Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction / Jan Kiely and J. Brooks Jessup -- Buddhist activism, urban space, and ambivalent modernity in 1920s Shanghai / J. Brooks Jessup -- Buddhism and the modern epistemic space: Buddhist intellectuals in the science and philosophy of life debates / Erik J. Hammerstrom -- A revolution of ink: Chinese and Buddhist periodicals in the early republic / Gregory Adam Scott -- Resurrecting Xuanzang: the modern travels of a medieval monk / Benjamin Brose -- Buddhist efforts for the reconciliation of Buddhism and Marxism in the early years of the People's Republic of China / Xue Yu -- The communist dismantling of temple and monastic Buddhism in Suzhou / Jan Kiely -- Mapping religious difference: lay Buddhist textual communities in the post-Mao period / Gareth Fisher -- "Receiving prayer beads": a lay-Buddhist ritual performed by menopausal women in Ninghua, Wester Fujian / Neky Tak-Ching Cheung.

Modern Chinese history told from a Buddhist perspective restores the vibrant, creative role of religion in postimperial China. It shows how urban Buddhist elites jockeyed for cultural dominance in the early Republican era, how Buddhist intellectuals reckoned with science, and how Buddhist media contributed to modern print cultures. It recognises the political importance of sacred Buddhist relics and the complex processes through which Buddhists both participated in and experienced religious suppression under Communist rule. Today, urban and rural communities alike engage with Buddhist practices to renegotiate class, gender, and kinship relations in post-Mao China.-- Provided by publisher.

Jan Kiely is professor of Chinese studies and associate director of the Centre for China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. J. Brooks Jessup is a postdoctoral fellow in Chinese studies at the Graduate School of East Asian Studies, Free University of Berlin.

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