The Varieties of Confucian Experience: Documenting a Grassroots Revival of Tradition 9004374965, 9789004374966

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The Varieties of Confucian Experience

Religion in Chinese Societies Edited by Kenneth Dean (National University of Singapore) Richard Madsen (University of California, San Diego) David Palmer (University of Hong Kong)

volume 14

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/rics

The Varieties of Confucian Experience Documenting a Grassroots Revival of Tradition Edited by

Sébastien Billioud

LEIDEN | BOSTON

Cover illustration: Confucius cult performed by grassroots activists, Shandong province, 2007. © Sébastien Billioud The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2018025005

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1877-6264 isbn 978-90-04-37495-9 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-37496-6 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all rights holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Acknowledgements vii List of Illustrations viii Notes on Contributors xi Introduction 1 Sébastien Billioud 1

The Birth of a New Religion: The Development of the Confucian Congregation in Southeast China 17 Chen Na, Fan Lizhu and Chen Jinguo

2

Making a Virtue of Piety: Dizigui and the Discursive Practice of Jingkong’s Network  61 Ji Zhe

3

Popular Groups Promoting “The Religion of Confucius” in the Chinese Southwest and Their Activities since the Nineteenth Century (1840–2013): An Observation Centered on Yunnan’s Eryuan County and Environs 90 Wang Chien-Chuan

4

Belief and Faith: The Situation and Development of Confucianism in Yunnan Province 122 Chung Yun-ying

5

Civil Spirituality and Confucian Piety Today: The Activities of Confucian Temples in Qufu, Taipei, and Changchun 153 Nakajima Takahiro

6

The Revival of Traditional Culture and Religious Experience in Modern Urban Life: The Example of the Changchun Confucius Temple 176 Ishii Tsuyoshi

7

Contemporary Confucius Temples Life in Mainland China: Report from the Field 205 Anna Sun

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Rites Bridging the Ancient and Modern: The Revival of Offerings at Urban Ancestral Temples 235 Chen Bisheng

9

An Adventure Called “Sishu”: The Tensions and Vagaries of a “Holistic” Educational Experience (zhengti jiaoyu) in Today’s Rural China 262 Guillaume Dutournier and Wang Yuchen

10

Confucian Revival and the Media: The CCTV “Lecture Room” Program 302 Fabrice Dulery Bibliography 331 Index 344

Acknowledgements This book is one of the results of a research project funded by the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation and titled, The Confucian Revival in China, Forms and Meanings of Confucian Piety Today. Most of the contributors participated in the project and are thankful to the Foundation for its generous grant that made fieldwork possible. In addition, three workshops provided the participants with the opportunity to exchange before, during and at the end of the project. The first two workshops took place at the University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy (UTCP) and the third one in Fuzhou. We are grateful to the University of Tokyo, the French Center for Research on Contemporary China (Hong Kong) and Renmin University of China. Special thanks are also due to Professor Gan Chunsong (Peking University) for his support throughout the project. The chapters gathered in this volume were originally written in English, Chinese and French. Chinese chapters were often difficult to translate due to numerous quotes in classical Chinese and a complex historical background. We thank Stacy Mosher for the time and efforts that she spent translating texts and crosschecking references. Our gratitude also goes to the two anonymous reviewers of the manuscript, to the Brill team for the careful preparation of the volume, to Chen Sih-jie as well as to Professor David A. Palmer for his encouragement to submit our manuscript to the Religion in Chinese Societies series. This volume is dedicated to the memory of Joël Thoraval, participant in this project, who passed away in March 2016.

Illustrations Figures 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 2.1 2.2 2.3

2.4 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6

The third floor of the Confucian Congregation in Huishan. © Chen Na 34 Lining up to welcome guests for the opening ceremony of the House of Dao of the Huishan branch of the Confucian Congregation. © Chen Na 37 Offerings at the opening ceremony. © Fan Lizhu 41 Ketou/kowtow at the opening ceremony. © Fan Lizhu 41 Slogan on the wall: “Love the Party, Love the Country and Develop the Congregation; Construct a Harmonious Society.” © Chen Na 46 Master Jingkong. © Ji Zhe, 2013 66 Children in front of the Ancient Dabei Temple who have enrolled in a summer class dedicated to the study of the Dizigui. © Ji Zhe, 2011 81 A class of girls studying the Dizigui, Ancient Dabei Temple. The portrait of Confucius and big characters—ai 愛 (love), xiao 孝 (filial piety), ti 悌 (fraternity) and zhong 忠 (loyalty)—are posted on the classroom wall. © Ji Zhe, 2011 81 The portrait of Confucius in the Dizigui classroom of the Anshan Temple, behind several covered Buddhist statues. © Ji Zhe, 2013 83 A portrait of Confucius in Jianshui’s Temple of the Kitchen God. © Chung Yun-ying 129 Prayer cards to Confucius during the “Confucius Assembly”. © Chung Yun-ying 130 People gathering for the “Confucius Assembly”. © Chung Yun-ying 130 Prayers to Confucius during the “Confucius Assembly”. © Chung Yun-ying 131 Spirit tablet of Confucius (on the left) and of one of the highest Daoist deities, the Celestial Worthy of Original Beginning (on the right) in the temple of the Kitchen God. © Chung Yun-ying 133 Xiwang high school students. © Nakajima Takahiro 168 Praise for excellent young students. ©Nakajima Takahiro 169 Praise for citizens. ©Nakajima Takahiro 170 Unveiling ceremony. ©Nakajima Takahiro 170 Round-table discussion in the Department of History and Culture, Northeast Normal University. © Nakajima Takahiro 172 Wenmiao in Changchun. © Nakajima Takahiro 174

