NEW PUBLICATIONS IN 2011
Arrault, Alain. “Les calendriers chinois: l’image du temps, le temps dans les images.” Arts Asiatiques 66 (2011): 11-32.
Baker, Hugh. Ancestral Images: A Hong Kong Collection. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2011.
Abstract: This new revised edition collects in one place the articles from the three volumes of Hugh Baker's Ancestral Images originally published in 1979, 1980 and 1981. The 120 articles and photographs explore everyday life, customs and rituals in Hong Kong's rural New Territories. They investigate religion, food, language, history, festivals, family, strange happenings and clan warfare. The book documents much that can no longer be found. But it also provides an understanding of a world which has not yet entirely disappeared, and which still forms the background of life in modern urban Hong Kong and its neighbouring cities. Esoteric nuggets of information are scattered through the book: How do you ascend a pagoda with no staircase? How can you marry without attending the wedding? When is it wrong to buy a book? Hugh Baker answers these and many other questions in this well-rounded picture of a vibrant, quirky people painted with affection and informed by many years of scholarship and research. (Source: publisher's website)
Berezkin, Rostislav. “Scripture-telling (jiangjing) in the Zhangjiangang Area and the History of Chinese Storytelling.” Asia Major, Third Series, 24.1 (2011): 1-42.
Berezkin, Rostislav. “An Analysis of ‘Telling Scriptures’ (jiangjing) during Temple Festivals in Gangkou (Zhangjiagang), with Special Attention to the Status of Performers.” CHINOPERL Papers, no. 30 (2011): 25-76.
Billioud, Sébastien. “Le role de l’éducation dans le projet salvateur du Yiguan Dao.” Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident 33 (2011): 211-234.
Blake, C. Fred. Burning Money: The Material Spirit of the Chinese Lifeworld. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011.
Abstract: For a thousand years across the length and breadth of China and beyond, people have burned paper replicas of valuable things—most often money—for the spirits of deceased family members, ancestors, and myriads of demons and divinities. Although frequently denigrated as wasteful and vulgar and at times prohibited by governing elites, today this venerable custom is as popular as ever. Burning Money explores the cultural logic of this common practice while addressing larger anthropological questions concerning the nature of value. The heart of the work integrates Chinese and Western thought and analytics to develop a theoretical framework that the author calls a “materialist aesthetics.” This includes consideration of how the burning of paper money meshes with other customs in China and around the world. The work examines the custom in contemporary everyday life, its origins in folklore and history, as well as its role in common rituals, in the social formations of dynastic and modern times, and as a “sacrifice” in the act of consecrating the paper money before burning it. Here the author suggests a great divide between the modern means of cultural reproduction through ideology and reification, with its emphasis on nature and realism, and previous pre-capitalist means through ritual and mystification, with its emphasis on authenticity. The final chapters consider how the burning money custom has survived its encounter with the modern global system and internet technology. (Source: publisher's website)
Blake, C. Fred. “Lampooning the Paper Money Custom in Contemporary China.” The Journal of Asian Studies 70.2 (2011): 449-469.
Abstract: Over the past millennium and across the length and breadth of China and beyond, people have been burning paper replicas of the material world to send to their deceased family members, ancestors, and myriads of imaginary beings. The paper replicas, which include all types of goods and treasures, mostly old and new forms of money, is commonly referred to as the paper money custom. Studies of the paper money custom have neglected the native opposition to it, especially that of the contemporary intelligentsia, one form of which consists of news reports and human interest stories in the popular press that lampoon the practice of burning paper money. Many stories lampoon the paper money custom by showing how it burlesques traditional virtues such as filial piety. One of the interesting maneuvers in this criticism is how it employs the old and newer kinds of paper monies to shape the response of the readers.(Source: journal)
Boretz, Avron. Gods, Ghosts, and Gangsters: Ritual Violence, Martial Arts, and Masculinity on the Margins of Chinese Society. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2011.
