The “Blood Lake complex” refers to all the relevant myths concerning the “Blood Lake/Blood Bowl Hell” and the whole genre of death rite for deceased women derived from those myths. The core idea of the complex is simply that women are destined to be punished in Blood Lake/Blood Bowl Hell after death because they could not avoid polluting water and earth with their blood, either through menses or lochia, while they were living. Therefore, Buddhism and Daoism began to design new rites for rescuing women’s souls from the Blood Lake/Blood Bowl Hell since the turn of the 12^th and 13^th centuries onward. Later, the more and more elaborate and diversified ritual genre had gradually become one of the most often-used constituting parts of women’s death ritual in China. Now, relevant rites are still widely practiced by ritual specialists in many rural communities in south-eastern China.

This paper will briefly outline the trajectory through which this Buddhists-invented complex was adopted and actively developed by Daoism. Then, it will go on to delineate how the Blood Lake rites are practiced by Daoist priests in the southern Yangtze River delta region today. By so doing, the author attempts to suggest that the popularity of the Blood Lake complex maybe not caused by some entrenched sexism against women. Contrarily, it can be better explained by the moral authority actually commanded by mother, especially the mother of sons, in Chinese family.