The Sacred Village introduces local religious life in Cang County, Hebei Province, as a lens through which to view the larger issue of how rural Chinese perspectives and behaviors were shaped by the sweeping social, political, and demographic changes of the last two centuries. Thomas DuBois combines new archival sources in Chinese and Japanese with his own fieldwork to produce a work that is compelling and intimate in detail. This dual approach also allows him to address the integration of external networks into local society and religious mentality and posit local society as a particular sphere in which the two are negotiated and transformed. The book presents fascinating and important aspects of local religious life: the production of religious knowledge, the significance of formal ecclesiastical structures, the rise of new religious movements, millenarianism during the Japanese occupation, the ongoing place of sectarian groups in ritual life, and the relationship between religion and the village community.
The Sacred Village is the first study in English to discuss the entirety of North Chinese local religion in a holistic manner and over an extended period of time. It adds a new dimension to classic studies of the area that will be appreciated by students and scholars of modern Chinese history and society and adds to our larger understanding of how local religion is changed by forces from both within and without.
