Ritual and Mythology of the Chinese Triads

Ritual and Mythology of the Chinese Triads PDF Author: Barend ter Haar
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004483047
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description
The extensive ritual and mythological lore of the Chinese Triads form the scope of this new paperback title in Brill’s Scholars’ List. The author critically evaluates the extant sources and offers a wealth of contextual information. The core of the book is formed by a close reading of the initiation ritual, including the burning of incense, the altar, the enactment of a journey of life and death, and the blood covenant. Different narrative structures are also presented. These include the messianic demonological paradigm, political legitimation, and the foundation of myth. Triad lore is placed in its own religious and cultural context, allowing radically new conclusions about its origins, meanings and functions. This book is of special interest to social historians, anthropologists, and students of Chinese religious culture.

Ritual and Mythology of the Chinese Triads

Ritual and Mythology of the Chinese Triads PDF Author: Barend ter Haar
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004483047
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description
The extensive ritual and mythological lore of the Chinese Triads form the scope of this new paperback title in Brill’s Scholars’ List. The author critically evaluates the extant sources and offers a wealth of contextual information. The core of the book is formed by a close reading of the initiation ritual, including the burning of incense, the altar, the enactment of a journey of life and death, and the blood covenant. Different narrative structures are also presented. These include the messianic demonological paradigm, political legitimation, and the foundation of myth. Triad lore is placed in its own religious and cultural context, allowing radically new conclusions about its origins, meanings and functions. This book is of special interest to social historians, anthropologists, and students of Chinese religious culture.

Tongs, Gangs, and Triads

Tongs, Gangs, and Triads PDF Author: Peter Huston
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 9780595187546
Category : Chinese American criminals
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description


The Triads

The Triads PDF Author: Martin Booth
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description


The Origins of the Tiandihui

The Origins of the Tiandihui PDF Author: Dian H. Murray
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 080476610X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
The Tiandihui, also known as the Heaven and Earth Association or the Triads, was one of the earliest, largest, and most enduring of the Chinese secret societies that have played crucial roles at decisive junctures in modern Chinese history. These organizations were characterized by ceremonial rituals, often in the form of blood oaths, that brought people together for a common goal. Some were organized for clandestine, criminal, or even seditious purposes by people alienated from or at the margins of society. Others were organized for mutual protection or the administration of local activities by law-abiding members of a given community. The common perception in the twentieth century, both in China and in the West, was that the Tiandihui was founded by Chinese patriots in the seventeenth century for the purpose of overthrowing the Qing (Manchu) dynasty and restoring the Ming (Chinese). This view was put forward by Sun Yat-sen and other revolutionaries who claimed that, like the anti-Manchu founders of the Tiandihui, their goal was to strip the Manchus of their throne. The Chinese Nationalists (Guomindang) today claim the Tiandihui as part of their heritage. This book relates a very different history of the origins of the Tiandihui. Using Qing dynasty archives that were made available in both Beijing and Taipei during the last decades, the author shows that the Tiandihui was founded not as a political movement but as a mutual aid brotherhood in 1761, a century after the date given by traditional historiography. She contends that histories depicting Ming loyalism as the raison d'etre of the Tiandihui are based on internally generated sources and, in part, on the "Xi Lu Legend," a creation myth that tells of monks from the Shaolin Monastery aiding the emperor in fighting the Xi Lu barbarians. Because of its importance to the theories of Ming loyalist scholars and its impact on Tiandihui historiography as a whole, the author thoroughly investigates the legend, revealing it to be the product of later - not founding - generations of Tiandihui members and a tale with an evolution of its own. The seven extant versions of the legend itself appear in English translation as an appendix. This book thus accomplishes three things: it reviews and analyzes the extensive Tiandihui literature; it makes available to Western scholars information from archival materials heretofore seen only by a few Chinese specialists; and it firmly establishes an authoritative chronology of the Tiandihui's early history.

The Ritual and Mythology of the Chinese Triads

The Ritual and Mythology of the Chinese Triads PDF Author: Barend ter Haar
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004489665
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 533

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Book Description
The extensive ritual and mythological lore of the Chinese Triads form the scope of this new paperback in Brill’s Scholar’s List. In it the reader will find a critical evaluation of the extant sources together with a true wealth of context. The core of the book is formed by a close reading of the initiation ritual, including the burning of incense, the altar, the enactment of a journey of life and death, and the blood covenant. Different narrative structures are also presented. These include the messianic demonological paradigm, political legitimation, and the foundation of myth. Triad lore is placed in its own religious and cultural context, allowing radically new conclusions about its origins, meanings and functions. This book is of special interest to social historians, anthropologists, and students of Chinese religious culture.

