8. Religious Calendar, Festivals, Popular Customs

Aijmer, Göran, New Year Celebrations in Central China in Late Imperial Times. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2003.

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.

Allio, Fiorella, "Rituel, territoire et pouvoir local: Le procession du "pays" de Sai-kang (T'ainan, Taiwan)." Doctoral dissertation, U. de Paris X, Paris-Nanterre, 1996.

Allio, Fiorella, "Procession et identité: mise en scène rituelle de l'histoire locale." Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie 10 (1998): 1-18.

Allio, Fiorella. "Marcher, danser, jouer: La prestation des troupes processionnelles à Taiwan." Études Mongoles at Siberiennes 31(1999-2000)2: 181-235.

Allio, Fiorella, "Spatial Organization in a Ritual Context: A Preliminary Analysis of the Koah-hiu(n) Processional System of the Tainan Region and Its Social Significance." 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.131-178.

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.

Bartlett, Beatrice S., "Court and Countryside: the Traditional Chinese New Year's Dragon Dance." Yale-China Review 3(1995)1: 4-9.

Boretz, Avron A., "Righteous Brothers and Demon Slayers: Subjectivities and Collective Identities in Taiwanese Temple Processions." In: Paul R. Katz and Murray A. Rubinstein [eds.], Religion and the Formation of Taiwanese Identities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Pp.219-251.

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.

Chan, Kwok-shing. "Temple Festivals, Social Networks, and Communal Relationships: The Development of a Local Cult in Macau." Berliner China-Hefte 35 (2008): 118-126.

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

Cheu Hock Tong, "The Festival of the Nine Emperor Gods in Malaysia. Myth, Ritual, and Symbol." Asian Folklore Studies 55(1996)1: 49-72.

Choi Chi-Cheung, "Reinforcing Ethnicity: The Jiao Festival in Cheung Chan." In: David Faure & Helen F. Siu [eds.], Down to Earth: The Territorial Bond in South China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995.

Chow Wai-yin. "Religious Narrative and Ritual in a Metropolis: A Study of the Daoist Ghost Festival in Hong Kong." In: Elise Anne DeVido and Benoît Vermander [eds.], Creeds, Rites and Videotapes: Narrating Religious Experience in East Asia. Taipei: Taipei Ricci Institute, 2004. Pp.187-211.

Cohen, Erik. The Chinese Vegetarian Festival in Phuket: Religion, Ethnicity and Tourism on a Southern Thai Island. Bangkok: White Lotus, 2001.

Dai Yanjing, Keith Dede, Qi Huimin, Zhu Yongzhong & Kevin Stuart, "'Laughing on the Beacon Tower': Spring Festival Songs from Qinghai." Asian Folklore Studies 58(1999): 121-187.

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.

Feuchtwang, Stephan. "Hopes, Fears and Excitement: the Authority of a Local Festival." In: Lin, Tsong-yuan [ed.], Proceedings of the International Conference on Anthropology and the Museum = Renleixue yu bowuguan guoji xueshu yantaohui lunwen zhuanji. Taipei: Taiwan Museum, 1995. Pp. 101-118. [Note: on a Mazu festival in Guandu]

Feuchtwang, Stephan, "The General and the Immortal: The Authors and the Authority of Custom." In: Anders Hansson, Bonnie S. McDougall, and Frances Weightman [eds.], The Chinese at Play: Festivals, Games, and Leisure. London: Kegan Paul, 2002. Pp. 34-54. (Note: On temple festivals in Shiding, near Taipei.)

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.

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.

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.

Kennedy, Brian L. & Elizabeth Nai-Jia Guo. "Taiwanese Daoist Temple Parades and Their Martial Motifs." Journal of Daoist Studies 2 (2009): 197-209.

Lagerwey, John, "Festivals and Cults among the Hakka." China Perspectives 4(1996): 28-34.

Liu, Huan-yueh. "Placating Lost Souls and Praying for Them to be at Peace--the Mid Prime Festival of Universal Salvation in Worship of Lonely Ghosts." Translated by Lin Pei-yin. Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series 14 (2004): 119-128.

Nygren, Christina. Gastar, generaler och gäckande gudinnor. Resande teatersällskap, religiösa festivaler och populära nöjen i dagens Japan och Kina. Stockholm: Carlsson Bokförlag, 2000. [English title: "Ghosts, Generals and Gorgeous Goddesses. Travelling Theatres, Religious Festivals and Popular Amusements in Contemporary Japan and China."]

