Review: Religion in Taiwan and China: Locality and Transmission

Religion in Taiwan and China: Locality and Transmission by Institute of Ethnology Academia Sinica
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A collection of essays and articles. Once again, these are hit or miss. However, there was something interesting in each one of these for me. I either learned about a new person (Yu Yue), or a new sect (Yi-Guan Dao, which is apparently huge in Taiwan), or about a Chinese-born Christian sect (Local Church), or Chinese Sufism, or Shamanism for the Paiwan tribe. .

The Chapters:
1) In Search of the Original Scriptures. About a Japanese and a Chinese monk who try to find original Indian Buddhists scripts, mostly via London
2) Locality and Temple Fundraising in Northern Qing China
3) Yu Yue
4) Inside and Outside the British Settlement in Shanghai
5) The Construction of Fundamentalism in I-Kuan Tao
6) The problem of Locality. About the Little Flock, or the Local Church, the Chinese-born Christian sect.
7) Singing your own song? About New Age in Taiwan. Not sure why this would be considered religious, and the author seems to be criticizing one of the founders (and probably rightly so), but pretty interesting nonetheless.
8) Rituals as Local knowledge. How Several Indigenous populations relate to Millet.
9) A resurgent Temple. All about Fengtian temple in Xingang, Jiayi.
10) Decline and Revitalization of Shamanic traditions in Paiwan village. Relates it to Shamanism in Siberia and Korea. Also discusses how Christianity (and the Japanese and the KMT government) relegated these traditions and tried to get rid of them.
11) City of Saint. About Sufism in China. Quite fascinatin
12) Rivers and Lakes. About Diviners (fortune tellers, Feng shui experts, etc.)

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