Abstract: Demon warrior puppets, sword-wielding Taoist priests, spirit mediums lacerating their bodies with spikes and blades—these are among the most dramatic images in Chinese religion. Usually linked to the propitiation of plague gods and the worship of popular military deities, such ritual practices have an obvious but previously unexamined kinship with the traditional Chinese martial arts. The long and durable history of martial arts iconography and ritual in Chinese religion suggests something far deeper than mere historical coincidence. Avron Boretz argues that martial arts gestures and movements are so deeply embedded in the ritual repertoire in part because they iconify masculine qualities of violence, aggressivity, and physical prowess, the implicit core of Chinese patriliny and patriarchy. At the same time, for actors and audience alike, martial arts gestures evoke the mythos of the jianghu, a shadowy, often violent realm of vagabonds, outlaws, and masters of martial and magic arts. Through the direct bodily practice of martial arts movement and creative rendering of jianghu narratives, martial ritual practitioners are able to identify and represent themselves, however briefly and incompletely, as men of prowess, a reward otherwise denied those confined to the lower limits of this deeply patriarchal society. Based on fieldwork in China and Taiwan spanning nearly two decades, Gods, Ghosts, and Gangsters offers a thorough and original account of violent ritual and ritual violence in Chinese religion and society. Close-up, sensitive portrayals and the voices of ritual actors themselves—mostly working-class men, many of them members of sworn brotherhoods and gangs—convincingly link martial ritual practice to the lives and desires of men on the margins of Chinese society. (Source: publisher's website)
Bussotti, Michela. “Images familières, images familiales: imprimés de la Chine rurale (XVe-XIXe siècle).” Arts Asiatiques 66 (2011): 33-44.
Cai, Jiehua. “Xiyang ji und Tianfei niangma zhuan: Ein Vergleich.” In Studien zum Roman Sanbao taijian Xiyang ji tongsu yanyi, vol.1 (Maritime Asia, vol. 23), edited by Shi Ping & Roderich Ptak, 139-154. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz; Shanghai: Shanghai Zheng He yanjiu zhongxin, 2011.
Abstract: This article compares some basic features of Xiyang ji and Tianfei niangma zhuan, especially their macro-structure, the role of Tianfei, the position of different religious strata within the overall construction, and the implicit political messages behind each story. In both cases, the westbound movement underlying the narration seems to express the hope that Ming-China will reemerge as a powerful nation. In Xiyang ji this can be linked to the preface and other features. Certain similarities between both texts also pertain to the portrayal of Tianfei or Mazu; generally, however, she plays a more active role in Tianfei nianma zhuan, where she is one of the main protagonists; in Xiyang ji she is implicitly present as Zheng He’s guardian, but she usually stays in the background. Moreover in the first case, Tianfei appears as a reincarnation of a fairy, who is the daughter of Beitian miaoji xingjun. This can be linked to the idea of san jiao gui yi. Here, one can also detect several differences in the structure of both novels. In Tianfei niangma zhuan, Daoism and Buddhism are closely interlaced, in Xiyang ji they appear as com-petitive strata. These findings also have certain implications for the role of “Confucianism” and the classification of both novels within the xiaoshuo genre.
Chan, Selina Ching & Graeme Lang. “Temples as Enterprises.” In: Adam Yuet Chau [ed.], Religion in Contemporary China: Revitalization and Innovation. London: Routledge, 2011. Pp. 133-153.
Chau, Adam Yuet. “Modalities of Doing Religion.” In Chinese Religious Life, edited by David A. Palmer, Glenn Shive, and Philip L. Wickeri. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp.67-84.
Chau, Adam Yuet; G. Lowes Dickinson. “Modalities of Doing Religion and Ritual Polytropy: Evaluating the Religious Market Model from the Perspective of Chinese Religious History.” Religion 41.4 (2011): 547-568.
Abstract: This article examines the Chinese religious landscape through the lenses of ‘modalities of doing religion’ and ‘ritual polytropy’ and explores the implications such different conceptualisations might bring to the religious-market model. It argues that in Chinese religious culture one can identify five modalities of doing religion (the scriptural/discursive, the self-cultivational, the liturgical, the immediate-practical and the relational), each cutting across broader, conceptually aggregated religious traditions such as Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism. Instead of competition between membership-based churches, there is more typically competition within each modality, especially the liturgical modality. Religious pluralism in China is not manifested as the co-existence of, and competition between, confession- and membership-based denominations and churches, but rather as the co-existence of, and competition between, various ritual-service providers with different (though sometimes convergent) liturgical programmes. (Source: journal)
Chen, Chiung Chi. "Spectacle and Vulgarity: Stripper Dance at Temple Festivals in Contemporary Taiwan." TDR: The Drama Review 55, no. 1 (2011): 104–119.
