Emerging amid the social ferment of late Qing China, Yiguandao took its first concrete shape in Shandong province around the turn of the 20th century. While its devotees often trace a legendary lineage back millennia—claiming roots in Han-era masters—the movement as it’s known today actually blossomed in the coastal counties of northeastern Shandong. Here, folk scholars and wandering Taoist adepts wove Confucian ethics, Taoist inner alchemy and Buddhist compassion into a single tapestry, responding to the era’s mix of political upheaval and popular yearning for moral guidance.

Key figures—most notably Zhang Tianran and Sun Mingshi—gathered followers in towns like Weixian and nearby Cangzhou, preaching a message of moral renewal, communal charity and spiritual healing. By the 1910s and 1920s, their teachings radiated outward: first to nearby Hebei and Tianjin, then to the treaty port of Shanghai, where a wave of urbanites found solace in Yiguandao’s promise of unity and ethical living as China careened through revolution and warlord clashes.

That grassroots energy mirrored global trends of new religious movements springing up in moments of crisis—think of the spread of Pentecostalism in early 20th-century America or Japan’s Omoto in the same period. After 1949, practitioners carried their beliefs to Taiwan and Southeast Asia, where the faith continued growing through the late 20th century and into the present day.

Today’s revival of interest in China’s native faiths—amplified by state-sanctioned “folk belief” policies—has even sparked renewed curiosity about Yiguandao’s Shandong origins. In that northern coastal stretch, the seeds sown by those early 20th-century teachers still flourish in humble temples and study halls, reminding modern seekers of a syncretic tradition born at the crossroads of history.