This book describes the religious beliefs and practices of an agricultural village of Southern Taiwan in the middle 1960s. The village has a temple, and some religious activity centers there. But far more activity is connected to the business of daily life in individual households and groups of households. Far from the world of organized Buddhism, Taoism, or Confucianism, village religion centers on the spiritual forces that local people believe impinge upon them in the form of gods, who help them, ghosts, who trouble them, and the family dead, who can themselves become gods and ghosts. And underlying theme of morality prevades all of this, but so does opportunism and manipulation.
