The Market and Temple Fairs of Rural China: Red Fire by Gene Cooper (review)

Abstract

GENE COOPER, The Market and Temple Fairs of Rural China: Red Fire. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. xviii, 248 pp. US$155/£90 (hb). ISBN 978-0415 -52079-9 As mentioned in the preface, this is the second book on the Jinhua 金華 region, Zhejiang 浙江 province, published by Gene Cooper, professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California. His previous book was written jointly with Professor Jiang Yinhuo 蔣銀火 of the Department of Economics at Zhejiang University 浙江大學, focusing on the artisans and entrepreneurs of Dongyang 東 陽 County. During their travel throughout the region in the late 1980s in preparation for that book, the revival of local annual and semi-annual exchange fairs stimulated Cooper’s curiosity. Since such fairs were usually held on the ‘‘birthday’’ of a deity and centered on a local temple in earlier times, he considers them temple fairs in general even though today some of them are no longer connected with any temple. In 1998 Cooper returned to the region with the intent of carrying out multi-sited fieldwork on this topic. From July to December he visited eight towns in five counties. This enabled him to gain a closer view of such fairs as well as to collect much secondhand information, some of it only available locally. Part I of the book, following the ‘‘Introduction’’ in chapter 1, contains three chapters. Chapter 2 presents the geographic, historical, and political-economic background of the Jinhua region, centering on the city of Hengdian 橫店, a major movie-production center called ‘‘China’s Hollywood,’’ and the city of Yiwu 義烏, known for its internationally renowned small commodities market. These two cities display the strong economic dynamics of the region in recent decades. Traditional Buddhism and Daoism, including local deities, especially Huang Daxian 黄大仙, are presented in chapter 3. As perspectives for understanding modern Chinese religion, Cooper applies five ‘‘paradigms’’ proposed by Vincent Goossaert: orthodox/heterodox, religion/ superstition, elite/popular, institutional/diffused, and doctrinally pure/syncretic. He also adapts the notion of ‘‘diffused religion’’ used by C. K. Yang to interpret Chinese popular religious practice. Following Adam Y. Chau, who advanced a ‘‘sociothermic’’ theory of Chinese sociality, based on the Chinese notion of honghuo 紅火 [red fire, red hot], Cooper uses this term as the subtitle of the book and as a symbol for the carnivalesque social condition prevailing during temple fairs. A brief history of temple fairs in China and modern folkloristic studies of them are the subject of chapter 4. With regard to contents, the author relies heavily on secondary literature published by Chinese and Western scholars, among them Gao Youpeng 高有鵬, Lü Wei 呂微, Liu Xicheng 劉錫誠, Zhao Shiyu 趙世瑜, Laurence A. Schneider, etc. The framework of part II is inspired by Marcel Mauss’ concept of the ‘‘total social phenomenon,’’ which Cooper uses in chapters 5–10 to describe the commercial/economic, popular cultural, religious, and political dimensions of secular and temple fairs. He mostly gives a generalized overview and touches only slightly on different localities and cultural domains. As compensation for this approach, he discusses three specific case studies in detail, namely the Wuju 婺劇 opera, the resacralization of a fair in Fotang town 佛堂鎮, and the temple fair of 150 BOOK REVIEWS Hugong Dadi 胡公大帝. While the first two cases constitute separate chapters (7 and 10), the latter one is embedded in chapter 8 on ‘‘the religious dimension.’’ From my point of view as an ethnographer, these case studies are the highlights of the book. The vast amount of data on local cultural knowledge presented therein is well summarized from Chinese sources and is certainly useful as general information and as guidelines for future research. The discovery of the resacralization process reveals an important aspect of modern Chinese religious life. Possibly because of the dominance of Communist ideology in contemporary China, the revival of public religious practices such as temple fairs and sacrificial rituals often begins under the cover of diverse secular events serving cultural, commercial, or touristic ambitions of local governments. In some cases people attempt to establish an authentic atmosphere by adding or tolerating religious symbols and activities. In a concluding chapter Cooper repeats his obligation to the Maussian concept for his regional study; however, this does not reach beyond the simple fact that...