anne E. Performing Grief: Bridal Laments in Rural China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008.

Abstract: This is the first in-depth study of Chinese bridal laments, a ritual and performative art practiced by Chinese women in premodern times that gave them a rare opportunity to voice their grievances publicly. Drawing on methodologies from numerous disciplines, including performance arts and folk literatures, the author suggests that the ability to move an audience through her lament was one of the most important symbolic and ritual skills a Chinese woman could possess before the modern era.
    Performing Grief provides a detailed case study of the Nanhui region in the lower Yangzi delta. Bridal laments, the author argues, offer insights into how illiterate Chinese women understood the kinship and social hierarchies of their region, the marriage market that determined their destinies, and the value of their labor in the commodified economy of the delta region. The book not only assesses and draws upon a large body of sources, both Chinese and Western, but is grounded in actual field work, offering both historical and ethnographic context in a unique and sophisticated approach. Unlike previous studies, the author covers both Han and non-Han groups and thus contributes to studies of ethnicity and cultural accommodation in China. She presents an original view about the ritual implications of bridal laments and their role in popular notions of “wedding pollution.” The volume includes an annotated translation from a lament cycle.
    This important work on the place of laments in Chinese culture enriches our understanding of the social and performative roles of Chinese women, the gendered nature of China’s ritual culture, and the continuous transmission of women’s grievance genres into the revolutionary period. As a pioneering study of the ritual and performance arts of Chinese women, it will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of anthropology, social history, gender studies, oral literature, comparative folk religion, and performance arts. [Source: publisher's website]

Miles, Steven B. "Celebrating the Yu Fan Shrine: Literati Networks and Local Identity in Early Nineteenth-Century Guangzhou." Late Imperial China 25 (2004)2: 33-73.

Miller, Eric T. "Filial Daughters, Filial Sons: Comparisons from Rural China." In: Charlotte Ikels [ed.], Filial Piety: Practice and Discourse in Contemporary East Asia. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Pp.34-52.

Miller, Tracy Gay, "Constructing Religion: Song Dynasty Architecture and the Jinci Temple Complex." Thesis (Ph.D.), University of Pennsylvania., 2000, 502p.

Abstract: This dissertation addresses the buildings within the Jinci temple complex both as a case study in early building style and as evidence for local religious practice. In Part I, I assess the date of the primary temple building at Jinci, the Sage Mother Hall. I do this first by comparing the building to the Northern Song building manual the Yingzao fashi in order to review the current methodology of dating traditional buildings. Then I compare the bracketing style and structural features of the Sage Mother Hall to buildings of similar date in southern Shanxi province. By establishing a stylistic chronology within the southern Shanxi region, I show that the Sage Mother Hall is not a tenth century building, rather it is stylistically from the end of the eleventh century and should be given a date range of 1038-1102.

In Part II, I examine the architecture of the temple complex in relation to local religion. The distribution of temple buildings at Jinci reveals both how local people conceived of their divinities, and how over time the temple buildings themselves affected later generations' interpretation of the site. The architectural language of traditional Chinese ritual sites used by elite and common patrons alike reveals aspects of local religious belief systems which were obfuscated by the elite authors of textual sources. [Source: Dissertation Abstracts International]

Miller, Tracy G. "Water Sprites and Ancestor Spirits: Reading the Architecture of Jinci." Art Bulletin 86(2004)1: 6-30. [Note: The Jinci temple complex is located about eleven miles southwest of Taiyuan, Shanxi province.]

Naquin, Susan, "Sites, Saints, and Sights at the Tanzhe Monastery." Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie 10(1998): 183-211.

Naquin, Susan, Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400-1900. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000.

Nedostup, Rebecca Allyn, "Religion, Superstition and Governing Society in Nationalist China." Thesis (Ph.D.), Columbia University, 2001, 668p.

Abstract: In its self-appointed role as the savior of Chinese culture, the Nationalist regime at Nanjing (1927-1937) sought to define habits suitable for a modern citizen, and to eliminate customs that might hinder the formation of a cohesive nation. In religion, reformers saw laudable systems of ethics degraded by wasteful and unseemly popular practices, and institutions whose influence threatened to impede government control. Thus party and government officials sought to translate a nebulous distinction between acceptable beliefs and harmful superstition into executable ways to regulate religious groups and control practitioners. Meanwhile, by confiscating temple property and attempting to substitute civic rituals for old-style customs, the regime sought to reorder the pattern of power in local society, sometimes to great resistance. This project aims to trace the story of Nationalist policy towards Chinese popular religion and then place it in the context of local history, employing case studies from the capital and Jiangsu province. The result is not simply a case of an "urban intellectual" government seeking to repress a clear-cut set of "traditional" cultural practices. The difficulties faced by KMT officials and party cadres in dealing with superstition reveal the inherent contradictions in the regime's greater project to remake Chinese culture, society and nation. [Source: Dissertation Abstracts International]

Nie Lili. "Changes in Perceptions of Ancestors: Field Data from a Rural Village in Northeastern China." In: Suenari Michio, J.S. Eades & Christian Daniels [eds.], Perspectives on Chinese Society: Anthropological Views from Japan. Canterbury: Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing, University of Kent, 1995. Pp.92-104.

