To date I’ve published four posts on Coronavirus in China—two featuring songs critical of the official response, and two on local ritual activity. How strange it now seems to reflect that when I wrote these, the virus seemed like a distant problem.

• Here I feature a song by blind bard Liu Hongquan in Shanxi, mourning whistleblower Li Wenliang—also including a harrowing account of rural poverty
• and this post has some fine songs by Gansu singer Zhang Gasong, with a note on the traditional morality tales he studied with senior blind bards.

I made a digested version of these two posts into an article for the stimulating online magazine First of the Month, and an edited Italian version appears in the journal Sinosfere, also worth consulting.

sdr

• Moving on to ritual life, here I explore temple activity behind closed doors in Sichuan
• and this post details the uninterrupted activity of individual household Daoists in north Shanxi, “serving the people” as they meet the constant demand for routine burial services. In a recent update, I note that the full ritual sequence, with the whole Daoist group performing funeral liturgy, has now been restored.

See also the very end of my post on Navajo ritual and musical culture.