Stephen Jones begins this book by asking whether he was the right person to write it. I confess that my first reaction was very similar. Jones is a well-known and highly accomplished ethnomusicologist. He has conducted well over two decades of fieldwork throughout northern China, interviewing and observing village musicians and performing troupes, many of whom do indeed perform in a ritual capacity, or at least provide musical accompaniment for those do. His two recent books, both published by Ashgate, did touch upon rural religion, albeit largely as a platform for discussing the lives, income and musical traditions of the performers themselves. On the other hand, the study of Chinese religion is a highly specialized field, in which the study of Daoism poses perhaps the highest bar in terms of mastering esoteric terminology of scriptures and rituals. By his own admission, Jones possesses little of this background.

However, what at first appeared to be a liability has turned out to be anything but. His professions to the contrary aside, Jones is indeed very well versed in the literature on Chinese religion, and is moreover clearly intent on charting a new course in its study. Jones is keen to present northern folk Daoism on its own terms. He frequently returns to the very detailed picture of local Daoist practice that scholars such as Kenneth Dean and John Lagerwey have produced for Fujian and Taiwan. His reason for doing so is that this southern tradition is so well known, that it comprises the standard image of Daoism. Yet many elements of southern Daoism: the classical jiao liturgy, clearly defined lineage traditions and fenxiang networks, rituals of cosmic visualization, ascending sword-ladders and crossing burning coals, are largely unknown in the North, and “virtually unrecognizable” (p. 213) to the author.

Jones is not interested in establishing an ideal northern “type” of Daoism. He is largely content to let the data speak for itself, and places particular emphasis on the diversity of regional traditions. The content of the book is thus arranged geographically, rather than by theme. Individual chapters cover different regions of Shanxi and Hebei, along with a somewhat lighter treatment of Shaanxi and Gansu (this based largely on secondary sources), and a brief discussion of practice in Beijing and Tianjin. Reflecting the depth of the author's field experience, the data goes back as far as the late 1980s, although it does not emphasize the impact of political and commercial changes discussed in some of the author's other recent work. Content chapters all follow roughly the same pattern. Each begins with a brief introduction to the ritual specialists of that particular area, addressing such questions as how specialists are trained, and what sort of networks link Daoist groups to local society, to a variety of other religious specialists, and to temples. Jones peppers this description with human drama, in the life stories of some of the Daoists themselves. The heart of each chapter outlines religious performance. Jones describes in detail each calendar of local ritual occasions, as well as where different groups perform, and how they are compensated. Like the provenance of the Daoists themselves, the level of diversity in the structuring of ritual activities is striking.

The book's particular contribution comes in its technical discussion of the rituals themselves. Jones approaches such activities with a highly technical eye, providing precise detail on the layout of ritual space, number and composition of performers, and most importantly, a step-by-step analysis of the ritual itself. He breaks complex sequences such as multi-day funerals into smaller ritual components, discussing each individual piece in detail. He also introduces the texts that are recited or chanted: short odes and songs are discussed in the text, while a detailed appendix provides a new level of detail about the use and content of “precious scrolls” (baojuan). While many scholars would more readily associate the genre of precious scrolls with the sectarian tradition than Daoism, Jones wisely chooses to disregard any formal distinction between the two. In many instances, the discussion of ritual performance provides links to the DVDs that accompanied the author's 2007 and 2009 monographs.

This book is an invaluable work of ethnography, and a landmark accomplishment in the study of Chinese religion. The author comes to the topic with a background of field experience that is virtually unmatched. Beyond this, Jones is deeply versed in Anglophone literature, but also engages a vast amount of Chinese scholarship. The book itself is more encyclopedic than narrative. It is exceedingly well indexed, and will be irreplaceable as a work of reference, even if few will want to read it from cover to cover. In sum, I would place this book on a par with the great ethnographic studies of the 1930s and 1940s. Like them, I expect that it will remain unsurpassed for many years to come.