Oakes, Tim. “Alchemy of the Ancestors: Rituals of Genealogy in the Service of the Nation in Rural China.” In: Tim Oakes & Donald S. Sutton [eds.], Faiths on Display: Religion, Tourism, and the Chinese State. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. Pp.51-77.

Oguma Makoto. "The Village of 'Two Dragons' and the Village of 'Dragon and Tiger': A Field Study of Fengshui in Two Zhejiang Villages." In: Suenari Michio, J.S. Eades & Christian Daniels [eds.], Perspectives on Chinese Society: Anthropological Views from Japan. Canterbury: Centre for Social Anthropology and Computing, University of Kent, 1995. Pp.120-135.

Olles, Volker. Der Berg des Lao Zi in der Provinz Sichuan und die 24 Diözesen der daoistischen Religion.Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2005. Asien- und Afrika-Studien 24.

Abstract: Der Berg des Lao Zi (Laojun Shan) in der Provinz Sichuan ist eine heilige Stätte des Daoismus, die auf eine lange Geschichte zurückblicken kann und auch in der heutigen Zeit als florierender Tempelstandort und regionales Zentrum der einheimischen Religion Chinas bekannt ist. Die Bedeutung und das Erscheinungsbild des Laojun Shan in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, die Grundlagen seiner spirituellen Legitimation in kanonischen Schriften und Überlieferungen, der traditionelle Tempelkomplex und das religiöse Leben auf dem Berg werden in diesem Buch umfassend dargestellt. Die Studie ist das Ergebnis von Forschungen an mehreren Lokalitäten in Sichuan, die zu den Stützpunkten des Himmelsmeister-Daoismus (Tianshi Dao) in der Östlichen Han-Zeit (25-220) gehörten. Diese Orte, die sich auf oder in unmittelbarer Nähe von Bergen bzw. Hügeln befanden, sind als ã24 Diözesen" (ershisi zhi) in den daoistischen Schriften aufgelistet. In vielen Fällen können diese Stätten auch heute noch identifiziert werden. Der Laojun Shan, das ehemalige Zentrum der Diözese Chougeng (Chougeng Zhi), wurde im Verlauf der Geschichte zum Standort eines Tempels zu Ehren von Lao Zi, der in dieser Religion als kosmische Gottheit und Verkörperung des Dao verehrt wird. Als heiliger Raum überdauerte der Berg die Jahrhunderte, und heute beherbergt der Tempelkomplex auf dem Laojun Shan eine Klostergemeinschaft von Daoisten, die zur Schule der Vollkommenen Verwirklichung (Quanzhen) gehören. Als erste Monographie zu diesem Berg bietet die Studie einen Einblick in Erscheinungsformen und Bedeutungen des heiligen Raumes innerhalb der chinesischen Religiosität und zeichnet zugleich ein lebendiges Bild der daoistischen Kultur von Sichuan.

The twenty-four dioceses (ershisi zhi) of early Celestial Master Daoism (Tianshi Dao) appear as a system of religious geography in various texts of the Daoist canon (Daozang). They were religious administrative spheres of an early Daoist movement and as such played an important role in the founding process of China's native religion. These administrative spheres were centered around mountains or hills surrounded by fertile farmland. From the beginning, their function was of a spiritual nature, and after the vanishing of the early Daoist movement these mountains became locations for temples and monasteries. Mt. Laojun (Laojun Shan), the Mountain of Lord Lao, is located in Xinjin County, south of the Sichuanese capital of Chengdu. This mountain has been identified as the center of the former diocese Chougeng (Chougeng Zhi) and, furthermore, has a long history as sanctuary for the worship of Laozi. The temple on Mt. Laojun is today a very active and flourishing institution that belongs to the Dragon Gate (Longmen) order of Complete Realization (Quanzhen) Daoism. This study is the first comprehensive monograph that illustrates Mt. Laojun's past and present in order to provide an insight into the nature and meaning of Daoist sacred space. [Source: publisher's website.]

Olles, Volker. "The Gazetteer of Mt. Tianshe: How the Liumen Community Reshaped a Daoist Sacred Mountain." In Chinese and European Perspectives on the Study of Chinese Popular Religions, edited by Philip Clart. Taipei: Boyang Publishing, 2012. Pp.229-289.

Abstract: The Mountain of Lord Lao (Laojun shan), a sacred site in Sichuan Province, belongs to the earliest sanctuaries of the Daoist religion. In late Qing and Republican times, the temple on Mt. Laojun was closely connected with the Liumen (Liu School) community, a quasi-religious movement based on the doctrine of the Confucian scholar Liu Yuan (1768-1856). Under the influence of the Liumen community, an ancient legend of Laozi’s sojourn on this mountain has become the main source of Mt. Laojun’s spiritual authority. Tang Jicang, an adherent of the Liumen tradition who functioned as the caretaker of the sanctuary from the early 1960s through the 1980s, wrote the only monograph on this sacred site: the Tianshe shan zhi (Gazetteer of Mt. Tianshe). “Tianshe shan” is an alternative appellation for Mt. Laojun, which is favoured by members of the Liumen community. The focus of my contribution is on this valuable document that allows fascinating insights into the modern history of the temple on Mt. Laojun. (Source: book)

Overmyer, Daniel L., "Comments on the Foundations of Chinese Culture in Late Traditional Times." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.313-342. [NOTE: Review of two studies of local culture and religion in Meizhou, Guangdong.]

