《红火：中国乡村的集市与庙会》书评
GENE COOPER, The Market and Temple Fairs of Rural China: Red fire
London & New York: Routledge, 2013. xviii, 248 pages. ISBN 978-0-415-52079-9
王霄冰（原载 Journal of Chinese Religions, vol 41/2, 2013, 第150-151页）
As mentioned in the preface this is the second book on the Jinhua 金华 region, Zhejiang 浙江 province, published by Gene Cooper, professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California. His previous book was written jointly with Professor Jiang Yinhuo of the Department of Economics at Zhejiang University 浙江大学, focusing on the artisans and entrepreneurs of Dongyang 东阳 County. During their travel throughout the region in the late 1980s in preparing for that book, the revival of local annual and semi-annual exchange fairs stimulated Cooper's curiosity. Since such fairs were usually held on the “birthday” of a deity and centered on a local temple in earlier times, he considers them temple fairs in general even though today some of them are no longer connected with a temple anymore. In 1998 Cooper returned to the region with the intent of carrying out a multi-sited fieldwork on this topic. From July to December he visited eight towns in five counties. This enabled him to gain a closer view of such fairs as well as to collect much secondhand information, some of it only available locally.
Part I of the book, following the “Introduction” in chapter I, contains three chapters. Chapter 2 presents the geographic, historical and political-economic background of the Jinhua region, centering on the city of Hengdian 横店, a major movie-production center called “China’s Hollywood”, and the city of Yiwu 义乌, known for its internationally renowned small commodities market. These two examples display the strong ecnomic dynamics of the region in recent decades. Traditional Buddhism and Daoism, including local deities, among them especially Huang Daxian 黄大仙, are presented in chapter 3.
As perspectives for understanding modern Chinese religion, Cooper applies five “paradigms” proposed by Vincent Goossaert: orthodox/heterodox, religion/superstition, elite/popular, institutional/diffused, doctrinally pure/syncretic. He also adapts the notion of “diffused religion” used by C. K. Yang to interpret Chinese popular religious practice. Following Adam Y. Chau, who advanced a “sociothermic” theory of Chinese sociality, based on the Chinese notion of honghuo 红火 (red fire, red hot), Cooper uses this term as the subtitle of the book and as a symbol for the carnivalesque social condition prevailing during temple fairs. A brief history of temple fairs in China and modern folkloristic studies on it are the subject of chapter 4. With regard to contents the author relies heavily on secondary literature published by Chinese and Western scholars, among them Gao Youpeng 高有鹏, Lü Wei 吕微, Liu Xicheng 刘锡诚, Zhao Shiyu 赵世瑜 and Laurence A. Schneider etc.
The framework of Part II is inspired by Marcel Mauss’ concept of the “total social phenomenon”. Accordingly Cooper uses chapters 5-10 to discribe the commercial/economic, popular cultural, religious, and political dimensions of secular and temple fairs. He mostly gives a generalized overview and touches only slightly on different localities and cultural domains. As compensation for this approach, he discusses three specific case studies in detail, namely the Wuju 婺剧 opera, the resacralization of a fair in Fotang town 佛堂镇 and the temple fair of Hugong Dadi 胡公大帝. While the first two cases constitute separate chapters (7 and 10), the latter one is embedded in chapter 8 on “the religious dimension”. From my point of view as an ethnographer these case studies are the highlights of the book. The vast amount of data on local cultural knowledge presented therein is well summarized from Chinese sources and is certainly useful as general information and as guidelines for future research. The discovery of the resacralization process reveals an important aspect of modern Chinese religious life. Possibly because of the dominance of Communist ideology in contemporary China, the revival of public religious practices such as temple fairs and sacrificial rituals often begins under the cover of diverse secular events serving cultural, commercial or touristic ambitions of local governments. In some cases people attempt to establish an authentic atmosphere by adding or tolerating religious symbols and activities.
In a concluding chapter Cooper repeats his obligation to the Maussian concept for his regional study. However, this does not reach beyond the simple fact, that religion is traditionally embedded in culture and society, and plays an important role in rural Chinese economy and social life. In two appendices he summarizes the content of five Daoqing 道情 performances and nine Wuju operas. A comprehensive bibliography and a general index help the reader to find items of interest easily, since many names of authors and concepts are given in Chinese characters beside their English or Pinyin equivalents. Throughout the book eight maps and eight statistical tables mainly created from official sources of local authorities, as well as thirty-seven photographs taken by the author, are presented.
This book is unique insofar as it makes regional specific sources in modern temple fairs studies accessible, which can be used for regional comparison and general studies. Furthermore it provides a good introduction to rural economy, popular culture and religion of the Jinhua region for students and scholars who are interested in Southeastern China.
（Xiaobing Wang-Riese，Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou）
[ 本帖最后由 王霄冰 于 2014-1-21 12:39 编辑 ]
