Religion in Taiwan and China: Locality and Transmission ed. by Hsun Chang and Benjamin Penny (review)

Religion in Taiwan and China: Locality and Transmission represents a major step forward in our understanding of how Chinese religious life has developed and transformed in different types of settings. Ably edited by Chang Hsun and Benjamin Penny, the essays in this volume cover a wide range of religious phenomena in China and Taiwan, including some in non-Han communities. This book also benefits from having Chinese abstracts, which will broaden its appeal in both Asia and the West.

The book opens with a chapter by Chen Jidong, who explores how interaction between Chinese and Japanese intellectuals contributed to the globalization of modern Buddhist Studies. This is followed by Luo Weiwei’s chapter on temple fundraising in Shouyang 壽陽 County, Shanxi, during the Qing dynasty, which treats the volume’s topic head-on by discussing ideas of locality in official documents and local sources. Additionally, Luo shows how fundraising from both native and outside donors could reinforce communal ties while also helping temple cults expand via trans-regional networks. The next chapter is an English translation from French of Vincent Goossaert’s pioneering study of the late Qing literatus Yu Yue 俞樾 (1821–1906),¹ which elucidates how elite views of religious beliefs and practices could be shaped by their localities during interactions with neighbors, friends, and relatives. Benjamin Penny’s chapter presents fascinating data on missionaries’ lives in and around the British Settlement in Shanghai in the context of considering what locality could mean for foreigners residing in China. This essay also features stimulating discussions of missionary women in church and domestic life.

The next set of chapters focus on Fujian and Taiwan. First, there is an essay by Ting Jen-chieh, which combines textual analysis and field research to examine contemporary constructions of fundamentalism in Taiwan’s Fayi chongde 發一 崇德branch of the I-Kuan Tao 一貫道. Ting convincingly argues that such fundamentalism is aimed at revitalizing textual traditions for promoting moral and social order, yet might have said more about the gender aspects of the spirit-writing rites at the heart of these traditions, which tend to be performed by women (see the chapter’s Picture 1). The next chapter, by Kao Chen-yang, presents a thought-provoking case study of the Fuzhou 福州 branch of the Little Flock (Xiaoqun 小群), also known as the Local Church (Difang jiaohui 地方教會). Kao’s chapter surpasses previous work on this subject by using fieldwork data collected in 2004 and 2005 to show how ideas of locality have molded the religious identities of two church elders.

Kao’s chapter is followed by Paul J. Farrelly’s striking account of the Taiwanese actress, folk singer, and New Age religion practitioner Terry Hu 胡茵夢/胡因夢 (1953–), who contributed to the advent of cafes for the campus folk music movement as uniquely modern forms of locality during the 1970s and 1980s. Another chapter on contemporary Taiwanese religion, by Chang Hsun, focuses on a leading Mazu 媽祖 temple, the Fengtian Gong 奉天 宮 in Jiayi 嘉義 County, where she has been doing fieldwork since 2010. Chang describes how the temple committee has worked to further communal development, including reviving traditional industries, while also tracing how temple cults became accepted as part of Taiwan’s cultural heritage following the martial law era, thereby playing a role in that nation’s public sphere.

Two chapters shed new light on issues of locality among Taiwan’s Aboriginal communities. Benoît Vermander’s study of millet-related myths and rituals among the Amis, Bunun, Rukai, and Paiwan, while not focusing on one specific locality, does reveal the importance of millet in the formation of traditional identities. Vermander also assesses the impact of the adoption of rice cultivation and conversion to Christianity. The chapter by Hu Tai-li treats the revitalization of shamanic ritual traditions in one Paiwan village located in Pingdong 屏東 County, while making comparisons to examples from Siberia and Korea. (Similar patterns of...