Overmyer, Daniel L. [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002.

Abstract: This book includes twenty chapters reviewing a total of sixty-four books in Chinese in the two series: "Studies in Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore" and "Traditional Hakka Society," edited respectively by Wang Ch'iu-kuei and John Lagerwey.

It is intended to inform the wider world of scholarship of this new research, which provides the most detailed information ever available about Chinese local culture, drama and religion. Together with the excellent studies of this dimension of culture by scholars in Taiwan, and with a revived interest in this area by other China mainland scholars, this book represents a resumption of the folklore studies movement of the 1920s and 1930s that was interrupted by the war with Japan. These new reports may also be seen as a complement to the work of anthropologists, who until recently have not been able to conduct many field studies in China. As such, this research provides fresh information for an understanding of the culture of the majority of the Chinese people, an understanding based on their lived experiences and values. [From the book's cover.]

Overmyer, Daniel L. "Ritual Leaders in North China Local Communities in the Twentieth Century: A Report on Research in Progress." Minsi quyi 153 (2006): 203-263.

Oxfeld, Ellen. "'When You Drink Water, Think of Its Source': Morality, Status, and Reinvention in Rural Chinese Funerals." Journal of Asian Studies 63(2004)4: 961-990. [Note: Based on fieldwork in a Hakka village in Mei xian, northeast Guangdong province.]

Pan Hongli. "The Old Folks' Associations and Lineage Revival in Contemporary Villages of Southern Fujian Province." In: Tan Chee-Beng [ed.], Southern Fujian: Reproduction of Traditions in Post-Mao China. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2006. Pp.69-96.

Peng, Mu. "Shared Practice, Esoteric Knowledge, and Bai: Envisioning the Yin World in Rural China." Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2008. 

Abstract: How do rural Chinese people practice popular religion? Without Church and institutional propagation, how do people form visions of the yin world, the Chinese spiritual world that is the opposite of the yang world where we live? Based upon fieldwork from 2005-2006 in Chaling County, Hunan Province, China, my dissertation explores what and how social processes and agents influence and shape formation and reproduction of religious beliefs and practices in individual and rural community. Portraying how daily life practices, rites of passage, and annual festival performances mold people’s mind and body, I highlight various wandering ritual specialists, who, as ordinary villagers as well as itinerants, shape and are shaped by local tradition. Centering upon how beliefs and practices are reproduced on the ground, my dissertation touches upon wider issues in the study of religion in general and Chinese popular religion in particular. Religion, belief, and ancestor worship are all modern Western categories. What are the Chinese sense of religion, worship, and belief and believing—at least in one place and time? I invoke the local term bai to shed light on the sense of doing religion. On the one hand, bai refers to concrete bodily movements that embody respect and awe, such as bowing, kneeling, or holding up offerings on ritual occasions. On the other hand, villagers not only use bai as a generic term to generalize ritual worship, but also to characterize their religious inclinations and practices. In this sense, my dissertation is an ethnography of bai, of how cultural and social practices cultivate people to bai appropriately and to envisage the yin world at the same time. Religious practices, I argue, instill into people beliefs and ways of doing religion, and deeply engrain visions of the yin world in the acting body and mind as a whole. Religion is not simply a matter of belief. Using case studies in rural China, I aim to offer an ethnographic critique that demonstrates the possibility of religion as a way, as a repertoire, for people to negotiate and come to terms with the dread and desires of life and death. (Source: dissertation)

Peng, Mu. “Imitating Masters: Apprenticeship and Embodied Knowledge in Rural China.” In: Devorah Kalekin-Fishman & Kelvin E.Y. Low [eds.], Everyday Life in Asia: Social Perspectives on the Senses. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2010. Pp. 115-136.

Pomeranz, Kenneth, "Power, Gender, and Pluralism in the Cult of the Goddess of Taishan." In: Theodore Huters, R. Bin Wong, and Pauline Yu [eds.], Culture & State in Chinese History: Conventions, Accommodations, and Critiques. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997. Pp. 182-204.

Pomeranz, Kenneth. "Orthopraxy, Orthodoxy, and the Goddess(es) of Taishan." Modern China 33(2007)1: 22-46.

Poon, Shuk Wah, "Refashioning Popular Religion: Common People and the State in Republican Guangzhou, 1911--1937." Thesis (Ph.D.), Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2001, 207p.

Abstract: In its search for a modern China after the 1911 Revolution, the Nationalist regime not only mobilized public resources to strengthen the regime's administrative, financial, and military control over society, but also strove to nurture a new official culture in order to foster citizens' allegiance to the nation. Scholarship on the relationship between state and local society tends to emphasize how modern nation-states' dissemination of political ideology and urban values breaks down local cultural beliefs and leads to the homogenization of people's behavior and thoughts. By unfolding the process of state expansion into the domain of popular religion in Republican Guangzhou from the experiences of the grassroots people, this dissertation argues that official values and symbols did not dominate popular religion. Facing the expansion of state culture that stressed the modern ideas of "evolution," "science," and "anti-superstition," common people resisted by refashioning popular religion into state-approved forms of existence. Thus, the infiltration of national symbols into society did not necessarily mean the replacement of local traditions by national culture. Instead of being integrated into the national culture advocated by the political authority, common people in fact preserved their local traditions underneath the surface of cultural integration. By refashioning their own religion into state-approved forms, the common people at the same time refashioned the meanings and representations of national culture in local society. [Source: Dissertation Abstracts International]

Poon Shuk Wah, "Refashioning Festivals in Republican Guangzhou." Modern China 30(2004)2: 199-227.

