Religious Women and Modern Men: Intersections of Gender and Ethnicity in the Tale of Woman Huang

Abstract

AbstractThe tale of Woman Huang recounts a pious Buddhist woman’s journey to the underworld to recite the Diamond Sutra for King Yama. Over the centuries since its inception in the Song dynasty (960–1279), it has spread throughout China, including to areas often considered non-Chinese because of their large ethnic minority populations. In the Dali region of southwest China’s Yunnan Province, some modern scholars who belong to the Bai nationality have presented the tale as a distinctive product of Bai culture. However, the versions of the tale they have recently published in collections of Bai literature differ significantly from versions of the tale that women’s lay religious associations in Dali use in their ritual practice. The latter express sympathy for Woman Huang, especially for the tension she faces between her religious piety and family roles, but do not invoke ethnicity; the former foreground ethnicity and present Woman Huang (and other religious women) as superstitious and antimodern. I use thes...