This book is a new approach to how we in the West understand China and Chinese culture. It challenges the master narrative of Confucianism and shows that ancestor worship has underpinned Chinese culture in many influential and vital ways and provides a nuanced and more efficacious paradigm through which Chinese culture may be viewed. It is an exposition and analysis of Chinese ancestor worship and its correlations, especially filial piety and ritual, and it shows the intrinsic importance of ancestor worship to Chinese culture. By using a practice theory—ritual—and communication theory approach this work highlights the relationship between the rituals of ancestor worship and their meaning within Chinese culture. In emphasizing the efficacy of ritual to cultural meaning it also questions and compares the master narrative of Confucianism in its role as the prime cultural symbol and paradigm of Chinese culture. China and Chinese culture is conventionally understood by the West through the paradigm and its articulated discourse of Confucianism. In order to ameliorate and overcome the epistemological problematic of a cross-cultural understanding of China, a new approach to the understanding of China and Chinese culture is proposed. The thesis approach is ‘meta-disciplinary’ and multi-viewed, and draws on a range of evidence and theories which focus on the problematic of ‘cross-cultural understanding.’

The most striking feature of Wutong, the preeminent God of Wealth in late imperial China, was the deity's diabolical character. Wutong was perceived not as a heroic figure or paragon of noble qualities but rather as an embodiment of humanity's basest vices, greed and lust, a maleficent demon who preyed on the weak and vulnerable. In The Sinister Way, Richard von Glahn examines the emergence and evolution of the Wutong cult within the larger framework of the historical development of Chinese popular or vernacular religion—as opposed to institutional religions such as Buddhism or Daoism. Von Glahn's study, spanning three millennia, gives due recognition to the morally ambivalent and demonic aspects of divine power within the common Chinese religious culture.

Folk and popular religion is a very significant part of Chinese religious life, especially in rural areas. Contemporary Religions in China focuses on the religious activities of the lay people of contemporary China and their ideas of what it means to be "religious" and to practice "religion". Throughout, the discussion is illustrated with case studies, textboxes, images, thought questions, and further reading, which help to capture what religion is like, how and why it is practiced, and what ‘religion’ means for everyday people across China in the twenty-first century. Contemporary Religions in China is an ideal introduction to religion in China for undergraduate students of religion, Chinese studies, and anthropology.

"Kuah explores the centrality of ancestors and ancestor worship of the Chinese in the Diaspora Chinese and China universes. Building on the original work and book on "Rebuilding the Ancestral Village: Singaporeans in China", this book goes beyond the premise of remaking the ancestral home. Ancestor worship and the ancestors, together with selected cultural practices, constitute an important aspect of the broad Chinese culture shared by these two groups of Chinese and leads to the making of a collaborative cultural basin. This book takes the audience on an ancestor worship journey to uncover the complexity of ancestors and ancestral souls crossing transnational spaces, their choices of ancestral soul homes, the significance of the lineage ancestral house and the engagement of women through food offering contesting patriarchy. It also explores the increasing role of the Mainland Chinese state in appropriating ancestor and ancestor worship as a cultural icon and during the Qingming festival as a socio-moral capital and cultural bridge to foster closer ties with the Diaspora Chinese in its attempt to bring them into its "Chinese civilizational polity". The book also takes the audience on a photographic journey to visually experience the various rituals and the vibrancy of the ritual performances conducted during the different stage from pre-communal to communal ancestor worship. An essential read for scholars of Chinese society and religion, Chinese migration and diaspora studies"--