A state of the field of second- and early third-century Chinese popular religiosity, this article discusses the known features of the Yellow Turbans, the Scarlet Eyebrows, and the autonomous state of Hanzhong (in present-day Sichuan). Proposing a re-reading of key primary sources and questioning some of their received interpretations, the study helps to bridge the intellectual and ideological gap between the hermeneutics of the Weft writings (wei shu), the quasi-millennial expectations of Great Peace (taiping), and the beliefs and practices of late Han religious mass movements and subsequent Taoist communities.
