Week 11 Reflection

I feel like I may have made the wrong takeaways from this unit considering it was about mountains, but I found the most interesting piece about to be about the Fashi and Taoist Priests. I think the idea of one’s ability to perform exorcisms as being a symbol of status is just really interesting. Today people who perform exorcisms are just viewed as con-artists, so I just find it interesting that in ancient China this was really believed in. I also wonder if these ideas were spread by the fang-shi because the idea of people claiming that they could exorcise demons just seems like the people exorcising them must have known that it wasn’t real so I wonder if the people doing these things were fang-shi or if they were inspired by them at all.