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6.1 The main hall of the Changchun Confucius Temple. © Ishii Tsuyoshi 178 6.2 The construction site of the Confucius Cultural Garden. © Ishii Tsuyoshi 180 6.3 The Confucius Temple Elementary School. © Ishii Tsuyoshi 180 6.4 The Manchukuo Imperial Palace Museum attracts tours by groups of primary school students. © Ishii Tsuyoshi 182 6.5 Tour groups of primary school students can also be seen at the Changchun Confucius Temple. © Ishii Tsuyoshi 183 6.6 The Jilin Confucius Temple. © Ishii Tsuyoshi 184 6.7 A corner of “Home” ( jia), a private-run nursery training children in a cultivated lifestyle centered on traditional culture. © Ishii Tsuyoshi 193 6.8 Images of the Buddha and Laozi’s Classic of Virtue on a wall at “Home”. © Ishii Tsuyoshi 194 6.9 A ceremony to worship Confucius (2010). Students play the part of temple staff performing rites. © Ishii Tsuyoshi 196 6.10 The Changchun Mosque. © Ishii Tsuyoshi 200 6.11 The Huguo (Protecting the Nation) Prajna Temple. © Tsuyoshi Ishii 201 6.12 Street outside the Huguo Prajna Temple. © Ishii Tsuyoshi 202 6.13 The Changchun Christian Church. © Ishii Tsuyoshi 202 7.1 Nanjing 219 7.2 Suzhou 226 7.3 Wujiang 230 7.4 Confucius temples share a ritual habitus with rituals performed in other ritual sites 232 8.1 The Xiao lineage Sixu Hall in an urban residential area. © Chen Bisheng 238 8.2 Confucius shrine. In the past, the Sixu hall encompassed a school or sishu (私塾) and Confucius worship was also performed. A shrine to honor Confucius has been reconstructed in today’s ancestral hall. © Chen Bisheng.  241 8.3 Qiu Jun’s diagram based on Zhu Xi’s stipulation in the Ming Dynasty work Family Rites and Etiquettes. © Chen Bisheng 246 8.4 Diagram for offerings in the ancestral hall in Wu Zhai’s compilation of the Family Dictionary of the Wu lineage of Mingzhou. © Chen Bisheng 249 8.5 Shrine for ancestral tablets in the Xiao lineage’s Sixu hall. © Chen Bisheng 251

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8.6 Position of the ancestors’ tablets in the Sixu hall. © Chen Bisheng 252 8.7 One of the newly opened halls of the Xiao lineage’s Sixu hall. © Chen Bisheng.  257 9.1 Zhu Zhizhong on the doorstep of his sishu in 2007. © Guillaume Dutournier 269 9.2 Zhang Zhiyong teaching basic martial arts movements to children in his sishu (2010). © Guillaume Dutournier 283 9.3 Zhangguying’s sishu in 2011, with a sign showing Zhang Zhiyong in traditional robe. © Guillaume Dutournier 294 Tables 1.1 1.2 3.1 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 8.1

Gods and deities whose birthdays are celebrated in the Confucian Congregation 30 Major literature of the Confucian Congregation 31 List of the phoenix books produced by planchette writers of western Yunnan, Eryuan and such places 104 Most commonly observed ritual activities in contemporary Confucius temples 206 The impact of different economic structures on the way the temple managements facilitate (or not) ritual activities 213 Commonalities of ritually rich temple sites 214 Density of ritual activities in Mainland Confucius temples 215 Situations of three ancestral halls 239

Notes on Contributors Sébastien Billioud is Professor of Chinese Studies at University Paris-Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité and the Director of the Taipei branch of the French Center for Research on Contemporary China (CEFC). He is the author of monographs exploring the modern and contemporary fates of Confucianism: Thinking through Confucian Modernity, A Study of Mou Zongsan’s Moral Metaphysics (Brill, 2012), The Sage and the People, The Confucian Revival in China (co-authored with Joël Thoraval, Oxford, 2015) and Reclaiming the Wilderness, Contemporary Dynamics of the Yiguandao (forthcoming). Contact: [email protected] Chen Bisheng (陳壁生) holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy and is a Professor at the Institute of National Studies (Guoxueyuan) of Renmin University in Beijing. His research focuses on the study of Chinese classics and on Chinese philosophy. He is the author of Jingxue, zhidu yu shenghuo: Lunyu fuzi xiangyin zhang shuzheng 經學、制度與 生活—《論語》父子相隱章疏證; Jingxue de wajie 經學的瓦解; and Xiaojing xueshi 孝經學史, all published by East China Normal University Press, respectively in 2010, 2014 and 2015. Contact: [email protected] Chen Jinguo (陳進國) holds a Ph.D. degree in History and works as Research Fellow at the Institute of World Religions, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). He is the Chief Editor of Anthropology of Religion, Vice Chair of the Academic Committee of Anthropology of Religion of China, and Secretary of the Center for the Study of Bahai Faith at CASS. He has authored and edited five books on Chinese popular religion and folk tradition. Contact: [email protected] Chen Na (陳納) is Research Fellow at the Fudan Development Institute, Fudan University, Shanghai, China. Dr. Chen received academic training in Comparative Literature at Peking University, Communication at the University of Pennsylvania and Sociology at Temple University; and he was a Junior Research Fellow in Anthropology at Harvard University. His current research covers sociology of religion and intercultural communication. Contact: [email protected]