Abstract: Starting in the early 1980s, female striptease shows mounted on the backs of trucks, known as “electronic festooned vehicles” (EFVs), have been popular entertainments offered to the deities at temple festivals. The EFV takes the “realities” of contemporary Taiwanese society—sexism, capitalism, and social hierarchy—and re-presents them in an evocative/provocative form.
Chen Hsiu-fen. "Between Passion and Repression: Medical Views of Demon Dreams, Demonic Fetuses, and Female Sexual Madness in Late Imperial China.“ Late Imperial China 32.1 (2011): 51-82.
Clart, Philip. “Anchoring Guanyin: Appropriative Strategies in a New Phoenix Hall Scripture.” Min-su ch’ü-i / Journal of Chinese Theatre, Ritual and Folklore 173 (2011): 101-128.
Abstract: The fact that scriptures play such a significant role in the supposedly mainly oral culture of Chinese popular religion raises a number of questions: Who writes them? How are they used? What religious ideas do they manifest? How do they appropriate and affect the cult of their protagonist deities? The present article seeks to address these questions using the case of Guanyin’s Lotus Sutra of the Marvellous Dao (Guanyin miaodao lianhua jing), a text revealed between 1998 and 2000 by means of spiritwriting at a Taichung city phoenix hall, the Xuyuan tang. The analysis of the scripture’s structure and rhetoric reveals that the Guanyin sutra represents a mode of popular and sectarian engagement with the Buddhist tradition that differs from and enriches the picture provided for us by Chün-fang Yü’s studies of Guanyin and by Prasenjit Duara’s notion of “superscription.” While we are definitely looking at a layering of meanings, as Duara did by regarding the Guandi myth as “a palimpsest of layered meanings,” the image of “superscription” does not accurately describe the way the Guanyin sutra does not so much overwrite but underlay Buddhist devotionalism with phoenix hall notions of Dao cultivation. In effect, the Guanyin sutra provides an inclusivist re-anchoring of Guanyin-related devotional practices in a core set of sectarian notions of personal cultivation, thus allowing us to differentiate a distinct mode of the syncretic construction of religious doctrine in a popular sectarian context. (Source: journal)
DuBois, Thomas David. “The Salvation of Religion? Public Charity and the New Religions of the Early Republic.” Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore / Minsu quyi 172 (2011): 73-126.
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.
Fisher, Gareth. “Morality Books and the Revival of Lay Buddhism in China.” In: Adam Yuet Chau [ed.], Religion in Contemporary China: Revitalization and Innovation. London: Routledge, 2011. Pp. 53-80.
Flath, James. “Social Narratives in Yangliuqing Nianhua of the 1930s.” Arts Asiatiques 66 (2011): 69-82.
Formoso, Bernard. “A Wishful Thinking Claim to Global Expansion? The Case of Dejiao.” In Xuezhe guan Dejiao 学者观德教. Edited by Chen Jingxi 陈景熙 and Zhang Yudong 张禹东, 521-546. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2011.
Goossaert, Vincent. “Une repression endemique? La destruction des «temples immoraux» en Chine sous les Qing (1644-1898).” In: Arnaud Brotons, Yannick Bruneton & Nathalie Kouamé [eds.], État, religion et répression en Asie: Chine, Corée, Japon, Vietnam (XIIIe-XXIe siècles). Paris: Éditions Karthala, 2011. Pp. 183-221.
Goossaert, Vincent. “Yu Yue (1821–1906) explore l’au-delà: La culture religieuse des élites chinoises à la veille des revolutions.” Miscellanea Asiatica: Mélanges en l’honneur de Françoise Aubin / Festschrift in Honour of Françoise Aubin, edited by Roberte Hamayon, Denise Aigle, Isabelle Charleux, and Vincent Goossaert. Sankt Augustin, Monumenta Serica, 2011. Pp. 623-656.
Goossaert, Vincent. “Détruire les temples pour construire les écoles: reconstitution d’un objet historique.” Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident 33 (2011): 35-51.
