Xun Liu

This study investigates the Daoist role in the social and cultural transformation of modern Nanyang from the 1850s to the 1950s. Current scholarship has largely focused on the persecution of Daoism due to the May-Fourth iconoclastic rejection of Chinese indigenous religions as bastions of cultural backwardness and obsolescence. This project examines the Daoist initiatives and involvement in reforms in education, philanthropy, agriculture, public health, and city parks in Nanyang from the late Qing to 1949. It shows that Nanyang’s Daoist clerics and temples played active positive roles in local modern developments, creating a vibrant public space for both the expanding state and local community.