Excellent course. I recommend this course to anyone interested in Asian religions, Chinese culture, Chinese society and religions in general. The concept of “religion” in China is very difficult to understand for outsiders. China has a different concept of religion, very different from the views on religion in the Christian world, Islamic world and other places. This course will help you understand the basics of Chinese local religions (like Confucianism and Taoism), and the development and sinicization of “non-chinese” religions in China (like Buddhism and Islam).

I am a Buddhist and a history and world religions teacher. I've taken many, many online courses, and this one is probably the worst one that I've ever taken. The instructor lists a lot of facts, names, dates, events, and their Chinese translations, but he rarely explains anything. Don't expect to understand any of the religions in China. People in the forums are asking questions about the basic beliefs of each religion because the instructor doesn't explain them. The quizzes are questions about incredibly specific facts and Chinese translations of words, so you have to copy everything down. The quizzes don't test understanding at all. At the end of the course, all I've come away with is a notebook full of dull facts and little conceptual understanding. I'm very glad I didn't pay for this course.

I was very happy with this course. Professor Maslov did a great job in his videos with very useful PowerPoint slides. I have a very good understanding of how religions are weaved into Chinese society now.

I did get as much insight of Chinese and asian society and mindset knowldege.Fantastic Professor!

This gave me a thorough understanding of religions in China and how this helps to understand how Chinese people think. Excellent!

This course is to really understand the details, it has in depth explanations and i consider it very well explained.

A must do for anyone moving or interacting with china

I learned quite a bit from this course and I would recommend it. It covered a lot of ground but I felt that the info was organized/structured to cover the most important subjects in a logical and interesting way. The professor's English was hard to understand at times. The written transcripts

Great course, well explained ! you will learn a lot of diferent religions in china and how they coexist... but i wish the prof could pronounced clearly, sometimes i got a headache because of his voice :P

The course is very well designed and covers all the broad topics related to the subject. The exams at the end of each week are well thought out and tests the knowledge that has been gained. Maybe if the course notes / presentation are provided as downloadable options, it would help remember and retain future interests in similar courses.

The first week's content is quite inspiring. However, I don't think many of the Taoism concepts are widely accepted and correct... For example, the explanation of Jing as semen is quite superficial while the meaning of Jing should be more profound.

the tests were inconsistent with what was being taught. A lot of the questions on the quizzes were not covered in the course!

I finished this course because it is an interesting concept and did acquire some high level learnings. However, course was not very good. If I knew what it was like from the start I would not have taken it.

First off the quiz questions just test me on memorization of pointless facts. I don’t feel I am rehashing any of the important concepts I should have learned but searching for highly specific information like the Chinese name of some term. The answers to these questions often differs in spelling from those found online or I couldn’t even find a definitive answer in the lecture. I mention online because it is impossible to find this information in a lecture (even if it exists) if I haven’t watched all weeks lectures and immediately taken a quiz. Often even then it is very hard.

This may be because the lecturer is confusing. He is intent on sharing a lot of knowledge but unclear what is most important. Taoism is a great example where so much information is as presented I became unclear what practicing Taoism even means. Apparently everything.

The quiz questions also seem to only cover First half of lectures in each week so I have to reason to finish second half of I just care about completions.

Excellent, thank you very much.

it suits me well and helps me a lot!

Firstly, I'd like to say it is an interesting course to take. Especially for me, who did not have any knowledge on the subject, it was a rich source of learning. However, I'd like to point that most of the lessons didn't have a nice flow to follow. I got confused in the themes dealt in the slides very often, since sometimes it was a new topic totally disconected with the last one. Also, some basic questions like "what is", "when was it", "why was it" remained unanswered in lots of slides, so many of them i couldn't understand. In the overall, the course has a lot to improve, but was very enriching for me.

Just great! This course gave me more than two years spent offline in the university (MA in religious studies). Thank you very much!

This is an excellent overview of the complex topic of religions in China across time, with examples of religious events, important events and other relevant information. The narrative is well structured and engaging.

The course was good. The idea of covering the different religions was a very good one. Unfortunately the slides were not made available to students and no other readings or material was given. Requests to make the slides available were not dealt with. The tests could have been better. Finally, the transcripts weren't always good, may-be because of the pronunciation of the professor.

Interesting and fun course! Thanks.

Instructor's English language skills are not very good, some errors in the material presented, quizzes test trivia. I kept asking myself if the course was worth my time, but I'm very interested in China so I persisted.

I really loved the course and learned a lot from it! Given that my knowledge about China was very basic, I feel that my understand of its society and culture became more solid. The teacher made me interested in the subject so much that I started learning Mandarin. I would recommend this course to anyone who is even vaguely interested in Oriental cultures, religions and philosophies.

It was an AMAZING course. Thanks to everyone involved in putting it together. It was a delightful experience.

I enjoy every lecture of professor Maslov. I've listened to all records and interviews with him available on youtube, and I DO recommend everyone!

His English is perfect, I understand every word though I am Russian. Would appreciate to see more courses with him in the future no matter in English or Russian.