Popular culture in late imperial China

Studies on China #4

by David George Johnson, Andrew J. Nathan, Evelyn S. Rawski

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1985.

Genres: China, History

449 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Brian Griffith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great sampling of cultural creativity by local people in recent centuries. Below the rather boring mask of official culture and religion, we have a seething ferment of arts and myths. The authors show how how new movements spread through popular art, how social movements take politicized form as secret society networks, and how local heroes evolve into new gods and goddesses. This book reinforces Joseph Campbell's insights in showing mythology as a furiously mutating, rapidly evolving thing--not a static inheritance from long ago. I was especially fascinated by James Watson's great investigation of the rising cult of Mazu, or T'ien Hou, Queen of the Seas and Empress of Heaven--who rose from a fishing-village girl in the 900s CE to a goddess with around a hundred million devotees.