ABSTRACT
Provincial scholars have made a suspiciously neat ritual distinction between north Shanxi, where lay huoju Zhengyi Daoists known as yingmenshi are common, and south Shanxi, where Quanzhen Daoist priests dominate, apparently resident in temples and known as chanmenshi. In the melodic instrumental music played by Daoists in south Shanxi as part of their rituals, the suona shawm has often replaced the more classic shengguan instrumentation. The Xingtai and Handan regions of south Hebei, not far east of south Shanxi, sound very lively for Daoist ritual. Best documented is the jiao ritual of the Daoists in Julu county, subject of a book by Yuan Jingfang, though frustratingly laconic on social background. The Fanzhuang temple fair in Zhaoxian county has been much studied; the material doesn't specify ritual sequences, and so appears to lack Daoists or vocal liturgists, though amateur sects presumably perform hymns and so on.
