Download or read book Ritual Opera and Mercantile Lineage written by Qitao Guo and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Focusing on the Confucian transformation of Mulian opera, and especially on the interplay between the "civilizing" effect of ritual performance and the rise of gentrified mercantile lineages in sixteenth-century Huizhou prefecture, this book develops a radically novel interpretation of both Chinese popular culture and the Confucian tradition in late imperial China.