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Chung Yun-ying (鍾雲鶯) is Professor in the Department of Chinese Literature and Linguistics of Yuan-Ze University, Taiwan. Her research focuses on two main directions: The way Confucian classics are appropriated and interpreted by Chinese sectarian movements and the doctrines and history of Yiguandao in Taiwan. Among other works, she is the author of Qing mo Min chu minjian rujiao dui zhuliu ruxue de xishou yu zhuanhua 清末民初民間儒教對主流儒學的吸收與轉化 (Taida University Press, 2008) and of Minguo yilai minjian jiaopai “Daxue” “Zhongyong” sixiang zhi yanjiu 民國以來民間教派“大學”“中庸”思想之研究 (Huamulan, 2008). Contact: [email protected] Fabrice Duléry is a Ph.D. candidate in Chinese Studies at University Paris-Diderot, Sorbonne Paris Cité and a Professor of Chinese at Lycée Fénelon (classes préparatoires) in Paris. Contact: [email protected] Guillaume Dutournier is Associate Researcher at the Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient and in charge of the EFEO Beijing Center since 2016. At the crossroads of history of Confucianism and anthropology of knowledge, his research focuses on intellectual controversies in premodern China, and on the educative and patrimonial aspects of contemporary Confucianism. He published an annotated translation of the philosophical controversy between Zhu Xi and Lu Jiuyuan, Une Controverse lettrée (co-edited with Roger Darrobers, Les Belles Lettres, 2012), and has contributed to academic journals such as Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident, Chinese Perspectives and Etudes chinoises. Contact: [email protected] Fan Lizhu (范麗珠) is Professor of Sociology and Director of Globalization and Religious Studies at Fudan University. As a pioneer scholar in the study of sociology of religion in China, she has engaged in historical and ethnographic studies of Chinese folk religious beliefs, sociological theories of religion, and the study of trends of religious beliefs in modern Chinese society. Contact: [email protected] Ishii Tsuyoshi (石井剛) is Professor of Chinese Modern Intellectual History and Philosophy at the University of Tokyo’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. His main publications include Qiwu de zhexue: Zhang Taiyan yu Zhongguo xiandai sixiang de Dongya jingyan 齐物的哲学：章太炎与中国现代思想的东

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亚经验 [Philosophy of the Equalization of Things: Zhang Taiyan and the Experience of East Asia in Modern Chinese Thought] (Huadong shifan daxue chubanshe, 2016), and Tai Shin to Chugoku kindai tetsugaku: Kangaku kara tetsugaku e 戴震と中国近代哲学：漢学から哲学へ [Dai Zhen and Chinese Modern Philosophy: from Philology to Philosophy] (Chisenshokan, 2014). Contact: [email protected]

Ji Zhe (汲喆) is Professor of Sociology at the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales, Université Sorbonne Paris Cité. He is also the Director of the Parisbased Center for Interdisciplinary Studies on Buddhism and a Junior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France. His main study areas are Buddhism and the relationship between state and religion. He is the author of Religion, modernité et temporalité: Une sociologie du bouddhisme chan contemporain (CNRS Editions, 2016) and the co-editor (with Vincent Goossaert and David Ownby) of Making Saints in Modern China (Oxford, 2017). Contact: [email protected] Nakajima Takahiro (中島隆博) is Professor of Chinese Philosophy and Comparative Philosophy at the Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo. His interest focuses on the contemporary Confucian revival in China and Japan. His publications include Language qua Thought (Iwanami 2017), Philosophy of the Evil (Chikuma-shobo, 2012), Praxis of Co-existence: State and Religion (University of Tokyo Press, 2011), The Zhuangzi (Iwanami, 2009), Philosophy in Humanities (Iwanami 2009) and The Reverberation of Chinese Philosophy: Language and Politics (University of Tokyo Press, 2007). Contact: [email protected] Anna Sun is Associate Professor of Sociology and Asian Studies and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Kenyon College, USA. Her book Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities was published in 2013 by Princeton University Press. Her forthcoming book is on the social life of prayer in contemporary urban China. Contact: [email protected] Wang Chien-chuan (王見川) is Assistant Professor at the Southern Taiwan University of Science and Technology. His research focuses on Chinese popular religion (Guandi, Xuantian shangdi, Wenchang, Mazu), prophetic texts, late imperial popular religion, and contemporary Daoism, Buddhism, spirit-writing, and charity. He has written Zhang tianshi zhi yanjiu: yi Longhushan yixi wei kaocha zhongxin

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張天師之研究：以龍虎山一系為考察中心; Hanren zongjiao, minjian zongjiao, minjian xinyang yu yuyanshu de tansuo 漢人宗教, 民間信仰與預言書的探索; and edited Mingqing minjian zongjiao jingjuan wenxian 明清民間宗教經卷文 獻; and Zhongguo minjian xinyang, minjian wenhua zhiliao huibian 中國民間 信仰, 民間文化資料彙編. Contact: [email protected]

Wang Yuchen (王宇琛) is a Ph.D. candidate in Historical Folklore Studies at Beijing Normal University. Her current research focuses on the modern transformations of local schooling institutions in the Republican era, and on local dimensions of contemporary cultural heritage practices. Contact: [email protected]

Introduction Sébastien Billioud This book is a contribution to a still very limited body of ethnographic work that aims to document and understand the variety of phenomena encapsulated under the label “Confucian revival” in the first two decades of the 21st century. Its primary focus is grassroots enterprises carried out in the name of Confucius or, sometimes more vaguely, the Confucian tradition. The starting point was a collective research project to which most of the authors of the book contributed and that focused on the forms and meanings of Confucian piety today. We originally decided to start with the notion of “piety” since the relevance of applying the category of religion to Confucianism has been discussed in China for now more than one century1 and our target was not to participate in these debates. Our ambition was in fact to apprehend a variety of phenomena in the “space of the people” whether or not they were carried out in direct reference to religion. In this context, the reference to piety was inspired by a text in which Robert Bellah mentions his own use of piety “to indicate an element of action that ‘religion’ does not convey and for which ‘religious behavior’ or ‘religious action’ (…) seems a bit too clumsy.”2 However, this project orientation did not stem from an ardent ambition to further theorize on the theme of piety and this is precisely why the word does not appear in the title of the book even though some of the authors of this volume mention it. Rather, this book highlights results of fieldwork, that is, the wide spectrum of modes and forms of being Confucian today and, in other words and alluding to William James, “The Varieties of Confucian Experience.” Confucian experience is understood here in a broad sense (in a much broader sense than James’s) that may include personal motivations but also collective enterprises and related revived institutions that provide room for Confucianism-inspired activities.

