Remembering the Dead in Modern China : Religious Rituals of Remembrance

Remembering the Dead in Modern China is a groundbreaking interdisciplinary volume that brings together diverse scholarly perspectives to examine the complex and evolving practices of death, dying, and remembrance in modern China. Studying the ideals and practices of caring for the dead is essential to understanding social and cultural change in modern China. The chapters in this volume elucidate the many ways in which remembrance of the dead challenges established norms.

The contributors show how acts of remembrance provide opportunities to find meaning in the untimely loss of loved ones; to challenge cultural conventions by generating significance from absence in burial rituals; to refashion mourning rites in response to modern political demands; and to forge bonds between urban and rural mortuary communities. The chapters trace transformations in how the dead are remembered across a broad social spectrum, from the Imperial Court to factory workers in Maoist China to contemporary Christian converts. Taken together, they offer valuable insight into how political, economic, and religious changes have influenced people’s interactions with the dead and how those interactions, in turn, reshape the political, economic, and religious landscape.

Featuring original research and thoughtful analysis, this volume makes a significant contribution to death studies, Chinese studies, religious studies, history of religion, anthropology, and sociology. This book will appeal to scholars and students interested in the intersection of tradition and modernity in Chinese cultural practices surrounding mortality.

Stephen G. Covell is the Mary Meader Professor of Comparative Religion at Western Michigan University. A Fulbright scholar, he has written extensively on modern Japanese Buddhism. His research interests include self-cultivation traditions, death and dying, and Japanese religions.

Stuart H. Young is Associate Professor of East Asian Religions in the Department of Religious Studies at Bucknell University. He is the author of Conceiving the Indian Buddhist Patriarchs in China (2015). A scholar of premodern Chinese religions, his research focuses on rituals of silk production, religious uses of silk, and multispecies dimensions of Buddhism and Daoism.

Ying Zeng is Senior Director of Asian Initiatives at Western Michigan University. Her research interests are in Chinese American social history and Asian American Literature.