Confucian Rituals and Chinese Villagers: Ritual Change and Social Transformation in a Southeastern Chinese Community, 1368–1949 by Yonghua Liu (review)

Abstract

source—the contributions to this volume are no exception. The undeniably valuable data from interviews presented in the various chapters is rarely tested against or supported by evidence from written primary sources. But due to the ever evolving nature and dynamic of contemporary Christian groups, information gathered from interviews alone, while captivating, is also quickly out of date. The book will be of enormous interest to all scholars of contemporary religion, who would like to gain a better understanding of how religion—in this case Chinese Christianity—and members of faith groups negotiate the complex relations with the state and secular society. What emerges from this volume is a complex patchwork where Christianity plays an important part in an individual’s or an ethnicity’s identity and their relation to the state and the many factors influencing this relationship. The increased visibility and confidence of Chinese Christians is a sign of the increasing plurality of Chinese society, yet there remain a number of tensions—some social, some cultural, and in rare cases political— between these churches as social groups and the different layers of the party state. These tensions are not necessarily any greater than the tensions between other social groups in contemporary China where citizens increasingly confidently exercise their right of assembly and association. GERDA WIELANDER University of Westminster, London YONGHUA LIU, Confucian Rituals and Chinese Villagers: Ritual Change and Social Transformation in a Southeastern Chinese Community, 1368–1949. Religion in Chinese Societies, vol. 6. Leiden: Brill, 2013. xv, 326 pp. J125, US$162 (hb). ISBN 978-90-04-25724-5 True to its title and subtitle, this book is in two parts: one of approximately 100 pages on village rituals and the ritual masters called lisheng 禮生, and another of roughly 270 pages on the creation of lineages and community institutions in the township of Sibao 四堡, Fujian 福建, in late imperial times. Sibao will be familiar to many readers as the rural printing center studied by Cynthia Brokaw, a place whose economy was based on the production and distribution of cheap books through much of southeastern China. The aim of the book is to show ‘‘the nature and impact of the Chinese villagers’ encounter with Confucian rituals and the major mechanisms that facilitated this cultural encounter,’’ and its argument is that ‘‘the promotion of Confucian rituals in the countryside greatly transformed rural social structures and local popular culture’’ (p. 4). After an introductory chapter, there are two chapters on the lisheng, one providing a quick overview of these important specialists and the other covering the rituals at which they officiated, which Liu persists throughout in calling Confucian or Neo-Confucian. Liu was able to collect or copy fifty lisheng manuals, which contained the texts they wrote out, recited, and burned at those rituals, plus a few other items. Nearly half the texts were used at funerals, while another two-fifths were used at sacrifices to gods or ancestors (Appendix 4). Judging by the three Liu translates, they were short and conventional (pp. 89–90). Some of the manuals contained a few ‘‘ritual formats’’ (yizhu 儀注), which were scripts for the performance of rituals. Though it appears they were quite short, BOOK REVIEWS 235 they are potentially of great interest and one wishes Liu had discussed them in more detail. (One example is translated on pp. 72–73.) Local ritual specialists who were neither Daoist priests nor Buddhist monks could be found in many parts of China in late imperial times, and are of high importance for our understanding of the attitudes and values of ordinary people. They have not been much studied by scholars in the US and Europe, and hence these chapters are most welcome. The next five chapters deal with the creation of a number of important interrelated social institutions in Sibao from mid-Ming on: lineages with corporate estates, the community compact (which actually was the organizational hub of a village alliance), the establishment of altars of the soil and of orphan souls, and temple construction. Taken together these comprise the ‘‘social transformation’’ of his subtitle. The chapter on the rise of large-scale lineages is the longest, and in fact the lineage was the dominant local institution...