1 Project member and contributor to this volume Anna Sun dedicated a monograph to this issue: Anna Sun, Confucianism as a World Religion, Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013). See also John Makeham, Lost Soul, “Confucianism in Contemporary Chinese Discourse (Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008), 277–310. 2  Robert Bellah. “Transcendence in Contemporary Piety,” in Beyond Belief, Essays on Religion in a Post-Traditionalist World (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1991), 197.

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Billioud

The Modern and Contemporary Fates of Confucianism and the Current Popular Developments

In 1965, American historian Joseph Levenson wrote his seminal Confucian China and its Modern Fate, arguing at the end that the Chinese had largely relegated Chinese culture and Confucianism to the Museum. Around half a century later, the multi-faceted revival that currently takes place requires a fresh reading of the situation of Confucianism during the 20th century.3 There is no room here for a systematic introduction to this issue. Suffice it to underscore a few elements that constitute a backdrop for the following chapters. The dismantlement of the imperial order generated a fragmentation of Confucianism which lost its prevailing and holistic dimension. The remnants of the Confucian tradition, themselves the objects of a century of transformation, lost some considerable amount of visibility in this process. They took form in very different projects, some intellectual, others educational, politicalideological or religious. Tracing the history of Confucianism in modern times means first and foremost producing narratives about the fate of these independent fragments and their reconfigurations, but also exploring their possible interactions, up to the present. One of the most striking features of the present time is certainly that after 30 years of Maoism and nearly 40 years of reform and opening some of these fragments seem to coalesce again. And if the emerging configurations share next to nothing with what Confucianism used to be in the late imperial period, lines of continuity can certainly be found with projects and situations of the Republican era. Retrospectively—and particularly since 1949—it seems that the most visible puzzle piece of the Confucian heritage has probably been the philosophical one. This is largely due to the fact that if we look all across the 20th century the most prominent discourse on Confucianism (which in no case means the only discourse) was produced by scholars who were for the most part of the time engaged in philosophical enterprises.4 Sociologically, it is one of the fates of ancient scholars-literati to have turned into philosophy professors. This was the case of a number (though not all) of so-called New Confucians (dangdai xinrujia 當代新儒家) to whom a very substantial body of

3  For an introduction to this issue, see Sébastien Billioud, “The Hidden Tradition: Confucianism and its Metamorphoses in Modern and Contemporary China,” in Modern Chinese Religion II (1850–2015), eds. Vincent Goossaert, Jan Kiely and John Lagerwey, vol. 2 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016), 767–805. 4  This includes philosophizing about the religious nature of Confucianism.

Introduction

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literature is now dedicated.5 This does in no case mean that other discourses on Confucianism or practices claiming a link to the Confucian heritage did not exist—especially in Republican China or later in Taiwan—but primarily that they were less audible, visible or considered relevant, especially in scholarly circles. More generally, the twists and turns of China’s history in the 20th century combined with the territorial diversity of its political experiences and the radical anti-traditionalism that prevailed after 1949 did not help to keep track of the modern and contemporary developments of Confucianism. It is a major specificity of the current period to see the reemergence and/or increased visibility of a spectrum of phenomena nowadays carried out in the name of the sage or, more generally, with references to the Confucian tradition. These phenomena have gained considerable momentum since the beginning of the 2000s in all parts of China. They range from education (rediscovery and re-appropriation of classical texts) to self-cultivation, religion and ritualism, attracting very different people in all kinds of premises: schools and universities, academies, parks, temples, stadiums, homes, associations, administrations, companies, etc. and, of course the Internet. Strikingly, activists involved in this movement can be found in all strata of the population. In the course of fieldwork, we encountered numerous people coming from very ordinary or modest backgrounds (workers, peasants, craftsmen, employees, often with little formal education) along with businesspeople, military officers, school teachers, students, scholars, etc. Such a diversity of activities and actors also explains a wide range of underlying motivations: some are more “existential” (e.g. adopting a self-cultivation regimen) whereas others are more instrumental (e.g. teaching classics to children in order to boost their language abilities); some are primarily personal (e.g. daily solitary reading of classics as a source of inspiration for life directions) whereas others are characterized by an aspiration for things collective (initiating or taking part to group rituals, contributing to society by disseminating Confucian values and promoting Confucian virtues in a company, etc.). All these motivations are of course linked to the current Chinese social context but some are clear reactions against that context (for instance when one pulls his or her children out of the supposedly “failed” school system and turns to a traditional school)…6 5  See for instance John Makeham, ed., New Confucianism: A Critical Examination (New York: Palgrave MacMillan), 2003. 6  These motivations have been introduced, through concrete case studies, in Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval, The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China (Oxford and New York: Oxford UP, 2015). Some chapters of the present volume also explore them (for instance chapter 1 by Chen Na, Chen Jinguo and Fan Lizhu or chapter 9 by Dutournier and Wang

