Zhang Jiyu张继禹

Style & Daoist names

Sixty-fifth generation of the Celestial Masters' lineage, Daoist name Jiyu

Period

Modern

Dates

1962 — 2015

School

Zhengyi (Orthodox Unity) Daoism

Role

Vice President of the Chinese Taoist AssociationDaoist ScholarsDescendant of the Celestial Masters

Birthplace

Guixi (present-day Guixi, Jiangxi)

Places of activity

Mount Longhu (Dragon and Tiger Mountain), White Cloud Temple (Baiyun Guan), Beijing

Life

Zhang Jiyu, a native of Guixi, Jiangxi, was, according to mainland accounts, the sixty-fifth-generation descendant of the Zhang Celestial Master lineage of Longhushan. In the 1980s he studied at the China Taoist College, and afterward remained to work for the Chinese Taoist Association, serving successively as deputy secretary-general and vice-president, while also serving as deputy president of the China Taoist College and a member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress; he presided for many years over Daoist cultural research, the compilation of the Zhonghua Daozang (serving as executive deputy editor-in-chief; published 2004), and the journal Chinese Daoism, wrote Tianshi Dao Shilüe (A Short History of the Way of the Celestial Masters), and took part in promoting the conferral of Zhengyi ordinations and the restoration of the Mansion of the Celestial Masters at Longhushan. He died of illness in Beijing in 2015 at the age of fifty-three. He was the most important scholar-leader of contemporary Zhengyi Daoism, and a representative figure of the Celestial Master lineage on the mainland.

Contributions & Influence

• Served as executive editor-in-chief of the Zhonghua Daozang, the largest project of Daoist canon compilation in the contemporary era
• Wrote Tianshi Dao Shilüe, advancing the study of Zhengyi Daoism
• Long presided over the cultural and religious affairs work of the Chinese Taoist Association

Works

• Tianshidao shilüe (天师道史略, A Brief History of the Way of the Celestial Masters)
• Zhonghua Daozang (Executive Deputy Chief Editor)
• "The Dao Follows What Is Natural" and Environmental Protection