Religious Taoism (or Religious Daoism) is a system of belief
that first showed up in writing in China about 2000 years ago.
People do not always write about their religions at first, so
this religion may be much older. In it, people do things
somewhat like what people do in Shamanism. They also have gods
that take over a person to be able to talk to humans and answer
their questions. The total number of books in this religion is
huge. It is bigger than the Encyclopedia Britannica. Among these
books are Lao Zi's Dao De Jing (also spelled Tao Te Jing), the
Zhuang Zi (also spelled Chuang Tzu), and many other books by the
teachers of Philosophical Daoism (also written "Philosophical
Taoism"). People who follow this religion believe that doing
something with words, thoughts, symbolic actions, etc. can make
things in the real world change. That idea is hard to
understand. Here is an example: There is an old story that says
China was once covered by a flood. The world was saved from the
flood by 禹 Yǔ, who had only o