Yang, Zhaohua

Zhaohua Yang 楊朝華 is an Assistant Professor at Columbia University 哥倫比亞大學. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. He specializes in tantric or esoteric Buddhism in middle-period China. His research interests also include Chan/Zen, indigenous scriptures, and the interactions between Buddhism and Daoism. In addition to his training in pre-modern Dunhuang and Japanese manuscripts, he has done extensive fieldwork in the Mainland China, Taiwan, Japan, and the US. He is finishing his first book manuscript, Devouring Impurities: The Rise of the Cult of Ucchuṣma in Tang China (618-907), which explores Chinese responses to transgressive esoteric practices as seen through a Dunhuang manuscript on this fierce god. His next project, tentatively titled Performing Yoga: Transformations of Buddhist Ritual in Late Imperial China (960-1450), studies the evolution from Yoga in esoteric Buddhism to Yoga as a monastic category in Ming Buddhist institutions.