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Among the activists operating in today’s China, one group maybe played— and still plays—a special role that needs to be highlighted: “grassroots scholars” (caogen xuezhe 草根學者) by which I allude here not to professional scholars working in higher education institutions but to people with various occupations (typically teachers but not only) often self-educated in the classics and eager to share with others (friends, family, colleagues or members of local societies for the promotion of education and culture) the Confucian worldview they embrace. Their impact has been strong for the local development of the revival throughout China.7 Let us immediately underscore that even though vocal groups of activists claim a Confucian identity many people participating to this broad cultural trend do not necessarily self-identify as specifically Confucians. Whereas they often consider Confucianism to be the “core of traditional culture” (thus echoing a prevailing but not undisputed narrative promoted by many revivalists and scholars, including in the present volume), they also take part to a broader movement of cultural renaissance fueled by other traditional resources as well. One of the most striking features of the revival that started with the new century has been its largely spontaneous and, at least at the beginning, autonomous nature since it was not—contrary to an often heard cliché—an enterprise primarily monitored by the authorities. In these circumstances, how should one explain that approximately around the same period of time (the beginning of the 2000s) Confucianism-inspired projects and references started to burgeon nationwide without any obvious structuration? Only fieldwork and concrete case studies may illuminate local situations and provide satisfactory explanations. Some of the contributors to this book—like the authors of Chapter 1 who explore the Confucian Congregation in Fujian— indeed emphasize the importance of local conditions for the emergence of specific Confucian enterprises. However, an overall context—one could evoke an overall ecology—also needs to be taken into account. It does not provide direct causal explanations but constitutes some sort of “facilitating soil” on which Confucianism-inspired projects could flourish. The first element is a changing relation to the past and more generally to time. The end of the Maoist period enabled over now almost four decades a gradual phase of reconnection of the population to different strata of the past. This trend translated in what is cosmmonly referred to as crazes or “fevers” (re 熱) and a rising popular interest for history—a short glance at airport Yuchen) but we do not provide here some systematic “grammar” of the actors’ motivations. A systematic enquiry into the issue could be a valuable direction for a future project. 7  Billioud and Thoraval, The Sage and the People, 103–105.

Introduction

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or train station bookshops anywhere in China is sufficient to get an idea of the phenomenon—”national studies,” and classical texts, religious traditions, ancient culture and customs in general (from tea ceremony to clothing, participation to traditional festivals) etc. The latest episode of this series of crazes for the past is the so-called “Republican-era fever” (minguo re 民國熱) that currently translates in all kinds of enthusiastic references to this period.8 Classically, this reconnection to the past—i.e., to various strata of the past—is largely a process of production of collective memory (rather than history) with all its shares of retrospective dreams and reinventions. Although it interacts in a complex way with an official manipulation of memory (and history) that crystallizes, for examples, in all kinds of state-fostered commemorations (from tutelary figures of Chinese civilization to Maoist epics) it cannot be reduced to such a political dimension either (especially since some of the references associated with various fevers also have the potential to undermine the regime’s ideology). Official and ideological “production of the past” primarily sanctifies the present. By contrast, collective production of memory “in the space of the people” may turn into resources able to inform and shape the future. Somehow, its development in today’s China might even herald—even though this is just a hypothesis—an entry into what historian François Hartog terms a new “regimen of historicity,” by which is meant a reorganization of the articulations between past, present and future.9 If this proved to be true, it would be a much deeper trend than the mere wave of nostalgia and conservatism that now sweeps over many places worldwide (and probably also fuels, at least to some extent, the current interest for Maoism in today’s China; suffice it to think about the craze for “red songs” sung for now a while by elderly citizens in city parks).10 8  These references can be found in TV series, books, reedited primers, interest for prominent figures of the Republican era etc. Official voices have been very critical of this trend. For an account of this phenomenon see Qiang Zhang and Robert Weatherley, “The Rise of ‘Republican fever in the PRC’ and the Implication for CCP Legitimacy,” China Information, 27 (3) (2013): 277–300. 9  François Hartog, Régimes d’historicité : Présentisme et expérience du temps (Paris: Le Seuil, 2003). Some ideas in this paragraph are taken from Sébastien Billioud, “The Revival of Confucianism in the Sphere of Mores and the Reactivation of the Civil Religion Debate in China,” in Confucianism, A Habit of the Heart, Bellah, Civil Religion and East Asia, eds. Philip J. Ivanhoe and Sungmoon Kim (New York: SUNY Press, 2016), 47–70. 10  Further research would be necessary to investigate the meaning of these reconnections to various strata of the past that seem nowadays to collide but that are not necessarily endowed with the same meaning. Nostalgia for by-gone days and appropriation of resources likely to inform the future are not of the same nature and tell us different things about the articulations of the past, the present and the future in China.

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The second contextual element is a sociological background characterized both by an affirmation of the individual in all spheres of his/her life (a process described by anthropologist Yan Yunxiang as the “individualization” of Chinese society”)11 and—paradoxically maybe given the overall rise of China—an increasing and acute sense of crisis shared by many: ecological crisis, educational crisis and, more generally moral crisis (moral anomy, collapse of trust, unbridled individualism and dislocation of solidarities etc.; Needless to quote here a list of well-known scandals that might illustrate these points). Such a social context fuels a deep counter-current of aspirations for ideals, sound relations to both fellow citizens and the environment, a sense of community, etc. and the religious revival, the rising commitment of ordinary people in NGOs or the Confucian revival all build on this situation. If I insist here on the relative autonomy of popular movements and on the general ecology that constitutes their backdrop, it is because the Confucian revival has too often been introduced as primarily or merely driven by the authorities. However, fieldwork reveals that this is not so simple and that the agency of ordinary people has been a fundamental force behind this rediscovery of Confucianism. In fact, it is largely ordinary people re-appropriating an ancient heritage and identifying therein a source providing meaning to their lives and society who have been on the forefront of this revival. This does not mean that the intervention of the authorities should be downplayed but that it should be nuanced, contextualized and critically analyzed. Hence the following remarks: The popular Confucian revival is obviously not a static phenomenon. It began to become increasingly visible around 15 years ago (beginning of the 2000s) and has evolved with time. Whereas it was at the beginning largely severed from the official sphere (guanfang 官方) and, counterintuitively, from the elites ( jingying 精英), it is no longer the case. I think that it is possible to posit that the major paradigm switch that differentiates popular Confucianism in the mid-2000s and in the mid-2010s is probably the much more massive involvement of the elites in the later period.12 These elites are scholarly, but also economic and political ones. Public intellectuals and scholars now largely partake to the Confucian revival through lectures, training programs, opening of traditional institutions (academies, etc.), involvement in rituals etc. They sometimes do it out of sheer conviction that this is necessary for China’s future but sometimes also to make the most 11  Yunxiang Yan, The Individualization of Chinese Society (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2009). 12  This topic is developed in Billioud and Thoraval. The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

