Skip to content
Scan a barcode
Scan
Hardcover Daoist Modern: Innovation, Lay Practice, and the Community of Inner Alchemy in Republican Shanghai Book

ISBN: 0674033094

ISBN13: 9780674033092

Daoist Modern: Innovation, Lay Practice, and the Community of Inner Alchemy in Republican Shanghai

(Book #313 in the Harvard East Asian Monographs Series)

This book explores the Daoist encounter with modernity through the activities of Chen Yingning (1880-1969), a famous lay Daoist master, and his group in early twentieth-century Shanghai. In contrast to the usual narrative of Daoist decay, with its focus on monastic decline, clerical corruption, and popular superstitions, this study tells a story of Daoist resilience, reinvigoration, and revival. Between the 1920s and 1940s, Chen led a group of urban lay followers in pursuing Daoist self-cultivation techniques as a way of ensuring health, promoting spirituality, forging cultural self-identity, building community, and strengthening the nation. In their efforts to renew and reform Daoism, Chen and his followers became deeply engaged with nationalism, science, the religious reform movements, the new urban print culture, and other forces of modernity. Since Chen and his fellow practitioners conceived of the Daoist self-cultivation tradition as a public resource, they also transformed it from an "esoteric" pursuit into a public practice, offering a modernizing society a means of managing the body and the mind and of forging a new cultural, spiritual, and religious identity.

Recommended

Format: Hardcover

Condition: Very Good*

*Best Available: (ex-library)

$39.49
Save $10.46!
List Price $49.95
Almost Gone, Only 1 Left!

Customer Reviews

0 rating
Copyright © 2025 Thriftbooks.com Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Do Not Sell/Share My Personal Information | Cookie Policy | Cookie Preferences | Accessibility Statement
ThriftBooks ® and the ThriftBooks ® logo are registered trademarks of Thrift Books Global, LLC
GoDaddy Verified and Secured
Timestamp: 4/16/2025 6:27:50 PM
Server Address: 10.20.32.102