Stephen Jones blog » Taoism
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Posts about Taoism written by Stephen Jones.
Stephen Jones blog » Taoism
2d ago
Following in the footsteps of Kristofer Schipper, John Lagerwey has taken research on living Daoist ritual into new territory, expanding the field for scholars in mainland China. A new volume, published in Hong Kong and edited by Lin Chenyuan and Pan Junliang, Wandering on the way of history and fieldwork: an anthology of essays by ..read more
Stephen Jones blog » Taoism
1w ago
Following the flummery of the Coronation, I keep finding myself perplexed by the ways in which elites dominate images of society. Exhibition catalogue. The new exhibition at the British Museum, China’s hidden century, is a splendid idea. If the Qing dynasty is a poor cousin of the Ming, the 19th century has suffered by comparison ..read more
Stephen Jones blog » Taoism
2w ago
My book Daoist priests of the Li family, and the film that complements it, mainly document the maintenance of their ritual tradition in the countryside of Yanggao county (for a roundup of posts on the Li family Daoists, click here). But Chapter 18 of the book makes an interlude discussing their recent wider exposure, “marching ..read more
Stephen Jones blog » Taoism
3w ago
Daoist ritual in the Jin ping mei: click here. Like the Great Plague and the Cultural Revolution, the Coronation is history, whether we like it or not. My flimsy excuse for adding to the endless discussions is that it reminded me of China—the role of Daoist and Buddhist ritual in propping up the status quo ..read more
Stephen Jones blog » Taoism
3M ago
As I struggle to declutter my library, many books were easy enough to hand over to a new home within the CHIME collection in Heidelberg, but I was reluctant to part with a set of nine mimeographed volumes which Li Shigen 李石根 (1919–2010) gave me on my first fieldtrip to China, entitled Xi’an guyue quji ..read more
Stephen Jones blog » Taoism
4M ago
Among the numerous topics that have since amplified my blog, it’s always worth bearing in mind that its original raison d’être was to advertise my film Li Manshan: portrait of a folk Daoist (watch here!!!). It complements my book on the Li family, and numerous vignettes and updates on the blog (roundup here). An initial ..read more
Stephen Jones blog » Taoism
5M ago
Like doing and undoing a jigsaw in a kinda suburban Sisyphus shtick, having gone to great lengths to mix up the daily sequence of my diverse topics in a stimulating fashion, it’s that time of year when I try and reassemble them into some kind of thematic order (cf. 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021). In September ..read more
Stephen Jones blog » Taoism
7M ago
Apart from feeling mildly guilty at defecting from Tang history, another spinoff of my current decluttering is rediscovering random notes from my time editing and indexing volumes of The Cambridge History of China. I’ve already listed some jocular citations from Han and Tang history, so here’s a sequel with gems that I may not have ..read more
Stephen Jones blog » Taoism
8M ago
Having been impressed by Epiphany at the Greek church near the iskele ferry in Kuzguncuk, recently we got to attend Sunday service at the main Greek church further up the main street (for a fine study of the mahalle‘s multi-ethnic past, see Nostalgia for cosmopolitanism). The Greek population of Istanbul (like other ethnic groups there ..read more
Stephen Jones blog » Taoism
9M ago
Apart from my annual surveys (2021 here), I’ve added a tag in the sidebar for roundups, where I group together posts on a particular theme. Whether or not you share my fetish for taxonomy (see e.g. here) and the joys of Indexing, as long as you start clicking away on the links (and the links ..read more