Religion in Chinese Society: A Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of Their Historical Factors.

An impressively comprehensive review of Chinese religions. Neither scholars from China nor the West have been able to accomplish such a comprehensive review of Chinese religions as this. No other book offers such a detailed, sustained analysis and functional interpretation of critical facts in order to reveal a pattern of relationship between religion and Chinese social life and organization. Yang's work focuses on the religious systems that have become firmly integrated parts of the Chinese culture, including Buddhism, Taoism, and the numerous cults of the classical religion. His study is primarily concerned with the recent periods of Ch'ing and the Republic--especially the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries--but because the roots of Chinese cultural traits extend deep into the past, historical data and discussion are included when clarification is necessary. Because the concept and structure of all major Chinese social institutions contained religious elements, this much-cited classic will be valuable to any reader who really wants to understand China.