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Contemporary scholars and tourism officials of the Bai nationality in the Dali region of Southwest China's Yunnan Province present their village god (benzhu) worship as part of Bai ethnic religion and use the goddess Baijie as a paradigmatic example. In recent years Baijie has become an increasingly prominent face of Bai culture and religion in the Dali region and in China. Baijie's public face is not only ethnic but also gendered, as she appears as a paragon of feminine virtues. My research in villages that worship Baijie as their benzhu shows that most people involved in her worship--primarily older women--discuss Baijie in gendered terms but not ethnic terms. Furthermore, male and female villagers participate in her worship in different ways and to different degrees. This reveals the danger of uncritically accepting official discourse on ethnic religion, as rhetorics of ethnicity mask diversity within officially designated ethnic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is based on ethnographic and documentary research that concerns shantangs, Chinese charitable temples, in Southeast Asia and in the Chao-Shan region of Guangdong in China. Unlike the shantangs as benevolent societies in late Ming and Qing China, the shantangs described in this article not only emphasize charitable activities, they are also temples that honor Song Dafeng as a deity. I show that the religious nature of these shantangs account for their resilience, while the tradition of charity helps to promote their secular and benevolent image, especially when there is a need to emphasize their existence as non-superstitious organizations. I also describe the agency of the local elite--and especially merchants--in the development of shantangs in Southeast Asia and China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]