ABSTRACT
Why another book about Chinese secret societies? Scores of Chinese scholars have written thousands of pages on the topic since the Republican period, focusing largely on the question of secret society origins. Western academics produced a spate of studies of secret societies in the 1960s and 1970s, probing their roles in the rebellions and revolutions of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Journalists in the 1980s and 1990s continue to link the societies to worldwide narcotics smuggling rings. Sociologists scrutinize their structure and membership. Novelists and film-makers exploit their violent exoticism. At present, an impressive (some might say oppressive) bibliography treats the origins, social significance, and contemporary relevance of Chinese secret societies. One might be forgiven for thinking that there is little left to add.
