Fountain of Fortune

The most striking feature of Wutong, the preeminent God of Wealth in late imperial China, was the deity's diabolical character. Wutong was perceived not as a heroic figure or paragon but rather as an embodiment of greed and lust, a maleficent demon who preyed on the weak and vulnerable. In "The Sinister Way", Richard von Glahn examines the emergence and evolution of the Wutong ...

The most striking feature of Wutong, the preeminent God of Wealth in late imperial China, was the deity's diabolical character. Wutong was perceived not as a heroic figure or paragon but rather as an embodiment of greed and lust, a maleficent demon who preyed on the weak and vulnerable. In "The Sinister Way", Richard von Glahn examines the emergence and evolution of the Wutong cult within the larger framework of the historical development of Chinese popular or vernacular religion - as opposed to institutional religions such as Buddhism or Daoism. Von Glahn's study, spanning three millennia, gives due recognition to the morally ambivalent and demonic aspects of divine power within the common Chinese religious culture. Surveying Chinese religion from 1000 BCE to the beginning of the twentieth century, "The Sinister Way" views the Wutong cult as by no means an aberration. In Von Glahn's work we see how, from earliest times, the Chinese imagined an enchanted world populated by fiendish fairies and goblins, ancient stones and trees that spring suddenly to life, ghosts of the unshriven dead, and the blood-eating spirits of the mountains and forests. From earliest times, too, we find in Chinese religious culture an abiding tension between two fundamental orientations: on one hand, belief in the power of sacrifice and exorcism to win blessings and avert calamity through direct appeal to a multitude of gods; on the other, faith in an all-encompassing moral equilibrium inhering in the cosmos.

万志英（RICHARD VON GLAHN）

国际知名汉学家，美国加州大学洛杉矶分校历史学教授，耶鲁大学博士。

主要研究领域为中国经济社会史、中国宗教文化、全球经济史、东亚海洋历史等；多年来曾先后应邀在世界各地作学术访问和演讲，广受欢迎；主要著作包括《财富之泉：中国货币与货币政策，1000-1700》《宋元明中国历史转型》《全球视角下的货币历史，1470-1800》《旁门左道：中国宗教文化中的神与魔》《十字路口与文化：世界人民的历史》等。