ABSTRACT
In today’s Quanzhou, territorial divisions drawn along the boundary lines of pu are chiefl y involved in the organization of unoffi cial popular religious festivals that, from the government’s perspective, are merely “cultural survivals” of “feudal superstition” (which anthropologists of China abroad have alternatively termed “popular/folk religion”). But a few centuries ago, divisions of pu were conspicuously offi cial and politically rational. Archival materials pertaining to the organization of pu-contained in the histories compiled under the direct supervision of the ministers and magistrates in between the thirteenth and the nineteenth centuries-are the key documents recording the history of pu or, later, the pujing system. None of these documents associates pu with “superstitious” or “popular religious” celebrations, and all describe pu as an imperial state institution.
