Here’s a roundup of a series of posts on ritual life and musicking in south Jiangsu.

For vignettes from before Liberation:

• An American musician in 1920s’ China
• on the tangming ritual bands.

In this post I reflect on amateur entertainment and ritual connections in urban and rural Shanghai:

• Beyond silk-and-bamboo.

And here I introduce the fine work of Yang Der-ruey on the conflict in Shanghai of the state programme for training Daoists with the traditional values of their masters and the real world of the ritual economy:

• Training Daoists in Shanghai.

See also

• Images of Shanghai.

On Daoism around Suzhou, following this introduction to a remarkable project under Maoism

• A Daoist ritual, Suzhou 1956

I surveyed the broad field of research in

• Ritual life around Suzhou.

And to illustrate the challenges of adapting ritual to the concert stage:

• Suzhou Daoists, England 1994.

For a very different take on musicking in Shanghai, see

• A Shanghai Prom.