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.
ABÉLÈS, MARC (1988) “Modern political ritual: ethnography of an inauguration and a pilgrimage by President Mitterand. ” Current Anthropology29, 3: 391-404.
2.
AHERN, EMILY MARTIN (1981) “The thai ti kong festival,” pp. 397-425 in Emily Martin Ahern and Hill Gates (eds.), The Anthropology of Taiwanese Society. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
3.
ANAGNOST, ANN S. (1987) “Politics and magic in contemporary China. ” Modern China13, 1 (Jan.): 40-61.
4.
ANAGNOST, ANN S. (1994) “The politics of ritual displacement,” pp. 221-254 in Charles F. Keyes, Laurel Kendall, and Helen Hardacre (eds.), Asian Visions of Authority: Religion and the Modern States of East and Southeast Asia. Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai’i Press.
5.
APTER, DAVID E. and TONY SAICH (1994) Revolutionary Discourse in Mao’s Republic. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
6.
BENNETT, GORDON (1976) Yundong: Mass Campaigns in Chinese Communist Leadership. China Research Monographs, 12. Berkeley: Center for Chinese Studies, Univ. of California.
7.
BLECHER, MARC and VIVIENNE SHUE (1996) Tethered Deer: Government and Economy in a Chinese County. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
8.
BOURDIEU, PIERRE (1984) Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Richard Nice (trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
9.
BROOK, TIMOTHY (1997) “Auto-organization in Chinese society,” pp. 19-45 in Timothy Brook and B. Michael Frolic (eds.), Civil Society in China. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
10.
BROOK, TIMOTHY and B. MICHAEL FROLIC [eds.] (1997) Civil Society in China. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
11.
BROWN, MICHAELF. (1997) The Channeling Zone: American Spirituality in an Anxious Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
12.
BRUUN, OLE (1996) “The fengshui resurgence in China: conflicting cosmologies between state and peasantry.”China J. 36: 47-65.
13.
CHAMBERLAIN, HEATH B. (1993) “On the search for civil society in China.”Modern China19, 2 (April): 199-215.
14.
CHAN, ANITA, RICHARD MADSEN, and JONATHAN UNGER (1992) Chen Village under Mao and Deng. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
15.
CHAU, ADAM YUET (2003) “Popular religion in Shaanbei, North-Central China.”J. of Chinese Religions31: 39-79.
16.
CHAU, ADAM YUET (2004) “Hosting funerals and temple festivals: folk event productions in rural China.”Asian Anthropology3: 39-70.
17.
CHAU, ADAM YUET (forthcoming a) Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in Contemporary China. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
18.
CHAU, ADAM YUET (forthcoming b) “Expanding the space of popular religion: local temple activism and the politics of legitimation in contemporary rural China,” in David Wank and Yoshiko Ashiwa (eds.), The Politics of Religion in China. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
19.
CHAU, ADAM YUET (n.d.) “Of temples and trees: articulating environmentalisms in China.” (unpublished manuscript).
20.
CHEN, NANCY N. (1995) “Urban spaces and the experiences of qigong,” pp. 347-361 in Deborah S. Davis, Richard Kraus, Barry Naughton, and Elizabeth J. Perry (eds.), Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
21.
DEAN, KENNETH (1997) “Ritual and space: civil society or popular religion?” pp. 172-192 in Timothy Brook and B. Michael Frolic (eds.), Civil Society in China. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.
22.
DEAN, KENNETH (1998)Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
23.
DUARA, PRASENJIT (1988) Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
24.
ESHERICK, JOSEPH W. (1994) “Deconstructing the construction of the party-state: Gulin county in the Shaan-Gan-Ning border region. ” China Q. 140: 1052-1079.
25.
ESHERICK, JOSEPH W. (1998) “Revolution in a feudal fortress: Yangjiagou, Mizhi county, Shaanxi, 1937-1948. ” Modern China24, 4 (Oct): 339-377.
26.
ESHERICK, JOSEPH W. and MARY BACKUS RANKIN [eds.] (1990) Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
FEUCHTWANG, STEPHAN (1993) “Historical metaphor: a study of religious representation and the recognition of authority. ” Man28, 1: 35-49.
29.
FEUCHTWANG, STEPHAN (2000) “Religion as resistance,” pp. 161-177 in Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden (eds.), Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance. London: Routledge.
30.
FEUCHTWANG, STEPHAN and WANG MING-MING (2001) Grassroots Charisma: Four Local Leaders in China. London: Routledge.
31.
FRIEDMAN, EDWARD, PAUL G. PICKOWICZ, and MARK SELDEN (with KAY ANN JOHNSON) (1991) Chinese Village, Socialist State. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
32.
FUKAO YOKO (1998) Chūgoku seihokubu kōdo kōgen ni okeru “miaohui” o meguru shakai kōkan to jiritsu teki gishū (“Miaohui” as self-organization in northwestern China in the post-Mao era). Kokuritsu minzokugaku hakubutsukan kenkyū hōkoku (National Museum of Ethnology research report). Vol. 23, no. 2. Osaka, Japan: National Museum of Ethnology.
33.
