Daoist Patronage and Practices of Arts, Literati Culture, Local Politics and Society in Late Qing and Early Republican Nanyang

Using a variety of new and underused primary sources such as temple steles, poems, calligraphic brushworks, local gazetteers, and literati writings, this talk reconstructs the history of Daoist monastic practice and patronage of arts at the Xuanmiao Monastery in late Qing and early Republican city of Nanyang in North China. Professor Liu shows how such Daoist practice and patronage of literati arts help the Daoist monastery generate and accumulate cultural capital and moral prestige, and build and maintain the Daoists’ ideological, social and political ties with local literati and merchants. He argues that the Xuanmiao monastic patronage and practice of arts attests to the existence of an active and lively Daoist artistic tradition in the late imperial China. Further and more importantly, Professor Liu demonstrates that the Daoist cultural capital and moral prestige in turn enabled the Xuanmiao Monastery and its Daoists to engage in public activism in modern reforms in education, social philanthropy, medicine, and other public areas, and to play a vital role in shaping the modern development and configuration of local society and politics in late Qing and early Republican Nanyang.