Subversive Practices: Traditions of Talismanic Healing in the Making of Modern China, c. 1850–1949 (360G-Wellcome-217661_Z_19_Z)

Throughout Chinese history, talismans have been central to healing for the vast majority of the population. From the Sui to the Qing dynasties (581-1644), talismans formed an imperially-sponsored medical discipline, after which they were permanently forsaken by the court. However, despite subsequent condemnation by the state, talismans remained pervasive throughout Chinese society until the first half of the twentieth century. This can be attested by the publication of an unprecedented wave of cheap almanacs and manuals of talismanic healing, as well as a dynamic economy revolving around these practices between the 1850s and 1940s. Paradoxically, this was precisely the period when the Chinese state began to marginalize talismans and other healing rituals from China’s public sphere, condemning them as at odds with a modern Chinese medicine. Combining historical and ethnographic analysis, I will examine the marginalization and survival of talismanic culture in Republican China (1912–1949). Print culture will provide copious textual evidence of the circulation of talismanic knowledge in Shanghai and the place of talismanic healers in its healthcare market, while fieldwork with a talismanic healer will offer a case study that ties together the historical and anthropological strands in an analysis of contemporary transmission and practice of talismanic healing.