Everywhere I went there were temples and shrines to various gods and belief systems, Buddism, Taoism, Confusionism, Shintoism and various sects and divisions within each.
These are social traditions, a kind of cultural glue that binds people together in a society.
If you were to sit down and talk to the people, you would probably find that for many of them, these are not serious beliefs, but only cultural practices.
We have our own modern forms of these. They go under names such as "cricket", "football", "golf". And some folk get very religious about those, too.
Fundamentalism - the anti-American, anti-Christian branch of American Christianity