|
|
as a “ritual master” (fashi 
) who used his own set of “vernacular” texts for his rituals.51 Like other texts found in print form in southern Fujian since the 18th century, the texts of the Taiwanese ritual master are in Hokkien syntax. “However, when used ritually, the vernacular texts that are transmitted in writing are never read; they are always recited by heart.”
Following Schipper’s work—as well as that of the many anthropologists who produced ethnographic accounts on Chinese religion in Taiwan—a next step was to trace the origin of specific practices and pantheons to the mainland. It is for this reason that much of the serious ethnographic work on Chinese religion during the 1980s and 1990s was conducted in Fujian, in precisely those areas from where Taiwanese hailed.
Meanwhile, another trend that gained momentum during the 1990s—and continues today—was the detailed investigation and documentation of local ritual practices throughout China, work that in some ways harkened back to the work of Chinese anthropologists during the 1930s and 1940s. The Minsu Quyi 
series, administered by the Taiwanese scholar, Wang Qiugui 
, is most representative of this trend, in that the majority of research in the series of now over one hundred volumes was conducted by scholars who hailed from the areas under investigation.52 Rather than making generalized claims about a single Chinese religion that was the same at all places and all times, the Minsu Quyi scholars limited their focus to the county and district levels. Despite its highly descriptive nature, the Minsu Quyi series has made it possible for scholars to explore the regional variations of Chinese religious phenomena, as well as specific patterns that seem to unite different regions, classes, and ethnicities. This project was begun after Strickmann’s article.53
Daoism and Sinification
To Strickmann, and those who followed him, the existence of Yao Daoism was nothing short of remarkable, because it was an indication