Chinese ‘bad death’ practices in Taiwan: Maidens and modernity
In Taiwan’s traditional patrilineal society, ancestral status and a ‘good death’ are granted exclusively to those with male heirs. Unmarried women are consequently excluded from the family lineage, relegating them to the marginalised category of a ‘bad death’. By analysing how families navigate this exclusion—first through private Daoist rituals in pre-modern, rural areas, and later through public Buddhist institutions in modern, urban environments—this study reveals how age-old religious structures continually adapt to broader processes of societal modernisation.
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