Film screening
Li Manshan: Portrait of a Folk Daoist
- Date
- Wednesday 19 March 2025
- Time
- Address
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 1.21
This intimate portrait film explores the life of eighth-generation household Daoist Li Manshan (b.1946), leader of a group of ritual specialists in the poor countryside of Yanggao county in north Shanxi, China.
Steve will briefly introduce the film, and respond to any comments afterwards. He has known the group since 1991, and since 2005 has also taken them on several tours of Europe and the USA. He has presented the film all over Europe, and at several screenings in Beijing.
Using footage mainly from the period since 2011 but also from as far back as 1987, the film shows both Li Manshan’s funerary practice as leader of his ritual group and his solo activities—determining the date for the burial, decorating coffins, and even his work in the fields. We are led into the vocal liturgy, percussion, and melodic instrumental music of their magnificent funeral rituals, learning how ritual practice has changed since the 1930s—and even since the 1990s, under challenges such as migration, the modern education system, and the competition at funerals from pop music.
Complementing Steve’s book Daoist priests of the Li family: ritual life in village China (Three Pines Press, 2016), this moving portrait of the diverse activities of Li Manshan and his group serving their local community in a rapidly changing rural China will fascinate anthropologists, scholars of Daoism and folk religion, world-music aficionados, and all those interested in Chinese society.
For further details, vignettes, updates, images, and jokes, see https://stephenjones.blog
Bio
Stephen Jones is an independent scholar based in London. Having studied Tang history at Cambridge from 1972 to 1976, from 1986 he began regular fieldwork projects on ritual life and soundscapes in the north Chinese countryside, working closely with colleagues from the Music Research Institute in Beijing. Among his six books (some with DVDs) are Plucking the Winds (2004) and Daoist Priests of the Li Family (2016), the latter accompanying his moving portrait film Li Manshan. While holding research fellowships at SOAS, as well as performing as violinist in London early music ensembles, he has also published many articles, and invited Chinese folk groups to perform around Europe. Since 2016 he has focused on his blog (“Daoism—lives—language—performance. And jokes”), which has become a vast compendium of fieldnotes and a miscellany of posts on Chinese culture and politics, as well as “world music”, jazz, Western Art Music, European history, and film.