GAMBLE, SYDNEY D. (1954) Ting Hsien: A North China Rural Community. New York: Institute of Pacific Relations.
34.
GAMBLE, SYDNEY D. (1963) North China Villages: Social, Political and Economic Activities before 1933. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
35.
GATES, HILL (1991) “Eating for revenge: consumption and corruption under economic de-reform. ” Dialectical Anthropology16: 233-249.
36.
GATES, HILL (2000) “Religious real estate as indigenous civil space.” Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica. Special Issue in Honor of Professor Li Yih-yuan’s Retirement (I): 313-333.
37.
GEERTZ, CLIFFORD (1980) Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
38.
GILLEY, BRUCE (2001)Model Rebels: The Rise and Fall of China’s Richest Village. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
39.
GRAEZER, FLORENCE (1998) “Le ‘Yangge’ dans la Vie Associative à Chengfu, Quartier de Pékin. Monographie d’une Activité Populaire et Quotidienne.” M. Phil., Paris, EHESS.
40.
GRAEZER, FLORENCE (1999) “The yangge in contemporary China: popular daily activity and neighbourhood community life. ” China Perspectives24: 31-43.
41.
GROOTAERS, WILLEM A. (with LI SHIH-YU and WANG FU-SHIH) (1951) “Rural temples around Hsuan-hua (South Chahar), their iconography and their history. ” Folklore Studies10: 1-116.
42.
HERSHKOVITZ, LINDA (1993) “Political ecology and environmental management in the loess plateau, China. ” Human Ecology21, 4: 327-353.
43.
HOLM, DAVID L. (1984)“Folk art as propaganda: the yangge movement in Yan’an,” pp. 3-35 in Bonnie S. McDougall (ed.), Popular Chinese Literature and Performing Arts in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1979. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
44.
HOLM, DAVID L. (1994) “The labyrinth of lanterns: Taoism and popular religion in northwest China,” pp. 797-852 in Hanxue yanjiu zhongxin (Center for Chinese Studies) (ed.), Minjian xinyang yu Zhongguo wenhua: guoji yantaohui lunwenji (Proceedings of the International Conference on Folk Beliefs and Chinese Culture). Vol. 2. Taipei: Hanxue yanjiu zhongxin.
45.
HSIAO, KUNG-CHUAN (1960) Rural China: Imperial Control in the Nineteenth Century. Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press.
46.
HUANG, PHILIP C. C. (1993)“‘Public sphere’/’civil society’in China? the third realm between state and society.”Modern China19, 2 (April): 216-240.
47.
HUANG, SHU-MIN (1998) The Spiral Road: Change in a Chinese Village through the Eyes of a Communist Party Leader. 2nd ed.Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
48.
JACOBS, J. BRUCE (1980) Local Politics in a Rural Chinese Cultural Setting: A Field Study of Mazu Township, Taiwan. Canberra: Contemporary China Center, Australian National Univ.
49.
JING, JUN (1996) The Temple of Memories: History, Power, and Morality in a Chinese Village. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
50.
JING, JUN (2000) “Environmental protests in rural China,” pp. 143-160 in Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden (eds.), Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance. London: Routledge.
51.
JORDAN, DAVID K. and DANIEL L. OVERMYER (1986) The Flying Phoenix: Aspects of Chinese Sectarianism in Taiwan. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
52.
JUDD, ELLEN R. (1986) “Cultural redefinition in Yan’an, China. ” Ethnos51, 1-2: 29-51.
53.
JUDD, ELLEN R. (1990) “Cultural articulation in the Chinese countryside. ” Modern China16, 3 (July): 269-308.
54.
KANG, XIAOFEI (2002) “In the name of the Buddha: the cult of the fox at a sacred site in contemporary northern Shaanxi.”Min-su ch’ü-i (Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore)138: 67-110.
55.
KATZ, PAUL R. (1995) Demon Hordes and Burning Boats: The Cult of Marshal Wen in Late Imperial Chekiang. Albany: State Univ. of New York Press.
56.
KATZ, PAUL R. (2003a) “Identity politics and the study of popular religion in postwar Taiwan,” pp. 157-180 in Paul R. Katz and Murray A. Rubinstein (eds.), Religion and the Formation of Taiwanese Identities. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
57.
KATZ, PAUL R. (2003b) “Religion and the state in post-war Taiwan. ” China Q. 174: 395-412.
58.
KEATING, PAULINE B. (1997) Two Revolutions: Village Reconstruction and the Cooperative Movement in Northern Shaanxi, 1934-1945. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
59.
LEFORT, CLAUDE (1986) Essais surle Politique (XIXiéme-XXième Siècle).Paris: Le Seuil.
60.
LIN, NAN and CHIH-JOU JAY CHEN (1999) “Local elites as officials and owners: shareholding and property rights in Daqiuzhuang,” pp. 145-170 in Jean C. Oi and Andrew G. Walder (eds.), Property Rights and Economic Reform in China. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
61.
LIN, YI-MIN and ZHANXIN ZHANG (1999) “Backyard profit centers: the private assets of public agencies,” pp. 203-225 in Jean C. Oi and Andrew G. Walder (eds.), Property Rights and Economic Reform in China. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
62.
