Until now, China has been scarcely represented in the burgeoning comparative literature on pilgrimage. This volume remedies that omission, discussing the interaction between pilgrims and sacred sites from the tenth century to the present. From the perspectives of literature, art, history, religion, politics, and anthropology, the essays focus on China's most famous pilgrimage mountains as well as lesser known sites.

Introduction: Pilgrimage in China
Women Pilgrims to T'ai Shan: Some Pages from a Seventeenth-Century Novel
An Ambivalent Pilgrim to T'ai Shan in the Seventeenth Century
Chang Shang-ying on Wu-t'ai Shan
Relics and Flesh Bodies: The Creation of Ch'an Pilgrimage Sites
P'u-t'o Shan: Pilgrimage and the Creation of the Chinese Potalaka
Huang Shan Paintings as Pilgrimage Pictures
The Pilgrimage to Wu-tang Shan
The Peking Pilgrimage to Miao-feng Shan: Religious Organizations and Sacred Sites
Reading the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in Peking: The Tribulations of the Implied Pilgrim

Susan Naquin is Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. Chün-fang Yü is Associate Professor of Religion at Rutgers University.

"Meticulous scholarship, indicative of how a fuller history of Chinese pilgrimages could augment comparative studies of pilgrimages in other cultures . . . a fresh contribution to the study of China's social history, inaugurating a promising new field of China studies."—JAAS

"This volume has without a doubt brought together some of the finest scholars working on Chinese religion, history, and culture today."—Pacific Affairs

"Advances research in Chinese pilgrimage, and in Chinese religion and society generally, with its wealth of information and documentation."—American Historical Review