Abstract: Influenced by the concept of evolution, the Republican regime branded popular religious beliefs and practices as superstition, believing that the eradication of superstition was crucial to the making of modern citizens. Government policies not only affected the development of popular religion but also reshaped the relationship between the state and the common people. Tracing the changes of the Double Seven Festival and the Ghost Festival in Republican Guangzhou, this article aims to show the complexities of the contestations between the state and the common people in actual religious settings, particularly the interaction between official culture and traditional festivals. It argues that although new national symbols successfully found their way into common people's religious lives, helping to give a nationalistic outlook to traditional festivals, underneath the expansion of an official culture, a rich variety of local traditions persisted. By appropriating official symbols, the common people refashioned and preserved their religious traditions. [Source: article]

Poon, Shuk-wah. “Religion, Modernity, and Urban Space: The City God Temple in Republican Guangzhou.” Modern China 34.2 (2008): 247-275.

Abstract: This article examines the impact of the Nationalist regime's modernizing project on the religious landscape and people's public behavior in Republican Guangzhou. In the transformation of the Guangzhou City God Temple, urban space became a place of contest between the government's modernizing project and urban people's religious traditions. In 1931, the municipal government converted the City God Temple into the Native Goods Exhibition Hall, a political space that attempted to foster patriotic consumption among the populace. Yet, beneath the surface, the people of Guangzhou continued to treat the "exhibition hall" as a religious space for expressing their faith in their patron god. While the government was doubtless an important force in modernizing the urban landscape, the city's people managed to inscribe their values onto the urban public space. [Source: journal]

Rack, Mary, "The Mu Yi Festival: Contesting Interpretations of a Territorial Temple Cult." In: Anders Hansson, Bonnie S. McDougall, and Frances Weightman [eds.], The Chinese at Play: Festivals, Games, and Leisure. London: Kegan Paul, 2002. Pp. 55-68. (Note: On a local cult in Yaxi village, near Jishou, western Hunan province.)

Rainey, Lee, "The Secret Writing of Chinese Women: Religious Practice and Beliefs." Annual Review of Women in World Religions 4(1996):130-163.

Rowe, William T., "Ancestral Rites and Political Authority in Late Imperial China: Chen Hongmou in Jiangxi." Modern China 24(1998)4: 378-407.

Rubinstein, Murray, "The Revival of the Mazu Cult and of Taiwanese Pilgrimage to Fujian." Harvard Studies on Taiwan: Papers of the Taiwan Studies Workshop, vol.1, pp.89-125 (Cambridge, MA: Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University, 1995).

Ruizendaal, Robin, "The Quanzhou Marionette Theater: A Fieldwork Report (1986-1995)." China Information 10(1995)1: 1-18.

Ruizendaal, Robin, "Ritual Text and Performance in the Marionette Theatre of Southern Fujian and Taiwan." In: Jan A.M. De Meyer & Peter M. Engelfriet [eds.], Linked Faiths: Essays on Chinese Religion and Traditional Culture in Honour of Kristofer Schipper. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 2000. Pp.336-360.

Schipper, Kristofer, "Liturgical Structures of Ancient Beijing." In: Dai Kangsheng, Zhang Xinying and Michael Pye [eds], Religion and Modernization in China: Proceedings of the Regional Conference of the International Association for the History of Religions held in Beijing, China, April 1992. Cambridge: Roots and Branches, 1995. Pp. 19-33.

Schipper, Kristofer, "Note sur l'histoire du Dongyue miao à Pékin." In Jean-Pierre Diény [ed.], Hommage à Kwong Hing Foon: Études d'histoire culturelle de la Chine. Paris 1995. Pp.255-269.

Schipper, Kristofer, Alain Arrault, Fang Ling & Vincent Goossaert, "Stèle de l'association pour divers objets utilisés dans le monde des ténèbres (Pékin, Dongyue Miao, 1591)." Sanjiao wenxian 1 (1997): 33-45.

Schipper, Kristofer, "Stèle du temple du Pic de l'Est (Dongyue Miao) de la Grande Capitale, par Wu Cheng (1249-1333)." Sanjiao wenxian 2(1998): 85-93.

Schipper, Kristofer & Pierre Marsone, "Inscription pour la reconstruction du temple du Pic de l'Est à Pékin par l'Empereur Zhengtong (1447)." Sanjiao wenxian 2(1998): 95-102.

Schipper, Kristofer, "La grande stèle de l'association de nettoyage (Pékin, Dongyue miao, 1774)." Sanjiao wenxian: Matériaux pour l'étude de la religion chinoise 3(1999): 169-179.