LUO HONGGUANG (1997) “Quanli yu quanwei: Heilongtan de fuhao tixi yu zhengzhi pinglun” (Power and authority: symbolic system and political critique at Heilongtan), pp. 333-388 in Wang Mingming and Wang Sifu [Stephan Feuchtwang] (eds.), Xiangtu shehui de zhixu, gongzheng yu quanwei (Order, justice, and authority in rural society). Beijing: Zhongguo zhengfa daxue chubanshe.
63.
MADSEN, RICHARD (1984) Morality and Power in a Chinese Village. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
64.
MALARNEY, SHAUN KINGSLEY (1996) “The limits of ‘state functionalism’ and the reconstruction of funerary ritual in contemporary northern Vietnam. ” American Ethnologist23, 3: 540-560.
65.
MCLEOD, JAMES R. (1999) “The sociodrama of presidential politics: rhetoric, ritual, and power in the era of teledemocracy. ” American Anthropologist101, 2: 359-373.
66.
OI, JEAN C. (1989) State and Peasant in Contemporary China: The Political Economy of Village Government. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
67.
OI, JEAN C. (1999) Rural China Takes Off: Institutional Foundations of Economic Reform. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
68.
ORTNER, SHERRY B. (1989) High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa Buddhism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univ. Press.
69.
PAN NIANYING (1997) Fupin shouji (Field notes on my poverty relief work). Shanghai: Shanghai wenyi chubanshe.
70.
RANKIN, MARY BACKUS (1986) Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China: Zhejiang Province, 1865-1911. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
71.
RANKIN, MARY BACKUS and JOSEPH W. ESHERICK (1990) “Concluding remarks,” pp. 305-345 in Joseph W. Esherick and Mary Backus Rankin (eds.), Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
72.
ROHSENOW, HILL GATES (1973)“Prosperity settlement: the politics of Pai-pai in Taipei, Taiwan.” Ph.D. diss. Univ. of Michigan.
73.
RUF, GREGORY A. (1998) Cadres and Kin: Making a Socialist Village in West China, 1921-1991. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
74.
SANGREN, STEVEN P. (2003) “Anthropology and identity politics in Taiwan: the relevance of local religion,” pp. 253-287 in Paul R. Katz and Murray A. Rubinstein (eds.), Religion and the Formation of Taiwanese Identities. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
75.
SCOTT, JAMES (1998) Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
76.
SEAMAN, GARY (1978) Temple Organization in a Chinese Village. Asian Folklore and Social Life Monographs, 101. Taipei: Orient Cultural Service.
77.
SELDEN, MARK (1971) The Yenan Way in Revolutionary China. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univ. Press.
78.
SHUE, VIVIENNE (1995) “State sprawl: the regulatory state and social life in a small Chinese city,” pp. 90-112 in Deborah S. Davis, Richard Kraus, Barry Naughton, and Elizabeth J. Perry (eds.), Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post-Mao China. New York: Cambridge Univ. Press.
79.
SIU, HELEN F. (1989) Agents and Victims in South China: Accomplices in Rural Revolution. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
80.
WANG MINGMING (1996) Shequ de licheng: Xicun hanren jiazu de ge’an yanjiu (A community’s path: a case study of a Han lineage in Xicun). Tianjin: Tianjin renmin chubanshe.
81.
WANK, DAVID L. (1995) “Bureaucratic patronage and private business: changing networks of power in urban China,” pp. 153-183 in Andrew G. Walder (ed.), The Waning of the Communist State: Economic Origins of Political Decline in China and Hungary. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
82.
WANK, DAVID L. (1999) Commodifying Communism: Business, Trust, and Politics in a Chinese City. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press.
83.
WATSON, JAMES L. (1985) “Standardizing the gods: the promotion of T’ien Hou (‘Empress of Heaven’) along the South China coast, 960-1960,” pp. 292-324 in David Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan, and Evelyn S. Rawski (eds.), Popular Culture in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
84.
WELLER, ROBERT P. (1985) “Bandits, beggars, and ghosts: the failure of state control over religious interpretation in Taiwan. ” American Ethnologist12, 1: 46-61.
85.
WELLER, ROBERT P. (1987) “The politics of ritual disguise: repression and response in Taiwanese popular religion. ” Modern China13, 1 (Jan.): 17-39.
86.
WHYTE, MARTIN K. (1974) Small Groups and Political Rituals in China. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
87.
WILSON, SCOTT (1994) “About face: social networks and prestige politics in contemporary Shanghai villages.” Ph.D. diss. Cornell Univ.
88.
YANG, C. K. (1961) Religion in Chinese Society: A Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of Their Historical Factors. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press.
89.
YANG, MAYFAIR MEI-HUI (1994) Gifts, Favors, and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
90.
Yulin shizhi bianji weiyuanhui [Yulin city gazetteer editorial committee] (1996) Yulin shizhi (Yulin city gazetteer). Xi’an: Sanqin chubanshe.
91.
ZITO, ANGELA (1997) Of Body and Brush: Grand Sacrifice as Text/Performance in Eighteenth-Century China. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press.
