Revealing Secrets: Talismans, Healthcare and the Market of the Occult in Early Twentieth-century China

Abstract

This article analyses the place and value of occult arts in the healthcare market of Republican China (1912-1949). Medical historiography has long neglected the resilience of such occult arts as talismans, astrology and divination in the context of China's search for modernity. Focusing on the production, trade, and consumption of goods and services related to talismanic healing, I give voice to Chinese occultists by investigating the formation of a 'market of the occult' in the Republican era. I adopt a global perspective to clarify the changes that occult healing underwent following the popularisation of new printing technologies, mass media and transnational spiritualism in early twentieth-century China. Erstwhile embraced in secrecy, the occult was now being made public. Cheap manuals, wide-circulation newspapers and book catalogues reveal that in contrast to past studies that herald the disenchantment of the world as the hallmark of Chinese modernity, occult healing did not simply survive but thrived in the face of modern science and technology.