Introduction

7

of the commodification of Chinese culture. As for businesspeople (rushang 儒商), they involve themselves for a variety of reasons that range from a personal quest for a “spiritual abode” ( jingshen jiayuan 精神家園) to more instrumental considerations (management, networking, etc.) and that may also encompass a paternalistic sense of mission (shiminggan 使命感) towards society in general and their employees in particular (see Chung Yun-ying’s contribution to this volume). As regards political elites, their involvement does certainly not point to an ideological turn engineered at the top and that would find in Confucian thought real sources of inspiration to rule the country. The current authoritarian and nationalistic ideological cocktail is in fact made up of many different ingredients (including a claimed allegiance to the socialist legacy, instrumentalization of Maoist groups, etc.) and the political embrace of Confucianism per se should not be overestimated.13 The undeniable instrumental use of traditional culture primarily consists in the manipulation of a wide number of cultural symbols (not merely Confucian ones) often attractive beyond the boundaries of the Nation-State, especially in Taiwan and in overseas Chinese communities, and in the promotion of moral indoctrination (rather than of any clear set of doctrine) building on several sources in the broader context of a civilizing discourse that is also emphasizing China’s rise. A good example of such a moral indoctrination scheme is a document jointly issued in 2017 by the General office of the Central Committee of the PRC (中共中央辦 公廳) and the General Office of the State Council of the PRC (國務院辦公廳) offering “advice” (yijian 意見) about the way the “excellent Chinese culture” (zhonghua youxiu chuantong wenhua 中華優秀傳統文化) should be promoted all across the country.14 More generally, the political appropriations of traditional resources today need to be analyzed within a larger framework of ideological projects (e.g. warlord politics, New Life Movement, Movement of Renaissance of traditional culture of the 1960s and 1970s in Taiwan, etc.) that throughout the 20th century and in various polities of the sinicized world used “traditional culture” and Confucian references as political tools. The increasing involvement of political elites in this revival cannot simply be considered at the central level but also needs to be taken into account at the local one. Here, things at stake are often of a hybrid nature with jiaohua (education/transformation) objectives intertwined with economic policies 13  If we look at the mixed “traditional culture ingredients” of this nationalistic and authoritarian ideological cocktail, it could also be argued that legalist thought ( fajia 法家) is a reference for the authorities. 14  See: http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2017-01/25/content_5163472.htm visited on February 17, 2017.

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of territorial development and an eagerness to benefit from a potential touristic bonanza. Confucian temples (Kongmiao, Wenmiao)—some of them discussed in this volume—often provide good examples of such a trend. Besides, delving into local situations also matters because one of the striking features of the Confucian revival has been its promotion by activists (or civil servants sympathizing with Confucianism) occupying positions within offices of local governments. These activists use their positions and influence to promote their cause and therefore may contribute to facilitate the emergence of local Confucian projects (e.g, opening a traditional school or sishu, authorizing local ritual “cultural” activities, opening a guoxue class, etc….). In other words, the relation between the authorities and Confucian circles can hardly be analyzed through a binary clearly distinguishing the two sides since they often overlap. One of the striking features explaining the current development of Confucianism certainly comes from the fact that it is increasingly embraced not by but within the state apparatus. However, activists employed by the authorities are certainly not the only force that made the most of the fertile historical and sociological soil described above to surf on the general interest for things past in general and Confucianism in particular. Other groups also made a decisive contribution to this development and it is necessary to emphasize here the decisive influence of people and organizations originating from Taiwan. Thus, the movement of classics reading by children (discussed in this volume by Guillaume Dutournier) gained considerable momentum in China (with millions of children participating) thanks to the role of Confucian activist and Mou Zongsan’s disciple Wang Caigui. His influence in the PRC, be it direct or indirect (pedagogy, writings, etc.), is pervasive. Rarely has a single individual, neither a politician nor a religious guru, been able to have such a societal impact. Apart from Wang, one should also highlight the pivotal role of Buddhism and especially Taiwanese Buddhist groups in the promotion of Confucian texts in the PRC. This is especially the case of the Jingzong xuehui of Master Jingkong studied in this volume by Ji Zhe. In so doing, it perpetuates an ancient tradition of promotion of Confucian jiaohua by Buddhist organizations. Finally, one should also mention the existence of another set of forces, much less known to the general public, but that currently makes a comeback in the PRC, namely redemptive societies. Redemptive societies have only recently been the focus of scholarly research. Such a category points to a number of moral and religious organizations more often than not with ancient roots that developed strongly and asserted themselves during the Republican period. Most of them were syncretistic but some of them had a strong Confucian orientation or even claimed a Confucian identity. Their influence largely disappeared during the Maoist era

Introduction

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and some of them could perpetuate their activities in Taiwan. The opening of China and the increasing circulations of people between the two shores of the Taiwan strait has created a new window of opportunity for some of these movements such as the Universal Morality society of the Way of Pervading Unity that also develop largely referring to Confucianism.15 2

Contribution of This Volume to the Ongoing Research on the Confucian Revival and Outline of the Chapters

Participants to this volume carried out fieldwork in different parts of China: Yunnan, Sichuan, Gansu, Jilin, Liaoning, Beijing, Tianjin, Shandong, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Fujian, Guangdong, Taiwan (for comparison purposes) and, finally, on the Internet. Therefore, the main contribution of the book is to enlarge the scope of existing field research and provide case studies and materials documenting a phenomenon that is often commented upon—normative discussions are in fact many—but scarcely on the basis of solid social facts. Our ambition in this specific volume being primarily ethnographic and not theoretical, an obvious limitation is that we do not provide some sort of comprehensive description and interpretation of the Confucian revival in general in the continuity of what I have tried to do elsewhere. Rather, we introduce specific cases and do hope that they will first contribute to our understanding of the revival’s striking diversity. The study of contemporary popular Confucianism is a brand new research field compared to what has already been done for Buddhism, Daoism or popular religion and much more work will be necessary to obtain a finely grained picture of the situation. Most chapters illuminate different patterns characterizing Confucian religiosity and jiaohua (education/transformation) patterns. Confucian ritual activities in Confucian temples are a classical topic and the book provides some insights into their contemporary transformations in different locations, their link with projects—both economic and ideological—run by the authorities, and the way local people are attracted or not by them (chapters by Anna Sun, Nakajima Takahiro, Ishii Tsuyoshi, Chung Yun-ying). But Confucian piety does not limit itself to these temples. It can be encountered in restored ancestor halls, academies, traditional schools (see the contributions 15  For a general introduction about redemptive societies see David Ownby, “Redemptive Societies in the Twentieth Century,” in Modern Chinese Religion II, op.cit., 685–727. On the specific case of the Yiguandao, see Sébastien Billioud, Reclaiming the Wilderness, Contemporary Dynamics of the Yiguandao (forthcoming).

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of Chen Bisheng, Chung Yun-ying, Guillaume Dutournier) often endowed with new functions and it can be advocated through modern mass-media (Dulery’s chapter). Besides, its revival nationwide also includes interactions with other religious phenomena. Thus, some of the chapters emphasize the links between popular religions and Confucianism. Confucius is in fact still often worshipped in non-specifically Confucian premises such as the Yunnan Jianshui temple of the kitchen god, Yunnan Dongjing assemblies or sacred edict halls (Chung Yun-ying and Wang Chien-chuan). The situation also exists where religious organizations claiming a Confucian identity start from scratch and this is for instance the case of the Confucian Congregation explored by Chen Na, Fan Lizhu and Chen Jinguo in Fujian province. It also happens that they are linked to some much more ancient groups that can be traced back to Republican China or even much before. Thus, Wang Chien-chuan’s detailed historical account, up to the present, unveils current presence in Yunnan of heirs of one of the main redemptive societies of the Republican era, namely the Tongshan Association (Tongshanshe 同善社). Finally, the volume also includes a case study by Ji Zhe of a Buddhist group’s strategy to disseminate Confucian classics. In brief, a wide spectrum of different manifestations of Confucian religiosity and Confucian jiaohua are introduced here. They consist sometimes in completely new phenomena but often also of the revitalization in the PRC of ancient practices and groups that probably need in the future to come under increased scholarly scrutiny. It is now time to briefly introduce each of the chapters of the volume. The book starts with an account of the cultural and religious creativity sometimes encountered in the framework of the Confucian revival. Chen Na, Fan Lizhu and Chen Jinguo offer us a fascinating ethnographic exploration of a new religion—the Confucian Congregation—established in Fujian province. After introducing the overall context of the Confucian revival, they trace back the origins and the consequent developments of this specific group focusing on the personalities and ambitions of its founders. Introducing the beliefs and rituals of the Congregation, they emphasize its syncretistic nature visible for instance in texts used by the adepts and that range from scriptures specific of the group to classics of the three main Chinese teachings (sanjiao) and … “Principle of socialist values” put forward by the government! Their chapter also includes a detailed account of the organization and of the strategy of the Congregation. Survival for a new religious group in the PRC context is no easy task even with a Confucian—that is, non-religious according to existing standards—label. In order to demonstrate its absolute loyalty to the authorities not only does the Congregation embrace official propaganda but it also nurtures good relations with local authorities, attempts to do the same

Introduction

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with scholars investigating their situation and builds on its Confucian identity. Compared to other syncretistic groups, the authors emphasize that the Congregation has a this-world orientation, which probably contributes to its development (now seven branches and hundreds of members). This group offers a fascinating case of how Confucianism may become both a source of religious inspiration and a means to creatively adapt to a complex political environment. The Congregation provides a good example of the ancient and tight links between Confucianism and other traditions. This is especially true for Buddhism. Ji Zhe’s chapter focuses on one of the most striking examples of a Taiwanese Buddhist organization building on the promotion of Confucian culture to develop in the People’s Republic. The transnational network established by Pure Land Buddhist Master Jingkong (淨空) massively promotes in China the Dizigui (Rules for Disciples), a short text of popular Confucianism. Basing himself on both written sources and fieldwork carried out in Liaoning and Gansu provinces, Ji demonstrates how successfully Jingkong’s organization managed to “canonize” the Dizigui in China and sanctify it as some sort of crystallization of the essence of Chinese culture. But beyond these facts, Ji also unveils the strategy behind the dissemination of such a Confucian text, a strategy that also needs to be understood in terms of positioning and legitimacy of Jingkong’s organization vis-à-vis other Buddhist forces. Wang Chien-chuan’s contribution provides a wide and deep coverage of a variety of forms of popular Confucianism encountered in Sichuan and Yunnan. It starts with a historical retrospective about groups that used to be active in the Chinese southwest by the end of the Empire and during the Republican era: phoenix halls (luantang 鸞堂) devoted to the mediumistic practice of spirit-writing or “planchette writing”; the “ten completion societies” (Shiquan hui 十全會) that was one of Sichuan’s leading relief organization in the late Qing and that endured through different forms afterwards; the Fellowship of Goodness (Tongshanshe 同善社), a prominent redemptive society of the Republican period; And finally, Yunnan Donjing (洞經) assemblies reciting scripture passages and preaching sacred edicts (shengyu 聖諭) accompanied by music. Wang afterwards attempts to trace back the fate of some of these groups during the Maoist period up to the present time. Wang’s chapter is important for several reasons. First, somewhat echoing previous chapters, it reminds us that a number of references to the Confucian tradition and its values were historically tightly interwoven with a much broader and largely syncretistic religious landscape. Second, it emphasizes that in spite of the tight grip on religions, “superstitions” and sectarian movements that characterized the Maoist period, lines of continuities could nevertheless