Hong, Jeehee. “Virtual Theater of the Dead: Actor Figurines and Their Stage in Houma Tomb No.1, Shanxi Province.” Artibus Asiae 71.1 (2011): 75-114.
Huang, C. Julia, Elena Valussi, and David A. Palmer. “Gender and Sexuality.” In Chinese Religious Life, edited by David A. Palmer, Glenn Shive, and Philip L. Wickeri. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp.107-123.
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)
Katz, Paul R. „Spirit-writing Halls and the Development of Local Communities: A Case Study of Puli (Nantou County).“ Min-su ch’ü-i / Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore 174 (2011): 103-184.
Kiely, Jan.“Shanghai Public Moralist Nie Qijie and Morality Book Publication Projects in Republican China.” Twentieth-Century China 36 (2011): 4-22.
Abstract: With an emphasis on the compilations of Shanghai philanthropist Nie Qijie, this article examines the flourishing of morality book and popular moral prescriptive text publication in the early decades of the twentieth century. The mass production and dissemination of such ostensibly traditional didactic texts advanced, in large part, due to the interests and resources of new urban elites and the capacity of the Shanghai-centered modern publishing industry. In the course of this process, the uses and meanings of these books shifted, and their lessons in traditional ethics often affiliated age-old terms and concepts with emerging ideologies and social images identified with a new, urban modern world. These widely available texts, in effect, became scripts of public moralism that were readily available to and influential among those promoting elite and state-building projects. (Source: journal)
Lackner, Michael. "Die Renaissance divinatorischer Techniken in der VR China - ein neues Modul chinesischer kultureller Identität?" In China, Japan und das Andere: Ostasiatische Identitäten im Zeitalter des Transkulturellen, edited by Stephan Köhn and Michael Schimmelpfennig, 239-263. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2011.
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.
Lee, Anru & Anna Wen-hui Tang. “From the 'Twenty-five Ladies’ Tomb' to a 'Memorial Park for Women Laborers': Gender, Religion, and the Politics of Memory in Taiwan’s Urban Renewal.” Journal of Archaeology and Anthropology 75 (2011):37-70.
Abstract: This essay looks at the recent renovation of the Twenty-five Ladies’ Tomb, and examines the politics of the feminist movements and the politics of memory as they are expressed through different meanings of female ghosts, in southern Taiwan. People who were involved in the renovation process included the families of the deceased “twenty-five maidens,” the Kaohsiung city government, and feminist groups in Kaohsiung and elsewhere in Taiwan – most notably the Kaohsiung Association for the Promotion of Women’s Rights – all of whom had different considerations and therefore diverse expectations regarding the future and purpose of the tomb. In Specters of Marx (2006), Derrida uses the idea of “specters” and “haunting” as consequences of historical injustice and tragedy metaphorically but powerfully. These two elements come together in our essay as well. However, the “ghosts” in our accounts are more literally ghosts with whom some (if not all) of our ethnographic subjects interact. They appear, express their sorrow, and demonstrate their grievances. The reestablishment of peace and order essential to residents of both the living world and the afterlife thus hinges upon mutual understanding and close collaboration between them. Yet, as meanings are constantly contested, so is the nature of the deceased’s requests. The different interpretations that the (living) socio-political forces give to the deceased’s needs open up new terrains of contestation for the memory of the past and the rights and obligations at the present. Ghosts are agencies that inform changes in the social life of the living. (Source: journal)
Li Lan. „The Changing Role of the Popular Religion of Nuo in Modern Chinese Politics.“ Modern Asian Studies 45.5 (2011): 1289-1311.
