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The Context of Strickmann’s Argument
Clearly, Strickmann was not the first scholar to discuss Yao Daoism. More accurately, he brought it to the attention of fellow Western sinologists, especially those studying Daoism and other aspects of Chinese religion. To understand the significance of Strickmann’s findings, it is necessary to view them in the context of Western scholarship on Chinese religion from the 1960s through the 1980s. Taiwan was the primary laboratory and Han religious traditions—Daoism, Buddhism, and popular religion—were the key samples under investigation. At that time, there was a great deal of discussion between anthropologists based in Taiwan and sinologists (those who were working primarily with classical Chinese texts), many of whom had studied Chinese in Taiwan, and were thus exposed beyond the text to the living religious culture that to this day can be witnessed on Taiwan’s streets and in its temples.47
Some scholars of Chinese religion in Taiwan, such as Kristofer Schipper, combined study of actual ritual traditions with equal attention directed at reading the texts used by practitioners, and made comparisons with practices that were known to have existed on the mainland. During the 1960s, Schipper, a sinologist by training, left his post at the Academica Sinica to immerse himself in Daoist life in South Taiwan.48 Schipper’s work in Taiwan shed light on the connections between religious life—particularly Daoist—in Taiwan and in the regions of China from where Taiwan’s inhabitants had come. In his own words: