An impressively comprehensive review of Chinese religions. Neither scholars from China nor the West have been able to accomplish such a comprehensive review of Chinese religions as this. No other book offers such a detailed, sustained analysis and functional interpretation of critical facts in order to reveal a pattern of relationship between religion and Chinese social life and organization. Yang's work focuses on the religious systems that have become firmly integrated parts of the Chinese culture, including Buddhism, Taoism, and the numerous cults of the classical religion. His study is primarily concerned with the recent periods of Ch'ing and the Republic--especially the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries--but because the roots of Chinese cultural traits extend deep into the past, historical data and discussion are included when clarification is necessary. Because the concept and structure of all major Chinese social institutions contained religious elements, this much-cited classic will be valuable to any reader who really wants to understand China.

楊慶堃（C.K.Yang）（1911-1999），華裔美國社會學傢、原籍廣東南海。1932年獲燕京大學社會學學士學位，1934年獲該校碩士學位。1939年獲美國密歇根大學社會學博士學位。先後任紐約商報編輯、華盛頓大學助理教授。迴國後，1948年起任嶺南大學社會學係副教授兼係主任，並在廣州近郊鷺江村從事農村社區的調查工作。1951年再度赴美，任麻省理工學院國際研究中心研究員。1953年任匹茲堡大學社會學係副教授、教授。1970年代在香港中文大學創辦社會學係。