Dissertationsprojekt Xiangyi Lin, M.A.

Daoist priesthood has featured in popular culture ever since the advent of vernacular narratives in late imperial China. With the resurgence of religious communities after the ultra-atheist Cultural Revolution, Daoist communities have been re-packaged as national cultural heritage under the state’s supervision. Although Daoist priestess and priests continue to provide funeral and exorcist services in regions with a lasting affinity with Daoism, for the general public, contacts to Daoist priesthood in real world are more or less restricted to glimpses and fleeting conversations in temples doubled as museums and tourist attraction site.

It is against this backdrop that imaginaries of Daoist priesthood revives in the form of fictional figures in mass-market literature, and more recently, through the bourgeoning internet-based “xiuzhen” (cultivation of immortality) fantasy fictions and “xianxia” (immortals and knights-errant) dramatic works and video games, whose topos of cultivation, spirits, and post-mortem immortality are predominantly inspired by Daoist worldview and practices. Today, this re-emergent popularity is manifest on internet forums dedicated to discussions of Daoist alchemy and techniques of self-optimisation, and in Daoist temples, where every few weeks, a young enthusiast of Daoism joins apprentice training and leaves within a month, too often disillusioned by the daily chores of monastic life and tourists flooding the temples, or by the institutionalised Daoist priesthood as a whole.

In the age of social media, many a young member of the Daoist priesthood becomes content creator who shares an insider perspective, pieces of specialist knowledge, or simply daily life to the general public. They are, not only more than aware of the myths and controversies surrounding Daoist priesthood and monasticism, but also deeply affected by imaginaries at different stages of their priestly life, and more often than not, were drawn to Daoist priesthood by such imaginaries in the first place. Moreover, their engagement and self-presentation on digital platforms constitutes a new dimension of practices that helps to shape and inform imaginaries of Daoist priesthood. How they construct and negotiate group and individual identities in response to perceived romanticisation or vilification, is thus a topic well worth exploring.

Based on the mixed-method of ethnography, virtual ethnography, archival research, textual and content analysis, this study intends to investigate the inter-dynamic between common imaginaries associated with Daoist priesthood in contemporary Chinese popular culture and its multiple forms of practices in real life since the 1990s. Attention will also be given to how this relationship gains more complexity and nuance in the past decade, with the prevalence of Daoist priestesses and priests sharing their experience and expertise on the increasingly supervised and censored social media platforms in relation to the state’s changing attitude towards such phenomenon.