ABSTRACT
Public life in the city of Quanzhou during the fi rst half of the seventeenth century continued to display colorful new developments. The temples of guardian-gods locally created within the territorial spaces of pujing became the foci of communal festivals. Participating in these popular ritual activities, residential groups in urban neighborhoods became more mobile as they neared the dynastic turn of the Qing. As the conditions of their existence changed, these groups brought the rationalized imperial cults closer to their everyday practices. Pujing was still used in offi cial discourse, but it became increasingly intertwined with popular ritual and separate from local administration.
