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Abstract

The rising importance of the tea business among the Bulang
people of Yunnan province, Southwest China, is intimately linked to
Theravada Buddhist ideologies and practices. Non-reciprocal merit-mak-
ing provides a sense of control, and this is particularly important in an

increasingly uncertain economic environment. More and more people
were ready to engage in high-risk trading, and new rituals emerged pre-
cisely at a time when profit margins increased rapidly. The reinvention of

local rituals helped people to control risk-taking and to morally legitimize
ambiguous market behavior. The result is strong synergies between the
ways uncertainty and risk are being addressed in the tea economy and

in local religious practice: economic processes are changing religious
practices just as much as religious practices are making a difference in
economic behavior.