Chinese Gods: An Introduction to Chinese Folk Religion [ペーパーバック]

I probably would not rate this book so highly were not books on this subject so hard to find! The selection of deities seems a little arbitrary at times, but the treatment of each one brings something special, and the author frequently seems to have, like a detective, uncovered hidden layers of meaning in the folklore concerning the various deities. He is also very respectful, which I appreciate. Perhaps the biggest flaw in the book is poor editing. There are many typos and unclear sentences, and some of the technical discussions of Chinese symbolism suffer as a result. A great complement to this book is "Chinese Gods: The Unseen World of Spirits and Demons" by Keith Stevens (which I can't seem to find on Amazon), which is much more complete and copiously illustrated.

I have no idea what Chamberlain is trying to accomplish with this book, but it had better not be helping people learn more about Chinese mythology, because this thing is a trainwreck. He admits up front that he hates pretty much every scholarly work on Chinese myth he's ever read ("One damn god follows another," he exclaims!) and refuses to emulate them, and boy does he follow through on that promise.

There's no discernible system of organization for the random stories and anecdotes he tosses around like unappetizing legumes, and furthermore he never cites sources or explains where he heard these stories he passes on, making it impossible to try to figure out where the regionalisms or interpretations might be among them. Even more hilarious is the fact that he straight-up refuses (and tells you so in the text) to attempt any kind of standard in his romanization of names and titles, leading to mass-scale confusion over what he's talking about when sometimes he uses modern pinyin, sometimes Wade-Giles, sometimes Cantonese names, sometimes Mandarin, and sometimes bizarre things he appears to be making up himself as he goes along.

We're meant to feel that this is all okay because he's making this stuff accessible to the layman, being a man of the people and whatnot. Sadly, this is also not true. His writing is an absolute pain to read; his tone and the thread of his conversation are meandering in the extreme and have an irritating quality of trying to sound knowledgeable but failing, and the intermittent whining about how scholarly sources aren't worth the paper they're printed on is aggravating and distracting. The total lack of coherent structure or organization within chapters makes trying to find any information a chore, and reading his self-satisfied tone gave me a headache.

In short, it is a terribly bad book when you are looking for concrete information on Chinese myth instead of random, unsourced anecdotes, and I am depressed that I spent ten dollars on it instead of finding something more appropriate for a student. If you're looking for a book with useful, coherent information on Chinese mythology rather than random, unsourced anecdotes, don't make my mistake.

I have a collection of mythology and folk religion from all over the world and found this a great book to include. There is very little available in English about Chinese folk religion that does not water the text down to a modern fairy tale. I enjoyed this book and feel it offers a unique voice to a part of the Chinese culture not easily found in a English translation outside of a college setting. I have been out of school for years but I loved the read.