{"product_id":"fountain-of-fortune-money-and-monetary-policy-in-china-10001700-9780520204089","title":"Fountain of Fortune: Money and Monetary Policy in China  1000-1700","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe most striking feature of Wutong  the preeminent God of Wealth in late imperial China  was the deitys 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 religionas opposed to institutional religions such as Buddhism or Daoism. Von Glahns 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 Glahns 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.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45665810939957,"sku":"ByrdShop_0520204085","price":134.3,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780520204089.jpg?v=1782408157","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/fountain-of-fortune-money-and-monetary-policy-in-china-10001700-9780520204089","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}