Segers, A. “Le mariage traditionnel dans un petit village Chinois anno 1916.” Courier Verbiest 24 (2011/2012): 16-18.

Sen, Tansen, "Astronomical Tomb Paintings from Xuanhua: Mandalas?" Ars Orientalis 29(1999): 29-54.

Abstract: While the popularity of cremation in China between the tenth and thirteenth centuries is well documented, archaeological evidence for the Buddhist impact on the practice has been lacking. A group of Liao dynasty (907-1125) tombs from the Xuanhua district in Hebei Province, belonging to Chinese residents, provides significant visual testimony to the application of Buddhist rituals in disposing of the dead by cremation. The paintings of celestial objects, drawn on tomb ceilings and framed with Buddhist motifs, show striking similarities to esoteric Star Mandalas and demonstrate the acceptance of Buddhist horoscopic astrology by the laity. Executed during the Liao-Jin transition period, the Xuanhua astronomical paintings include the earliest illustrations yet known of zodiacal symbols in the popular pantheon of East Asia. The paintings are important clues to the synthesis of Buddhist and Chinese views of, and the ways to deal with, life after death. (Source: Ars Orientalis)

Shiga Ichiko, "The Manifestations of Lüzu in Modern Guangdong and Hong Kong: The Rise and Growth of Spirit-Writing Cults." In: Livia Kohn & Harold D. Roth [eds.], Daoist Identity: History, Lineage, and Ritual. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002. Pp.185-209.

Shu, Ping, "Lineage Making in Southern China since the 1980s." In: Robert Cribb [ed.], Asia Examined: Proceedings of the 15th Biennial Conference of the ASAA, 2004, Canberra, Australia. http://coombs.anu.edu.au/ASAA/conference/proceedings/Shu-P-ASAA2004.pdf

Sutton, Donald S., "Myth Making on an Ethnic Frontier: The Cult of the Heavenly Kings of West Hunan, 1715-1996." Modern China 26(2000)4: 448-500.

Sutton, Donald S., "Prefect Feng and the Yangzhou Drought of 1490: A Ming Social Crisis and the Rewards of Sincerity." Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore / Minsu quyi 143(2004): 13-48. (Special issue on "Disasters and Religion", edited by Paul R. Katz and Wu Hsiu-ling)

Sutton, Donald S. & Xiaofei Kang. “Making Tourists, Remaking Locals: Religion, Ethnicity, and Patriotism on Display in Northern Sichuan.” In: Tim Oakes & Donald S. Sutton [eds.], Faiths on Display: Religion, Tourism, and the Chinese State. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. Pp.103-126.

Sutton, Donald S. & Xiaofei Kang “Recasting Religion and Ethnicity: Tourism and Socialism in Northern Sichuan, 1992-2005.” In: Thomas David DuBois [ed.], Casting Faiths: Imperialism and the Transformation of Religion in East and Southeast Asia. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Pp. 190-214.

Svensson, Marina. “Tourist Itineraries, Spatial Mangement, and Hidden Temples: The Revival of Religious Sites in a Water Town.” In: Tim Oakes & Donald S. Sutton [eds.], Faiths on Display: Religion, Tourism, and the Chinese State. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2010. Pp.211-233.

Szonyi, Michael A., "Village Rituals in Fuzhou in the Late Imperial and Republican Periods." D.Phil dissertation, University of Oxford, 1995.

Szonyi, Michael, "Local Cult, Lijia, and Lineage: Religious and Social Organization in the Fuzhou Region in the Ming and Qing." Journal of Chinese Religions 28(2000): 93-126.

Szonyi, Michael, Practicing Kinship: Lineage and Descent in Late Imperial China. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002. (Note: See especially ch.5 "Rituals of the Ancestral Hall: New Year's Day and Lantern Festival")

Abstract: Presenting a new approach to the history of Chinese kinship, this book attempts to bridge the gap between anthropological and historical scholarship on the Chinese lineage by considering its development in terms of individual and collective strategies. Based on a wide range of newly available sources such as lineage genealogies and stone inscriptions, as well as oral history and extensive observation of contemporary ritual practice in the field, this work explores the historical development of kinship in villages of the Fuzhou region of southeastern Fujian province.

In the late imperial period (1368-1911), the people of Fuzhou compiled lengthy genealogies, constructed splendid ancestral halls, and performed elaborate collective rituals of ancestral sacrifice, testimony to the importance they attached to organized patrilineal kinship. In their writings on the lineage, members of late imperial elites presented such local behavior as the straightforward expression of universal and eternal principles. In this book, the author shows that kinship in the Fuzhou region was a form of strategic practice that was always flexible and negotiable. In using the concepts and institutions of kinship, individuals and groups redefined them to serve their own purposes, which included dealing with ethnic differentiation, competing for power and status, and formulating effective responses to state policies. Official efforts to promote a neo-Confucian agenda, to register land and population, and to control popular religion drove people to organize themselves on kinship principles and to institutionalize their kinship relationships. Local efforts to turn compliance with official policies, or at least claims of compliance, to local advantage meant that policymakers were continually frustrated.

