ABSTRACT
Several village ritual associations in this area learnt only in the early 1950s from the Quanzhen Daoist priests of the Liangshanpo Daoist temple, properly called Pantaogong Liangshanpo, in Zhangziying district of Daxing county. In 1943 Gao Liwang left to join the Eighth Route Army against the Japanese, going on to fight the Nationalists in the civil war. Zhang recalled that Liangshanpo was most closely linked to the Li'ersi temple in Zhangjiawan district of nearby Tongzhou, with whose priests they also used to make up a band together for folk ritual. In 1993 visits to Lijiawu village, known as Lifu, we talked with the association leaders, notably Zhang Fengxiang, who was not only chief liturgist in the village association, and a sheng player, but was also village chief. They inherited the temple's ritual manuals, costumes, instruments, and shengguan score, but most were confiscated before the Cultural Revolution; two sets of ritual manuals were burned during the Cultural Revolution.
