"The Funeral of Mr. Wang is a vivid portrait of how the transition from life to death is negotiated in the midst of a rapidly transforming urban Chinese society. Showing how death in contemporary China generates interconnected processes of cultural recombination among family members, funeral service providers, bureaucratic regulators, strangers, and ghosts, this book will be critical reading for all students of China and of death in contemporary societies."--David A. Palmer, coauthor of The Religious Question in Modern China