Because kinship was constituted in a complex of representations, it was never stable or fixed, but fluid and multiple. In offering this new perspective on this history of Chinese lineage practices, the author also provides new insights into the nature of cultural integration and state control in traditional Chinese society. (Source: publisher's webpage)

Szonyi, Michael. "Making Claims about Standardization and Orthopraxy in Late Imperial China: Rituals and Cults in the Fuzhou Region in Light of Watson's Theories." Modern China 33(2007)1: 47-71.

Tam, Wai-lun, "Local Temple Festivals and Chinese Culture." Ching Feng 42(1999)1-2: 111-134. [Note: On pre-1945 temple festivals in three communities in Fujian, Jiangxi, and Guangdong]

Tam Wai-lun, "Local Religion in Southern Jiangxi Province: A Review of the Gannan Volumes in Lagerwey's Traditional Hakka Society Series." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.369-382.

Tam Wai Lun, "Religious Festivals in Northern Guangdong." In: John Lagerwey [ed.], Religion and Chinese Society. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press / Paris: École française d'Extrême-Orient, 2004. Pp.817-836.

Tam Wai Lun, "Local Religion in Contemporary China." In: James Miller [ed.], Chinese Religions in Contemporary Societies. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2006. Pp.57-83. [Note: Treats case examples from Fujian and Guangdong provinces.]

Tam, Wai Lun. “Communal Worship and Festivals in Chinese Villages.” In Chinese Religious Life, edited by David A. Palmer, Glenn Shive, and Philip L. Wickeri. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp.30-49.

Tan Chee-Beng. "Chinese Religious Expressions in Post-Mao Yongchun, Fujian." In: Tan Chee-Beng [ed.], Southern Fujian: Reproduction of Traditions in Post-Mao China. Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2006. Pp.97-120.

Tiedemann, R.G., "Christianity and Chinese 'Heterodox Sects'. Mass Conversion and Syncretism in Shandong Province in the Early Eighteenth Century." Monumenta Serica 44(1996):339-382.

To, Wing-kai, "The Making of Cantonese Society in Late Imperial China: Religion, Community, and Identity Formation of the Pear River Delta." Ph.D. dissertation, U of California (Davis), 1996.

Tsai, Lily Lee, "Cadres, Temple and Lineage Institutions, and Governance in Rural China." The China Journal 48(2002): 1-27.

Verellen, Franciscus, "Zhang Ling and the Lingjing Salt Well." In: Jacques Gernet & Marc Kalinowski [eds.] (avec la collaboration de Jean-Pierre Diény), En suivant la voie royale: mélanges offerts en hommage à Léon Vandermeersch. Paris: École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 1997. Pp.249-265.

Abstract: Zhang Ling, fondateur du mouvement taoïste des Maîtres célestes au IIe siècle de notre ère, fut également vénéré comme héros civilisateur de la région du Sichuan. Le présent article propose une nouvelle lecture de la légende de Zhang à partir de cette perspective régionale. L'image du héros au sein de la mythologie de Sichuan ancien est illustrée en particulier par les légendes ayant trait à sa création du Lingjing, puits de sel important et source majeure de richesse de la région au Moyen Age. [Source: article.]

Vermander, Benoît, Les mandariniers de la rivière Huai: le réveil religieux de la Chine. Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 2002.

Wang, Danyu. "Ritualistic Coresidence and the Weakening of Filial Practice in Rural China." In: Charlotte Ikels [ed.], Filial Piety: Practice and Discourse in Contemporary East Asia. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Pp.16-33.

Wang, Mingming, "Place, Administration, and Territorial Cults in Late Imperial China. A Case Study from South Fujian." Late Imperial China 16(1995)1:33-78.

Wang Mingming, "The Fa Zhu Gong Festival: The Birth of a God or the Reproduction of Locality in a Chinese Village." In: Anders Hansson, Bonnie S. McDougall, and Frances Weightman [eds.], The Chinese at Play: Festivals, Games, and Leisure. London: Kegan Paul, 2002. Pp. 12-33. (Note: On a temple cult in Meifa village, Anxi county, Fujian.)

Werblowsky, R.J. Zwi, "Catalogue of the Pantheon of Fujian Popular Religion." Studies in Central and East Asian Religions 12/13(2001-2002): 95-192.

Whyte, Martin King. "Filial Obligations in Chinese Families: Paradoxes of Modernization." In: Charlotte Ikels [ed.], Filial Piety: Practice and Discourse in Contemporary East Asia. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Pp.106-127.

Xu, Man. “Gender and Burial in Imperial China: An Investigation of Women's Space in Fujian Tombs of the Song Era (960-1279).” Nan nü 13.1 (2011): 1-51.

Abstract: This paper examines how Song dynasty (960-1279) contemporaries viewed women's place in the afterlife. It analyzes archaeological reports on women's and men's tombs in Song Fujian as well as relevant writings by Song era Neo-Confucian scholars. Despite Neo-Confucians' strong emphasis on gender segregation among the living, both textual and material evidence show that the increasingly hardened gender hierarchy did not carry over into the afterlife. Prescription of gender distinctions in burial practices is virtually absent from neo-Confucians' writings. The structure of tombs implies that communication between women and men after death was expected, not suppressed. Similarities overwhelm differences among women's and men's grave goods, which resemble each other in both object categories and decorative motifs. Women's place in the afterlife was not a reflection of the hierarchies on earth but a new construction. (Source: journal)

Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui, "Putting Global Capitalism in Its Place: Economic Hybridity, Bataille, and Ritual Expenditure." Current Anthropology 41(2000)4: 477-509. (Note: On ritual economy of modern Wenzhou, Zhejiang Province.)

Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui, "Spatial Struggles: Postcolonial Complex, State Disenchantment, and Popular Reappropriation of Space in Rural Southeast China." Journal of Asian Studies 63(2004)3: 719-755.

Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui, "Goddess Across the Taiwan Strait: Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-state, and Satellite Television Footprints." Public Culture 16(2004)2: 209-238.

Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui. “Goddess across the Taiwan Strait: Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-State, and Satellite Television Footprints.” In: Mayfair Mei-hui Yang [ed.], Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Moidernity and State Formation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008. Pp. 323-347.

Ye Xiaoqing, The Dianshizhai Pictorial: Shanghai Urban Life, 1884-1898. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan, 2003. (Note: See Part Four, "Religious Practices", pp. 188-224.)

Yu, Zhejun. "Volksreligion im Spiegel der Zivilgesellschaftstheorie: Gottbegrüßungsprozession in Shanghai während der Republikzeit." Doctoral dissertation, University of Leipzig, Germany, 2010. Download here.

Abstract: Gottbegrüßungsprozession (????, oder Gottempfangsprozession) ist die eines der wichtigsten volksreligiösen Rituale, die zu den bedeutendsten Zeremonien des Religionslebens des chinesischen Volks zählen dürften. Der Ausgangspunkt meiner Forschung ist die 1995 veröffentlichte Studie Demon Hordes and Burning Boats: The Cult of Marshall Wen in Late Imperial Chekiang von Paul Katz, in der „Zivilgesellschaft und Volksreligion“ zum ersten Mal in der Forschung über die chinesische Kultur thematisiert. Um Katz’ Schwächen in der Studie zum Marschall Wen - sowohl an Quellen als auch in Theorie - auszugleichen, folgen ich in meiner Arbeit vertiefend zwei Grundlinien und damit sie grob in zwei Teile teilen, nämlich einen theoretischen und einen empirischen Teil. Im theoretischen Teil müssen zwei Fragen beantwortet: Was ist Zivilgesellschaft? Wie könnte die Zivilgesellschaftstheorie für diese religionswissenschaftliche Forschung nützlich sein? Um eine präzise Arbeitsdefinition geben und eine operationalisierbare Fragestellung aufstellen zu können, verfolge ich zunächst im ersten Teil die Begriffsgeschichte von „Zivilgesellschaft“ und „Öffentlichkeit“ im abendländischen Kontext zurück. Ein dreieckiges Problemfeld zwischen Staat, Privatsphäre und Ökonomie, zwei Ansätze der Zivilgesellschaftstheorie (der analytisch-deskriptive und der Idealistisch-präskriptive) werden zusammengefasst. Sieben Merkmale (öffentliche Assoziationen, Autonomie, Pluralität, Legalität, zivilisiertes Verhalten und utopisches Potenzial) und sechs Modelle (Das Trennungs-, Oppositions-, Öffentlichkeits-, Unterstützungs-, Partnerschaftsmodell und die globale Zivilgesellschaft) werden in der Forschung angeführt. Anschließend setze ich mich mit der Zivilgesellschaftsdiskussion im chinesischen Kontext auseinander. Aus der „Modern China Debate“ in den U. S. A. und der daran angeschlossenen chinesischen Diskussion wird eine Bilanz gezogen. Die „teleologische Annahme“ und der „China-Hat(te)-Auch-Komplex“ werden herausgefunden, die in einer historischen Forschung nicht legitimierbar sind. Danach wird die bisherige Erörterung über die Beziehung zwischen Zivilgesellschaft und Religion kurz zusammengefasst. Zum Ende des theoretischen Teils beschließe ich auf den idealistisch-präskriptiven Ansatzes zu verzichten. Die Zivilgesellschaftstheorie als Idealtypus im Weberschen Sinn benutzt, um die Kulturbedeutung der volksreligiösen Feste in China zu erkennen. Besonders die Organisation und die politische Auseinandersetzung der Prozession sollen in Betrachtung der Zivilgesellschaftstheorie gezogen werden, um die chinesische Gesellschaft besser zu verstehen. Im empirischen Teil der Arbeit werden Regionalbeschreibungen, Archivakten und Zeitungsartikel als Hauptquelle benutzt. Weil bisher keine systematische Forschung im Bereich der Religionswissenschaft zur Gottbegrüßungsprozession vorliegt, wird zuerst eine ausführliche Einführung in die Prozessionen in China gegeben, um ein zuverlässiges Bild von den Prozessionen innerhalb der chinesischen Religionslandschaft entwerfen zu können. Die Etymologie, die Arbeitsdefinition und die kosmologische Ordnung hinter der Prozession werden anschließend vorgestellt. Ich schlage vor, die Prozession als das Kennzeichen der kommunalen Religion Chinas anzusehen. Durch einige Sammelbände zur Folklore in China wird dann deutlich belegt, dass zahlreiche Gottbegrüßungsprozessionen ab Anfang der Qing-Zeit bis in die Republikzeit hinein kontinuierlich in fast allen Provinzen Chinas stattfanden. Danach werden die gesetzlichen Verbote in der Kaiserzeit dargestellt. Die Forschungsgeschichte zur Prozession und deren Problematik werden daraufhin zusammengefasst. Nachdem die Grundform bzw. die alternativen Formen, der Aufbau des Umzugs, Gottheiten, Dauer und Häufigkeit der Prozessionen in einem weiter begrenzten geographischen Raum, nämlich dem heutigen Shanghai, und zeitlich Raum, nämlich der Republikzeit (1912-49), dargestellt werden, werden die Haltung der Regierung und die mediale Präsentation solcher Prozessionen während der Republikzeit rekonstruiert, um die potenzielle Spannung zwischen dem Staat und den religiösen Gemeinschaften als eine der wichtigsten kollektiven Einstellungen zur Prozession zu zeigen. Die Zwischenfälle in der Nachbarregion werden wiedergegeben. Sodann werden drei detailreiche historische Fallbeispiele stichprobenartig angeführt und analysiert, um die weitere Behandlung der Fragestellung empirisch zu untermauern. Das erste historische Fallbeispiel ist der Stadtgott-Inspektionsrundgang. In diesem Fallbeispiel werden besonders die Finanzierung, die Aktivisten und Organisationen berücksichtigt, um ein Licht auf die Durchführung und Verwaltung der Prozessionen zu werfen. Darüber hinaus werden die Streite, Auseinandersetzungen und Konflikte zwischen den lokalen Behörden und dem Aufsichtsrat des Stadtgotttempels beleuchtet, um deren Verläufe, Hintergründe und Ursachen zu erforschen. Das zweite Fallbeispiel handelt sich um die Prozessionen und die Konflikte in Pudong von 1919 bis 1935. Die Verbote, die Gegenmaßnahmen der Regierung und die Verstöße gegen das Prozessionsverbot werden ausführlich geschildert, um die tatsächliche Ursachen der Konflikte zu finden. Zum Schluss des Kapitels wird die Polizei als Beispiel der damaligen Staatsmacht analysiert. Das dritte Fallbeispiel ist die Prozession im Dorf Jiangwan. Im Jahr 1935 wurde die dortige Prozession von der lokalen Feuerwehr schikaniert. Die Nachwirkung und die direkte Einmischung der Parteidirektion werden auch detailreich dargelegt. In der Schlussfolgerung der Arbeit werden die Beteiligten der Prozession in drei Gruppen, nämlich den Schaulustigen, den Aktivisten, den Unterstützer und die Förderer, eingeteilt. Ihre unterschiedlichen Funktionen und Motivationen getrennt zusammengefasst. Die andere Partei, die Kontrolleure der Prozession, wird anschließend behandelt. Alle historischen Beschreibungen werden im Spiegel der Zivilgesellschaftstheorie, v. a. der sieben Merkmale und sechs Modelle, evaluiert. Außerdem bringe ich zwei Einwände gegen die Dichotomie von C. K. Yang vor.

