"Taken as a whole, the papers in this volume represent a significant addition to our understanding of Chinese popular religion. The authors successfully grapple with many of the key issues confronting the field, such as the impact of elite representations on popular ones, the transmission of sacred texts throughout Chinese society, the degree of overlap between performative and literary versions of texts, and the interaction between Taoism and local cults."—Paul Katz, National Central University, China Review International 3, no. 2 (Fall 1996): 447-450
"[The] common theme is the relationship between popular religious practice and written religious traditions and the question of how these two modes of religion interacted....In sum, this volume of essays is an important contribution to the now rapidly developing study of Chinese popular religion, some of the rich variety of which is reflected in the variety of topics, materials, and approaches displayed by the five studies." —Philip Clart, University of British Columbia, The Journal of Asian Studies 55, no. 1 (Feb. 1996): 150-152
