The Three Temples Pilgrimage: An Ancient Ritual Festival of Dali, China

The "Three Temples Pilgrimage" of Dali, in Chinese known as "Rao San Ling", is a festival of the Bai ethnic people who celebrate, in a ritual way, their unique traditions as a distinctive national group.Another significant if less recognized feature of this ceremony is its function as a fertility rite, preserving the remains among the rural Bai of a pre-modern set of kinship relations. These relations are characterized by a limited and ritualized recourse to practices of sexual promiscuity.The book contains a detailed narration of the events, based on field research, illustrated by 90 original color pictures.