Abstract: Since the early 1980s, China's rapid economic growth and profound social transformation have greatly changed the role of popular religion in modern Chinese politics. In the case of nuo, these changes have been directly responsible for the incorporation of this popular religion into the implementation of Party-state's policy on ethnic minority and the provision of evidence to support the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party's regime. Through manipulation and reinterpretation by local governments, the popular religion of nuo has not only become the target of local socio-economic development, a common phenomenon in contemporary China, but has also played a key role in ethnic identification, which is an important step for a post-Mao's CCP to maintain political stability in ethnic minority areas. In addition, nuo has through the research of Marxism-influenced schools fundamentally altered its position from an officially unrecognized religion opposed to both socialist political order and atheist ideology to a politically favoured ‘living fossil’ of primitive culture. This proves the Marxist evolutionary theory in which socialism and communism are thought to be inescapable consequences of social development. The positive role played by nuo in modern Chinese politics has brought the popular religion much open support and endorsement from party-state officials at all levels, including top-ranking officials within the Central Committee of the CCP. Like any popular religion, nuo has over the centuries undergone significant changes, but never before has it experienced such dramatic changes in its relationship with an anti-religious and pragmatic central government, something which has significantly altered the course of its development. (Source: journal)
Lin, Wei-Cheng. “Underground Wooden Architecture in Brick: A Changed Perspective from Life to Death in 10th- through 13th-century Northern China.” Archives of Asian Art 61 (2011): 3-36.
Palmer, David A. “Chinese Redemptive Societies and Salvationist Religion: Historical Phenomenon or Sociological Category?” Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore / Minsu quyi 172 (2011): 21-72.
Palmer, David A. “Chinese Religious Innovation in the Qigong Movement: The Case of Zhonggong.” In: Adam Yuet Chau [ed.], Religion in Contemporary China: Revitalization and Innovation. London: Routledge, 2011. Pp. 182-202.
Palmer, David A.; Paul R. Katz, Wang Chien-chuan. “Introduction: Redemptive Societies as Confucian NRMSs?” Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore / Minsu quyi 172 (2011): 1-12.
Palmer, David A. “The Body: Health, Nation, and Transcendence.” In Chinese Religious Life, edited by David A. Palmer, Glenn Shive, and Philip L. Wickeri. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp.87-106.
Ptak, Roderich. “Vom Weißen Aalgeist oder Baishan jing.” In Studien zum Roman Sanbao taijian Xiyang ji tongsu yanyi, vol.1 (Maritime Asia, vol. 23), edited by Shi Ping & Roderich Ptak, 119-138. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz; Shanghai: Shanghai Zheng He yanjiu zhongxin, 2011.
Abstract: In some earlier studies Xiyang ji emerges as a complex novel of quest. The quest theme and certain similarities between Xiyang ji and Xiyou ji are also addressed in the present note. Among other things, this implies that the heroes are moving from a familiar environment to an unknown space, where they are put to test. In Xiyang ji, the passage between both spheres is marked by a chain of initial challenges. One such challenge concerns the role of Baishan jing (White Eel Spirit), who threatens the fleet on the outbound voyage. Some years later, when the ships return home, he also causes trouble. Both episodes involve Zheng He and Zhang Tianshi. – The paper shows, how Baishan’s role and Zheng He’s behaviour should be understood and how one can relate the relevant segments to the overall structure of the story. It also provides some notes on the term baishan (and similiar expressions) and on earlier references to eel spirits.
Reiter, Florian C., ed. Feng Shui (Kan Yu) and Architecture: International Conference in Berlin. Asien- und Afrika-Studien der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, vol.38. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2011.
Abstract: Feng Shui (Kan Yu) and Architecture, edited by Florian C. Reiter, presents the results of a symposium with the same title that in 2010 was held at the Chinese Department of Humboldt-University (Berlin). The symposium assembled a number of specialists in the fields of Chinese, Japanese and Korean studies and also architects from Australia, China, Europe, Japan, New Zealand, Taiwan, and USA. The interdisciplinary exchange of discourses on Feng Shui and its scientific impact on constructions and architecture as practiced today was the avowed purpose of the symposium. The results are presented in thirteen articles that range from aspects of Feng Shui and its reality in Berlin to theoretical excursions into numerology and other either practical or literary and abstract matters of Feng Shui, and also include religion (esp. Buddhism) with exploits of Feng Shui. With contributions by G. Anders, O. Bruun, H. Choy, S.L. Field/J.K. and I. Lee, E. van Goethem, E. Kögel, M.Y. Mak, M. Paton, F.C. Reiter, A.T. So, Tsai Sueyling, Wang Yude, and Hong-key Yoon. (Source: publisher's website)
Segers, A. “Le mariage traditionnel dans un petit village Chinois anno 1916.” Courier Verbiest 24 (2011/2012): 16-18.
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.