Yuan Bingling, "Les inscriptions du temple du Pic de l'Est à Pékin/Beijing Dongyue miao beiwen kaoshu." Sanjiao wenxian: Matériaux pour l'étude de la religion chinoise 3(1999): 137-158. (Note: article in Chinese; French abstract provided on pp.6-7.)

Yuan, I, "Center and Periphery--Cultural Identity and Localism of the Southern Chinese Peasantry." Issues and Studies 32(1996)6: 1-36.

Zhang, Hong. "'Living Alone' and the Rural Elderly: Strategy and Agency in Post-Mao Rural China." In: Charlotte Ikels [ed.], Filial Piety: Practice and Discourse in Contemporary East Asia. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004. Pp.63-87.

Zhao, Xudong and Duran Bell. “Miaohui, the Temples Meeting Festival in North China.” China Information 21.3 (2007): 457-479.

Abstract: We examine the multiple purposes and modalities that converge during a circuit of festivals, miaohui, which temples organize in recognition of local gods and which are attended reciprocally by temple representatives from the surrounding area in North China. The festivals involve intense expressions of devotion to one or more deities, while offering an opportunity for representatives of other villages to seek recognition through rather boisterous drumming and prolonged choreographed dancing. We note also the emergence of Mao as a great god whose legacy as Chairman of the CCP is projected in order to legitimate current Party leadership and their policy of reform while concurrently acting as a powerful denial of those same policies from the perspective of villagers. [Source: journal]

Zhu Qiuhua, "Achievements in the Study of the Tongzi Ritual Drama in Jiangsu." In: Daniel L. Overmyer [ed.] (with the assistance of Shin-yi Chao), Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou Publishing Co., 2002. Pp.231-241.

Ziegler, Delphine, "Entre ciel et terre: Le culte des 'bateaux-cercueils' du Mont Wuyi." Cahiers d'Extrème-Asie 9(1996/97): 201-231.

Ziegler, Delphine, "The Cult of the Wuyi Mountains and Its Cultivation of the Past: A Topo-Cultural Perspective." Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie 10 (1998): 255-286.