Overview

In Confucian Rituals and Chinese Villagers, Yonghua Liu presents a detailed study of how a southeastern Chinese community experienced and responded to the process whereby Confucian rituals - previously thought unfit for practice by commoners - were adopted in the Chinese countryside and became an integral part of village culture, from the mid fourteenth to mid twentieth centuries. The book examines the important but understudied ritual specialists, masters of rites (lisheng), and their ritual handbooks while showing their crucial role in the ritual life of Chinese villagers. This discussion of lisheng and their rituals deepens our understanding of the ritual aspect of popular Confucianism and sheds new light on social and cultural transformations in late imperial China.

Full Product Details

9789004257245

Table of Contents

Reviews

This thoughtful book is rich in detail (some fascinating, such as how a god became an ancestor), draws on secondary studies in English, Chinese, and Japanese, and is written in impeccable English. Conrad Schirokauer, Columbia University, Choice March 2014 Vol. 51 No. 07 Yonghua Liu of Xiamen University has produced an outstanding study of Confucian ritual practices and socio-cultural change in rural Fujian province. Written with the objectivity of a historian and the sensitivity of an ethnographer, Liu builds on the existing scholarship on socio-religious space[...]to reveal an accommodating relationship between state and religion in late imperial China.[...] Liu should be congratulated for publishing this excellent analysis of popular religious practices in Southeast China. The rich ethnographical data and the conceptual insights should appeal to religious specialists, historians, and anthropologists of China. Joseph Tse-Hei Lee ( ), Pace University, Chinet.cz April 2014 ...the book can boast such merits as clarity, painstaking elaboration of details, use of new materials and up-to-date secondary research produced by Western, Chinese and Japanese scholars to support all the arguments. Ekaterina Zawidovskaya, Monumenta Serica 62 (2014) Based on his careful reading of around 30 genealogies held either in the ancestral halls or private hands of Sibao residents, and ritual texts compiled by Confucian ritual specialists (lisheng), as well as account books, family division contracts and local archival materials, Yonghua Liu has successfully produced an outstanding study of cultural mediation and the mediators. [...] it is an important addition to the rich literature of the Huanan school because of the author's acuteness as a historian and his mastery of the details. [...] the book contributes greatly to our understanding of how the cultural and social fabrics were woven and were constantly changing in a rural setting in late imperial China. Koh Khee Heong, National University of Singapore, Asian Studies Review, 2015, Vol. 39, No. 3, 521-540

This thoughtful book is rich in detail (some fascinating, such as how a god became an ancestor), draws on secondary studies in English, Chinese, and Japanese, and is written in impeccable English. Conrad Schirokauer, Columbia University, Choice March 2014 Vol. 51 No. 07 Yonghua Liu of Xiamen University has produced an outstanding study of Confucian ritual practices and socio-cultural change in rural Fujian province. Written with the objectivity of a historian and the sensitivity of an ethnographer, Liu builds on the existing scholarship on socio-religious space[...]to reveal an accommodating relationship between state and religion in late imperial China.[...] Liu should be congratulated for publishing this excellent analysis of popular religious practices in Southeast China. The rich ethnographical data and the conceptual insights should appeal to religious specialists, historians, and anthropologists of China. Joseph Tse-Hei Lee ( ), Pace University, Chinet.cz April 2014

This thoughtful book is rich in detail (some fascinating, such as how a god became an ancestor), draws on secondary studies in English, Chinese, and Japanese, and is written in impeccable English. Conrad Schirokauer, Columbia University, Choice March 2014 Vol. 51 No. 07 Yonghua Liu å æ°¸è ¯ of Xiamen University å ¦é 大學 has produced an outstanding study of Confucian ritual practices and socio-cultural change in rural Fujian ç¦ å»º province. Written with the objectivity of a historian and the sensitivity of an ethnographer, Liu builds on the existing scholarship on socio-religious space[...]to reveal an accommodating relationship between state and religion in late imperial China. [...] Liu should be congratulated for publishing this excellent analysis of popular religious practices in Southeast China. The rich ethnographical data and the conceptual insights should appeal to religious specialists, historians, and anthropologists of China. Joseph Tse-Hei Lee (æ 榭ç ), Pace University, Chinet.cz April 2014 ...the book can boast such merits as clarity, painstaking elaboration of details, use of new materials and up-to-date secondary research produced by Western, Chinese and Japanese scholars to support all the arguments. Ekaterina Zawidovskaya, Monumenta Serica 62 (2014) Based on his careful reading of around 30 genealogies held either in the ancestral halls or private hands of Sibao residents, and ritual texts compiled by Confucian ritual specialists (lisheng), as well as account books, family division contracts and local archival materials, Yonghua Liu has successfully produced an outstanding study of cultural mediation and the mediators. [...] it is an important addition to the rich literature of the Huanan school because of the author's acuteness as a historian and his mastery of the details. [...] the book contributes greatly to our understanding of how the cultural and social fabrics were woven and were constantly changing in a rural setting in late imperial China. Koh Khee Heong, National University of Singapore, Asian Studies Review, 2015, Vol. 39, No. 3, 521-540 Using a rich array of local archival materials, oral histories and participant observation, Yonghua Liu carefully analyses the historical impact and significance of a topdown movement to incorporate rituals into the daily lives of villagers that began in the late fourteenth century. [...] Yonghua Liu has given historians a fascinating glimpse of the interplay of the social, economic and cultural forces that supported the ritualization of Chinese illage life in southeast China. Evelyn S. Rawski, University of Pittsburgh, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 2014, Vol. 77, No. 2, 420-422

This thoughtful book is rich in detail (some fascinating, such as how a god became an ancestor), draws on secondary studies in English, Chinese, and Japanese, and is written in impeccable English. Conrad Schirokauer, Columbia University, Choice March 2014 Vol. 51 No. 07 Yonghua Liu of Xiamen University has produced an outstanding study of Confucian ritual practices and socio-cultural change in rural Fujian province. Written with the objectivity of a historian and the sensitivity of an ethnographer, Liu builds on the existing scholarship on socio-religious space[...]to reveal an accommodating relationship between state and religion in late imperial China.[...] Liu should be congratulated for publishing this excellent analysis of popular religious practices in Southeast China. The rich ethnographical data and the conceptual insights should appeal to religious specialists, historians, and anthropologists of China. Joseph Tse-Hei Lee ( ), Pace University, Chinet.cz April 2014

Author Information

Yonghua Liu, Ph.D. (McGill, 2004), is Professor of History at Xiamen University, China. He has published over two dozen articles on economic, social, and cultural history of late imperial China.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available