Tamaki Mitsuko. “The Prevalence of the Worship of Goddess Lin Guniang by the Ethnic Chinese in Southern Thailand.” In Xuezhe guan Dejiao 学者观德教. Edited by Chen Jingxi 陈景熙 and Zhang Yudong 张禹东, 503-520. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2011.
Weigold, Katrin. “Guan Yus Gastrolle im Sanbao taijian Xiyang ji tongsu yanyi.” In Studien zum Roman Sanbao taijian Xiyang ji tongsu yanyi, vol.1 (Maritime Asia, vol. 23), edited by Shi Ping & Roderich Ptak, 171-189. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz; Shanghai: Shanghai Zheng He yanjiu zhongxin, 2011.
Abstract: Guan Yu, one of the heroes in Sanguo yanyi, also appears in chapters 75 and 76 of Xiyang ji. In this section, which is set in Mogadishu, Zheng He and his soldiers are confronted with Chanshi feibo, a powerful magician, who uses “flying saucers” to kill his enemies (hence his name). Zhang Tianshi, the Daoist leader in the Chinese team, is commissioned to clear the way for China’s fleets, but he cannot overcome Feibo. Therefore, he calls the Heavenly Marshal Guan Yu for help. Guan Yu quickly understands the situation and takes Feibo as prisoner. However, Feibo outwits his “master”: He reminds the latter of his virtues (an allusion to Sanguo yanyi, in which Guan Yu releases Cao Cao) and Guan Yu lets him go. – As in the case of the previous paper, this arrangement shows that the author has opted to “play” with a set of familiar elements, which includes Guan Yu’s sense of loyality and righteousness, but also his arrogance. By displaying these features against the background of a totally different setting, the author reveals a good sense of humour. Moreover, seen from the internal setting of the novel, Guan Yu’s behaviour can be interpreted as a blow against Zhang Tianshi, who stands below the Buddhist leader Jin Bifeng.
Weller, Robert P. “Chinese Cosmology and the Environment.” In Chinese Religious Life, edited by David A. Palmer, Glenn Shive, and Philip L. Wickeri. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Pp.124-138.
Weller, Robert P. “The Dynamics of Religious Philanthropy in Lukang, Chinese Taiwan.” Zongjiao renleixue / Anthropology of Religion 3 (2011): 246-264.
Wong, Wai Yip. “Defining Chinese Folk Religion: A Methodological Interpretation.” Asian Philosophy 21.2 (2011): 153-170.
Abstract: The major dilemma of defining Chinese folk religion was that it could be defined neither by its belief contents nor characteristics, as these might also be found in other religious traditions. The fact that it did not involve any authoritative doctrine, scripture or institution has also made treating it as a religion problematic. To solve the problem, I survey the major theories proposed by both Western and Chinese scholars concerned with the methodological issues of defining this nameless religion, and develop an alternative approach that can distinguish Chinese folk religion from any other existing religious tradition. Basically, this approach eliminates the limitations of two existing models by defining Chinese folk religion on two aspects simultaneously. I also conclude that Chinese folk religion, based on the sociological perspective, can be seen as a religion, and should be taken into consideration while developing certain theological models. (Source: journal)
Wu, Cuncun & Mark Stevenson. "Karmic Retribution and Moral Didacticism in Erotic Fiction from the Late Ming and Early Qing." Ming Qing Studies 2011: 471-486.
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)
Yoshihara Kazuo. “Dejiao: A Chinese Religion in Southeast Asia.” In Xuezhe guan Dejiao 学者观德教. Edited by Chen Jingxi 陈景熙 and Zhang Yudong 张禹东, 45-66. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2011.
Yoshihara Kazuo. “The Hungy Ghost Festival Celebrated by a Dejiao Organization in Bangkok: An Interpretation of the Social Significance.” In Xuezhe guan Dejiao 学者观德教. Edited by Chen Jingxi 陈景熙 and Zhang Yudong 张禹东, 67-87. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2011.
Zaccarini, M. Cristina. “Daoist-inspired Healing in Daily Life: Lü Dongbin and the Multifaceted Role of Chinese Barbers. “ Journal of Daoist Studies 4 (2011): 80-103.
Zhu Haibin. “Chinas wichtigste religiöse Tradition: der Volksglaube.” minima sinica 23.1 (2011): 25-51.