This book is about interpreting the physical remains of a religion-traditional Chinese folk Taoism-that once flourished in North America, nearly died, and is now seeing a very modest revival. Its near-death was caused by racism, modernization, and conversion. In the nineteenth century, however, it formed the center of the lives of most Chinese North Americans.The subject has been neglected by historians and popular writers. A major problem is that those who believed in that past religion are gone. Very few left personal records of their own experiences. None left descriptions of their beliefs or those of other Chinese. Accounts by non-Chinese when based on interviews with Chinese participants have only limited value, being marred by ignorance and prejudice. However, a solution to the problem exists. A large volume of under-used but highly relevant evidence is available: that of early temples and shrines. There once were several hundred of them on this side of the Pacific. Although mostly ignored by historians, epigraphic data from temples constitutes by far the largest body of secure data about historic Chinese religion in North America.
The authors' qualifications are as follows. They received their Ph.D.'s from the Universities of London and Pennsylvania. They have visited most of the relevant sites and collections, discussed the subject with numerous Chinese and non-Chinese local historians, and-due to the recent availability of searchable digitized archives-been able to consult many more early newspapers and other primary sources than previous researchers. They have also had the advantages of decent educations in Chinese and other languages, familiarity with the specialized language of Chinese religious texts and, in the senior author's case, an old-fashioned Daoist/Buddhist upbringing in Hong Kong. Our objectives are twofold. By cataloguing as many early temples as possible, we want to assist in preserving what remains of them, often no more than a few ritual objects or a hand-written text or two in the storerooms of museums. And by providing extensive context for those remains, we hope to enable a modern audience to hear more clearly the voices of nineteenth century Chinese immigrants, telling us how they cultivated their faith, what it meant to them, and how it fitted into their daily lives.