The Triads as Business

The Triads as Business PDF Author: Yiu-kong Chu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134696825
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

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Book Description
There is no doubt that the triads have become recognized as a sophisticated and international criminal force and, following the handover of Hong Kong to China, there have been increasing fears that their influence will spread to the West through emigration. This book investigates the reality behind the myth with a study of the Hong Kong triads, generally regarded as the headquarters of triad societies throughout the world. Yiu Kong Chu examines their origins, their organized extortion from legitimate businesses large and small, and their more recent moves into illegal activities such as drug trafficking, human smuggling and gambling. Contrary to the popular belief that Hong Kong triads are replacing the Italian Mafia as the most powerful criminal organization in the world, this book argues that Hong Kong triads may be declining, as other ethnic Chinese crime gangs emerge as powerful crime groups in Western societies. Based on interviews with ex triad members and victims of the triads, police from Hong Kong, mainland China and Europe, as well as documentary evidence The Triads as Business gives a vivid and compelling picture of the triads as part of a wider society.

The Triads

The Triads PDF Author: J. M. S. Ward
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317845757
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 685

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Book Description
First published in 2006. Claiming origins in the mysteries of the Shaolin monastery and its martial traditions, the Triads are Chinese secret societies that overthrew the Qing Dynasty, evolved into organised crime syndicates, spread through the Chinese diaspora and are more powerful now than ever before. The symbol of the Triads is a triangle enclosing the characters for heaven, earth and man, emblematic of the societies’ far-reaching influence, and membership involves challenging rites of initiation and the practice of complex rituals little changed over the centuries. On one level, these practices can be seen simply as the customs of a purely mystical order; on another, they may be seen as the organising principles by which secret societies continue to operate as powerful political organisations invisible in our midst. This classic work, the definitive study of the history, symbols and secret rituals of the Triads, reveals the Triad initiation ritual of the mystical journey; sacred Triad signs, words and slang; the rite of the magic mirror and the oath of blood brotherhood; the symbolic decoration of Triad temples, Triad magic, and the meaning of the sacred objects and ceremonies at the heart of Triad practice in minute detail. The authors show that the Triad ritual is a potent mystical allegory with an immense power that can be used for good or ill.

Triad Societies: Triad societies in Hong Kong

Triad Societies: Triad societies in Hong Kong PDF Author: Kingsley Bolton
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780415243988
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 368

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Book Description
This set comprises a comprehensive selection of colonial Western scholarly texts on Chinese secret societies from the early nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. It includes a selection of important papers on Chinese secret societies by a variety of scholars, missionaries, and colonial officials.

Paper Fan

Paper Fan PDF Author: Terry Gould
Publisher: Vintage Canada
ISBN: 0307369307
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 716

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Book Description
For 14K Triad official Steven Wong, faking his own death to escape trial was easy. But evading investigative reporter Terry Gould -- impossible. For 11 years terry Gould has tracked the man known as the “paper fan” through the organized crime circles of six countries. This riveting, horrifying, yet often hilariously funny book is the story of that search, a daredevil journey through the seductions and terrors of Steve’s world. Steven Wong is the “paper fan,” a thirty-nine-year-old Hong Kong-born mobster. Raised in New York’s Chinatown, he matured into crime in Vancouver, where he founded and headed the murderous Gum Wah Gang in the late 1980s and early ’90s. In 1992, Wong “died” in a traffic accident in a remote area of the Philippines before he could be sent to jail for heroin trafficking, conveniently just after he’d taken out a million-dollar life insurance policy. His urn may still be interred in a Vancouver cemetery, but today, Interpol has a “Red Alert” arrest warrant out for Wong, and his updated file reads like a Hollywood action film -- a post-mortem panorama of organized criminal adventure that circles the Pacific Rim, from Macau to Japan, from Cambodia to the Philippines. Gould’s search takes him into a world in which politicians, police, businessmen and criminals sprint along in one big pack, sometimes nipping each other’s heels, sometimes licking each other’s faces, and sometimes inviting one another back home for all-night mah-jong parties. Forced to work according to right-side-up rules, honest cops haven’t had a chance of arresting Steve in his upside-down world. Four times, Terry Gould has traced Steven Wong through Asia’s circles of corruption and pinned him down, but the law has let him slip away. Fifth time lucky? “Gangsters are good team players who generally exhibit a locker-room familiarity with other men. Still, it surprised me when Steve answered the door on Monday wearing only his polka-dot boxers, showing off his biceps and his chest tattooed with the winged dragons and sharp-taloned eagle. He was talking on the phone and barely interrupted himself as he turned back into the house, whereupon I realized that the display was likely done on purpose. Neck to waist his back was totally covered by a stylized tableau of a dragon crawling against a background of tigers and flowers — a Triad montage no one outside his syndicate world was supposed to see.” -- from Paper Fan

The Dragon Syndicates

The Dragon Syndicates PDF Author: Martin Booth
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 9780786708697
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Traces the more than two-thousand-year history of the Triads, the one-time Chinese secret society that has evolved into an international criminal fraternity, bound by ritual and archaic oaths, involved in world-wide extortion, gambling, prostitution, money laundering, fraud, narcotics, immigrant smuggling, and other criminal enterprises. Reprint.