This essay examines two sets of reports in the Qing-dynasty Jiaqing and Daoguang periods (respectively 1796–1820 and 1821–45) in order to understand better the perceived reality of the Tiandihui. The first set, found among the papers of Jiangxi governor Xianfu (1809–14), allows a comparison of a criminal gang that invoked the Tiandihui ceremony with one that did not. The second set includes the diary of Taihe county magistrate Xu Dihui (in office from 1824) that recorded various events which came to be reported to the senior officialdom as having been conducted by secret societies. By collating the incidents as reported in the diary and memorials to the emperor, the authors argue that the pressure of the administrative process was responsible for the ultimate acquiescence by the Hunan governor Han Wenqi (in office 1825–29) in the perception of an indisputable connection of the incidents with secret societies. Moreover, both sets of reports show that participants in secret-society ceremonies and officials who suppressed them knew that the acclaimed networking of the Tiandihui as implied in its folklore was very far from the reality.

In 1802 the second major Tiandihui (Heaven and Earth Society) uprising erupted in the mountains of Huizhou prefecture near Canton. Before it was suppressed over a year later, the disturbances came to involve several tens of thousands of people and nearly a quarter of Guangdong province. This study, which is based on extant historical sources and fieldwork, takes an interdisciplinary approach, combining the methodologies of history, anthropology, and folklore. The areas where the uprising occurred were predominantly Hakka, an ethnic Chinese minority who came into conflict with the earlier settlers, known as the Punti. As violence escalated, both sides organized their own paramilitary units: Hakka formed Tiandihui groups and Punti formed Ox Head Societies. Significantly too, the Tiandihui groups in Huizhou belonged to a much wider network of secret society and sectarian organizations that spread across the Hakka heartland on the Jiangxi, Fujian, and Guangdong border. This article addresses key issues concerning the social, political, and religious contexts and motivations of this Hakka-led uprising.

This essay uses research in Chinese religion, and specifically Chinese “redemptive societies,” to challenge and enrich the received history of “sects and secret societies” in modern and contemporary Chinese history, and suggests that a future “history of cultivation movements” might be a helpful means to steer between competing narratives of state-building and personal religious experience. The discussion is illustrated with a brief biography of Li Yujie (1901–94), founder of the redemptive society Tiandijiao who devoted his life to cultivation and religion, but also to independent journalism and the Guomindang.

The phenomenal growth of Catholic and Protestant churches—both officially-registered Three-Self patriotic churches and unofficial house churches—in China has drawn attention to the underlying dynamics of Chinese Christianity. This article draws on archival research and ethnographic findings to investigate the interactions between the officials and Christians in the coastal regions of Shantou (Guangdong province) and Wenzhou (Zhejiang province) during the 1950s and 1960s. The Chaozhou-speaking Catholics, Baptists and Presbyterians in Shantou succeeded in transcending sectarian boundaries and helped each other to cope with political pressure. The Seventh-day Adventists in Wenzhou did likewise by organizing clandestine house gatherings with other Protestants. They held onto their faith, continued their worship activities on Saturday, and maintained a distinct, though not independent, identity under the broad spectrum of Protestantism. These local stories show that as a collective force, Chinese Christians not only employed a variety of tactics to help each other but also reinvented congregational, kinship and cross-regional networks as conduits for pursuing religious goals. Their covert and overt activism highlight the need to combine archival research and fieldwork to assess the revival of Christianity in present-day China.

This article explores nineteenth-century Penang’s Hokkkien merchants and their secret society or hui —the Kian Teik Tong (Jiande Tang)—which had a variety of roles and an extensive network. It contextualizes the merchants’ secret society as a transnational socioeconomic and political organization rather than as an overseas Chinese criminal group in the wider Penang area. By recovering Kian Teik Tong and its network, it can be shown how these merchants secured and mobilized labour, capital, and allies in a way that cut across linguistic, ethnic, class and state boundaries in order to establish control of coolies and the lucrative opium, tin, and rice businesses, in order to exert political influence in the colonial and indigenous milieus of the nineteenth-century Penang region. They established a social contract through their Kian Teik Tong relief activities and initiation rituals, and thus were able to recruit thousands of members who were mainly labourers. With such a substantial social force, the merchants launched organized violence against their rivals to attain dominance in opium revenue farming and tin mining businesses in Penang, Krabi, and Perak. The widespread and strategic location of the Kian Teik Tong in Burma also enabled the same merchants to monopolize the Penang-Burma rice trade. The versatility of the Kian Teik Tong’s functions allowed them to operate as an alternative political order vis-a-vis the colonial and indigenous powers. This arrangement allowed the Hokkien merchants to gain significant political clout in confronting the Siamese and Dutch authorities.