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]

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.)

Reiter, Florian C., "Wells (ching) and What They Meant to the Chinese." In: Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer [ed.], Das andere China. Festschrift für Wolfgang Bauer zum 65. Geburtstag. Wiesbaden: Harassowitz, 1995. Pp.237-255.

Shih, Shu-ch'ing. "The Procession of Lord Guan Di." Translated by Hwang Yingtsih. Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series 14 (2004): 73-78.

Siu, Kin Wai Michael, "Lanterns of the Mid-Autumn Festival: A Reflection of Hong Kong Cultural Change." Journal of Popular Culture 33(1999)2: 67-86.

Siu, Kin-wai Michael, "Red Packet: A Traditional Object in the Modern World." Journal of Popular Culture 35(2001)3: 103-125.

Stafford, Charles, Separation and Union in Modern China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Abstract: In this original and readable book, Charles Stafford describes the Chinese fascination with separation and reunion. Drawing on his field studies in Taiwan and mainland China, he gives a vivid account of raucous festivals of reunion, elaborate rituals for the sending-off of gods (and daughters), poetic moments of leave-takings between friends, and bitter political rhetoric about Chinese national unity. The idioms and practices of separation and reunion - which are woven into the fabric of daily life - help people to explain the passions aroused by the possibility of national division. In this book, the discussion of everyday rituals leads into a unique and accessible general introduction to Chinese and Taiwanese society and culture. [Source: publisher's website]

Contents: Introduction: an anthropology of separation; 1. Two festivals of reunion; 2. The etiquette of parting and return; 3. Greeting and sending-off the dead; 4. The ambivalent threshold; 5. Commensality as reunion; 6. Women and the obligation to return; 7. Developing a sense of history; 8. Classical narratives of separation; 9. The politics of separation and reunion in China and Taiwan; Conclusion: the separation constraint.

Sutton, Donald S., "Transmission in Popular Religion: The Jiajiang Festival Troupe of Southern Taiwan." In: Shahar, Meir & Robert P. Weller [eds.], Unruly Gods: Divinity and Society in China. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996. Pp.212-249.

Sutton, Donald S., "The Uses of Ritual in a Chinese Festival: The Jiajiang Troupe in Southern Taiwan." Journal of Ritual Studies 11(1997)1: 45-60.

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)

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, "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.

Tan, Betty O.S., "The Contextualization of the Chinese New Year Festival." Asia Journal of Theology 15(2001)1: 115-132.

Teather, E.K., "Time Out and Worlds Apart: Tradition and Modernity Meet in the Time-space of the Gravesweeping Festivals of Hong Kong." Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 22(2001)2: 156-172.

Abstract: This paper focuses on Hong Kong's Gravesweeping Festivals, Qingming and Chongyang. The practices carried out in urban cemeteries at these Festivals are over two thousand years old, and represent "time out" from modern "clock time". They are examined in the context of Giddens' (1985) reworking of Hagerstrand's time-space geography, and of Douglas' (1966) discussion of pollution. It is suggested that the cemeteries are regarded as dangerous places because they represent liminal spaces. Giddens' dimension of span enables a distinction to be made between, on the one hand, the long-established cultural significance of the grave, and, on the other, the recentness of the urban cemetery. The dimension of form (redefined from Giddens' original concept), applied to some details of cemetery landscapes, reveals the "worlds apart" of the non-material worlds of the spirits and of fengshui. By considering the Festivals in the light of Giddens' dimension, character it emerges that the Gravesweeping Festivals are, as they have been for centuries, firmly embedded in Hong Kong's social system, where routines of ancestor veneration continue to renew and strengthen the family bonds that are at the heart of Confucian values. Furthermore, their continued observation may well represent practices that are of deep ontological significance to the predominantly immigrant community of Hong Kong. (Source: A&H Search)

Thiriez, Régine, "Festivals and Photography in the Last Decades of Imperial China." In: Anders Hansson, Bonnie S. McDougall, and Frances Weightman [eds.], The Chinese at Play: Festivals, Games, and Leisure. London: Kegan Paul, 2002. Pp. 88-108.

Wang Chien-ch'uan. "The White Dragon Hermitage and the Spread of the Eight Generals Procession Troupe in Taiwan." 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. 283-302.

Wang Kefeng, "History of Lion Dance." Chinese Literature, summer 1995, pp.138-144.

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.)

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]