Play the Electronic Wooden Fish: Digitizing Rituals in Chinese Cyberspace

This paper introduces the concept of meme rituals—digitized religious practices that utilize online platforms to reproduce and disseminate in a memetic fashion, often manifesting as emojis, images, or interactive applications. Focusing on the Chinese cyberspace, the study employs a multidisciplinary approach integrating material culture studies and historiography to critically analyze the affordances of meme rituals within the unique historical and social context of contemporary China. I argue that the reinvention of rituals in Chinese cyberspace not only changes the format and medium of religious practices but also fundamentally transforms how individuals engage with deeply meaningful cultural and social experiences. By building the framework of meme rituals and analyzing its broader implication, this paper seeks to contribute to the late-blooming field of religion in Chinese cyberspace and the general understanding of technologization of everyday religious rituals.