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Chapter 4 reveals that immigrant parents had mixed success in translating the liyi practices of Chinese Popular Religion to their Chinese American children due to four major barriers. First, Chinese American families transmitted practices by modeling rituals without explaining them. The second generation performed customs without fully understanding the symbols and meanings. Second, the dissonant acculturation between parents and children led the second generation to be more Americanized and less receptive to traditional, hierarchical values. Third, Christian dominance and privilege in the United States rendered Chinese practices exotic and superstitious. Fourth, gendered and racialized experiences “othered” Chinese traditions as foreign and outdated. In spite of these barriers, Chinese Americans distilled and hybridized what was most important to them from these practices to sustain familism.

Chapter 2 offers a genealogical exploration of how Chinese traditions have shaped Chinese American religious affiliations and familism. Chinese adopt a plurality of beliefs for utilitarian purposes through their religious repertoire based in Chinese Popular Religion. Given their mixture of beliefs and practices that have no names, Chinese tend to identify as “nothing in particular.” Another factor contributing to the high rates of Chinese American religious nones is Confucian thought, which oriented Chinese society toward religious skepticism and an agnostic, symbolic interpretation of religious rituals. These twin approaches toward religion are the roots of modern-day Chinese atheism and agnosticism. Both reinforce the primacy of familial relations. These two traditions have undergone changes through modernization, migration, and the religious context in which they take root. The chapter ends with a survey of how these traditions have been transformed by Chinese state modernization, acculturation to the American context, and racialization.

Chapter 3 investigates the educational and class-based differences in how Chinese American households transmit the liyi dimensions of Chinese Popular Religion and Confucianism. Working-class households tend to pass down the practices of Chinese Popular Religion based on fate, luck, and qi, whereas professional households tend to affirm Confucian thought to match their rational, scientific worldviews. Nearly all respondents’ parents practiced elements of Chinese Popular Religion, most notably venerating ancestors, adhering to fengshui principles of qi, and celebrating Lunar New Year. For working-class families, these practices included belief in supernatural realities and the efficacy of practices to bring about well-being and good fortune. Chinese American professional families saw these rituals as secular customs and maintained them for different reasons: to instill family responsibility through ancestor veneration, maintain good energy via fengshui, and celebrate their heritage through Lunar New Year.