First published in 2001, Popular Religion in China: The Imperial Metaphor was written to bring together both the previously unpublished and published results of fieldwork in the People's Republic of China and Taiwan and to put them into an historical, political, and theoretical context.

1: History, Identification and Belief; 2: The Annual Apocalypse; 3: Official and Local Cults; 4: Local Festivals and their Cults; 5: The Incense-Burner: Communication and Deference; 6: Daoism and its Clients; 7: Ang Gong, or the Truth of Puppets; 8: The Politics of Religion and Politcal Ritual; Notes, References; Glossary; Index