Performing Grief: Bridal Laments in Rural China by Anne E. Mclaren (review)

122 Journal of Chinese Religions explore the subtle energy body where “consciousness is trapped and chronically constricted” (p. 181). The notion of an “energy body” is considered in relation to quantum physics and the somewhat esoteric and controversial observations of James L. Oschman (pp. 184-185). Brief overviews of neidan and kundalini practice are given and the chapter concludes with modern adaptations of these methods. The areas of inquiry embraced in this volume are so vast that, understandably, only superficial treatment can be given to many of the subjects raised. There are roughly eighty subsections in the 209 pages constituting the seven chapters. This work draws on some of the substantial earlier contributions made by the author in several of the areas discussed and readers would be well advised to look there for further information on specific topics. There will be methodological concerns for some regarding the frequent imposition of European psychoanalytic terms and ideas associated with hypnosis. This concern may be ameliorated by the general tenor of the book, which seems oriented to simply exploring the potential explanatory power of such an approach. PAUL CROWE, Simon Fraser University Performing Grief: Bridal Laments in Rural China ANNE E. MCLAREN. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008. 209 pages. ISBN 9780 -8248-3232-2. US$54.00 hardcover. Anne McLaren's work deals with a specific genre of women’s oral tradition, the lamentations of marriage in the region of Nanhui 南匯, at the mouth of the Yangzi river 揚子江 near Shanghai 上海. It is the first monographic study based on the corpus of lamentations of a woman from Shuyuan 書院 (present Pudong 浦東) in the district of Nanhui, Pan Cailian 潘彩 蓮 (1907-1994). The author never met with this woman personally, but she returned to the site several times (1994-2004) to speak with other women of the region, who knew Pan Cailian. She also had access to the records of the cycle of lamentations made by Pan Cailian herself. And finally she watched the performances that were organized for her by the local Bureau of Culture. She warmly emphasizes the help supplied by Chen Qinjian, a native of the PudongNanhui region, notably for the mandarin transcriptions from the Wu 吳 dialect. The work consists of two parts. The first part, “The Bridal Laments of Nanhui,” has four chapters, respectively: “Imagining Jiangnan 江南,” “The People of the Sands,” “The Hollow Cotton Spool: Women’s Labour in Nanhui,” and “Seizing a Slice of Heaven: The Lament Cycle of Pan Cailian.” This part deals with the way in which women assume and imagine their own world that is essentially represented by two houses between which they divide themselves, that of their mother and, fantasized, that of their mother-in-law; or rather the Book Reviews 123 house of their elder brother’s wife and that of the wife of their husband’s brother, which appears to be a characteristic trait of Nanhui. Anne McLaren introduces the economic context of this paradoxical region, at the same time one of the richest of the epoch because of the trade with silk and cotton in which women played a major role, but also a region that harbored the poorest, the people of the sands, those of the coastline and of the polders where Pan Cailian herself lived. It is here where the cycle of marriage lamentations was created as an echo to this situation. The second part consists of two chapters: “Weeping and Wailing in Chinese History” and “Shaking Heaven: Laments and Ritual Power.” McLaren here paints a large fresco of the history of the performance of marriage and funeral lamentations in China—Han and nonHan —and their relationship with gender. Perhaps this is a bit too vast a panorama and without doubt one might have more preferred a focus on the texts of lamentations or on Pan Cailian herself about whom one knows practically nothing. McLaren presents the ritual and the performative aspects of this singing, which is intended, according to her interpretation, to move Heaven, to exorcize the female pollution on the day before the marriage, to transform a girl into a wife, and to integrate women into the patrilineal hierarchy. She locates the origin of this genre in the mixture...