August 16, 2013
By: James Miller
In June this year Ian Johnson published a major report in the New York Times on China's plans to urbanize 250 million citizens over the next decade or so. This drive continues the decades-long story of China's conversion from an...
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March 26, 2012
By: James Miller
A conservation biologist by training, I first arrived in Xishuangbanna because of my interest in the ecological value of sacred groves called “holy hills,” fragments of old-growth rainforest that remain protected by indigenous Dai people despite rapid deforestation due to...
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January 7, 2012
By: James Miller
[caption id="attachment_524" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Maoshan Temple"][/caption] In May 2010 I had the opportunity to visit Maoshan, an important Daoist site in Jiangsu province (see here for my earlier post). One result of my fieldwork was that it gave a deeper...
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December 15, 2011
By: James Miller
[caption id="attachment_492" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="The Guandu Temple, Taipei"][/caption] According to tradition, Mazu (Matsu) was a girl who lived in the late tenth century who was renowned for her assistance to seafarers. She was posthumously deified and attracted a wide cult...
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August 16, 2011
By: James Miller
[caption id="attachment_463" align="alignright" width="150" caption="A Blang nationality woman"][/caption] The question of how to promote a culture of ecological sustainability in China took me this summer to conduct exploratory fieldwork among the Blang minority nationality, in Yunnan province, close to the...
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September 2, 2010
By: James Miller
[caption id="attachment_374" align="alignright" width="150" caption="Laozi Statue on Maoshan"][/caption] In May this year I had the opportunity to visit Maoshan (Mt. Mao) a Daoist mountain sacred to the Shangqing (Highest Clarity) tradition of Daoism that I studied in my most recent...
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