Taoist Ritual and Popular Cults of Southeast China

Review
Dean has made a major contribution to our understanding of Chinese religion. . . . As an expert tour-guide, eyewitness reporter, archivist, historical interpreter, textual translator, and semiologist, he constructs a valuable multifaceted view of some old and continuously developing religious phenomena.


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Most commentators imagine contemporary China to be monolithic, atheistic, and materialist, and wholly divorced from its earlier customs, but Kenneth Dean combines evidence from historical texts and extensive fieldwork to reveal an entirely different picture. Since 1979, when the Chinese government relaxed some of its most stringent controls on religion, villagers in the isolated areas of Southeast China have maintained an "underground" effort to restore traditional rituals and local cults.


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