ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the core agents of the ritual economy: The entrepreneurs. In sum, guanxi formation is a case in point for ritual entrepreneurship in two specific senses: Entrepreneurs take action in creating arenas for network formation which is often shaped by rituals, and the network dynamics itself is governed by ritualized rules of social exchange. Ritual entrepreneurship is about the creation and stabilization of business networks by means of rituals. A most important domain of ritual entrepreneurship is tourism. Tourism has attracted much scholarly attention in recent Chinese studies, as this is increasingly focused on cultural legacies, both tangible and intangible, and has to be located in the larger context of locational strategies of cities. The Huang lineage at Xiasha launched a major ritual innovation of the pencai and claim that they invented a new form of pencai, the ‘da pencai’, the ‘big common pot’.
