Rewarding the Gods and Transcending the Ghosts: Festivals and Hong Kong's Regional Society (Volumes 1 and 2)

""In Hong Kong, 'Jiao' is a sacrificial activity that involves communication with ghosts and gods through Taoist priests and monks. This book, written by Professor Cai Zhixiang, documents his forty years of research on Qingjiao activities in Hong Kong. The book is divided into two volumes. The first volume explores the relationship between folk religion, traditional religious festivals, and local communities by studying Qingjiao ceremonies held in different regions of Hong Kong. It examines the universality, differences, and changes within Chinese folk religion, focusing on the function and symbolic meaning of religious rituals in the context of immigration and urbanization. The second volume focuses on the author's observations of four Taiping Qingjiao rituals in the New Territories of Hong Kong during the 1980s. It explores the use of images for field research and discusses how researchers can understand the continuity, adjustments, and changes in periodic ritual festivals through a comparative perspective.""