Quite frankly, my paper and the class I took barely touched on the subject of Taoism, let alone religion in China or religion in Asia- it’s one of those immensely complex topics that is inherently hard for Westerners to get their brains around because we work off of different models. Many from countries like India, China and Japan didn’t even have a word comparable to “religion” until the white people showed up; and then white people decided to apply that term to all these melded practices “Taoism”, “Buddhism”, “Shintoism” so that they could understand it in their own framework. For many who know the “Western” (a problematic term but don’t get me started) religious traditions, religion is personal belief-based system but for many from East Asian countries, their “religious stuff” is family-based and practice-based. Funnily enough, many Japanese find Western religions scary. If you want to know more about those things, I recommend a college class because this is the kind of stuff that I throw in the face of the bio people who say I have an easy major. Anyways, if you want to know what I referenced in my essay, here are the sources; the actual articles were made available through Ctools and seem to be mostly copyrighted print sources.
Works Cited
Cedzich, Angelika. “Corpse Deliverance, Substitute Bodies, Name Change, and Feigned Death: Aspects of Metamorphosis and Immortality in Early Medieval China.” Journal of Chinese Religions. 29 (2001): 1-69. Print.
Cedzich, Angelika. “Ghosts and Demons, Law and Order: Grave Quelling Texts and Early Taoist Liturgy.” Taoist Resources. 4.2 (2003): 23-35. Print.
von Glahn, Richard. The Sinister Way The Divine and the Demonic in Chinese Religious Culture. Berkley and Los Angeles, California: University of California Press, 2004. 45-77. Print.