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endure. Thus, Wang shows for instance how the Fellowship of Goodness could continue some level of activity by officially becoming affiliated to Buddhist associations. Third, the chapter also highlights the importance of taking into account local contexts when pondering over the Confucian revival. General explanatory factors relevant to the whole country coalesce with reactivated local traditions and explain why Tongshan associations, Dongjing assemblies and sacred edict halls are reappearing today. One of the limitations of Wang’s chapter is certainly that his primarily historical approach did not translate into a detailed sociological or anthropological ethnographic account of current practices. But his study clearly paves the way for future research by offering a historically well-documented background of currently burgeoning phenomena. The South West, and more particularly Yunnan is also the place where the next author carried out her ethnographic fieldwork. In a first part of her chapter, Chung Yun-ying attempts to explore the vitality of Confucian faith or belief in different places of worship and therefore chooses to compare the situations of the large Confucius temple of Jianshui 建水 and that of the local temples of popular religion: the Jianshui Kitchen God (Zaojun si 灶君寺) and Green Tile (Lüwa 綠瓦) temples where a Confucius assembly (Kongzi hui 孔子會) congregates each year for the Sage’s birthday; and the Three Religions Temple in the small town of Fengyu in Eryuan county, north from Dali. Chung emphasizes the blatant difference between these premises: Despite ceremonies sponsored by the authorities, the Jianshui Confucius temple remains remote from the local people; to the contrary, it is in popular religions temples that a “religionized” Confucius is worshipped in ways that perpetuate ancient local traditions (e.g, Dongjing music) and that can be easily compared to cults rendered to other deities. Beyond the situation in temples, Chung also investigates how Confucian beliefs are promoted in Yunnan province within the framework of privately-established academies. Two case studies—those of the Dali Canglu Academy and of the Canghai Academy—highlight how the embrace of or even faith in Confucian culture by successful businessmen translates into a sense of mission and the establishment of institutions promoting classical texts and moral values (especially filial piety) in the population. Chung’s study finally also explores the influence of Taiwan in the local promotion of classics reading classes for children. Nakajima Takahiro’s chapter compares three kinds of Confucian ceremonies that took place in Qufu, Taipei and Changchun as well as their respective backgrounds. In Qufu, the official ceremony is primarily endowed with an ideological dimension and, in contrast with the tribute paid by Kong lineage members to their ancestors, it remains largely devoid of religiosity.

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At most, Nakajima posits that only a “shadow of Confucian piety” still endures. The situation in Taipei is different. Nakajima starts by tracing back the history of the temple: during the Japanese era, interactions between Taiwanese elites and Japanese colonizers led in the 1920s to the reactivation of Confucian ceremonies in the temple, first in a traditional Chinese way and then as some sort of original Shinto-Confucian synthesis; Ceremonies resumed after the war but the relation with Japan somewhat endured. Today, ceremonies continue and fieldwork clearly shows that they are endowed both with a political and a religious dimension since politicians take an active part to a ritual that is clearly endowed with some blatant religiosity. Contrasting this situation with prevailing narratives advocating “secularization” as well as with the situation in Qufu, Nakajima speaks of a “de-secularized ceremony.” The Changchun wenmiao offers a third and different case of contemporary fates of Confucian temples. Sponsored by the authorities, it is largely managed as a non-profit organization, gathers volunteers and organized activities directed toward the population such as charge-free guoxue lectures, diverse ritual activities (Confucius birthday, passage rites, weddings) artistic activities, etc. to the extent where Nakajima speaks of a “public commons” for the citizens of Changchun. The kind of spirituality that can be observed in the temple shares little with forms of religiosity existing in Taiwan with rites to escort or send spirits back and Nakajima interprets it as a form of “civil spirituality.” Ishii Tsuyoshi’s fieldwork was also carried out in Jilin province with a main focus on the Changchun Confucius temple already introduced in Nakajima’s work. After tracing back the contemporary plans initiated by the authorities that started in 2003 and aimed at renovating and expanding the temple and an attached “Confucius cultural park,” Ishii compares the Changchun temple with another large-scale temple located in the vicinity, namely the ancient Jilin Confucius temple that maintains much closer links with the Kong lineage. All in all, Ishii also explains that since Confucian culture was historically not intrinsic to this part of China, efforts to disseminate it, be it in the late Qing, under the Republic or during the Manchukuo era (Pu Yi worshipped at the Changchun temple) were always linked to initiatives or project of the political power. Today, the involvement of the authorities in the temple is undeniable. However, activities taking place in or around the temple also build on social forces (companies, volunteers, citizens participating) that are relatively autonomous. These activities match the spiritual expectations of people plunged into modern secularized life and urban consumer culture. In that context, Ishii demonstrates that government-led cultural reconstruction projects are not merely ideological tools but also platforms that complement and enhance civil society forces.

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It is also in Confucius temples that Anna Sun conducted her fieldwork. Her focus is not on official ceremonies but on “private rites” (offering incense, writing prayer cards, purchasing items of blessing) that are not part of any public performances (such as the celebration of Confucius’ birthday discussed in several other chapters of this volume). Her work is based on ethnographic surveys conducted in fifteen different temples throughout China and the chapter includes an overview of these temples with information about ritual life and environment that will be useful for further research. Anna Sun’s main objective in this chapter is to understand why the density of ritual activities differs highly from one temple to the other. To answer this question, she first focuses on the economic structure of the temples and demonstrates that there is a direct relation between their funding situation (degree of state involvement), incentives given to temples management to provide ritual apparatus and the density of ritual life. Building conceptually on Andrew Abbott’s idea of “linked ecologies,” she argues that the ritual density of a given temple is highly correlated to its location and relation to neighboring sacred sites and/or attractions. In so doing, she emphasizes that the vitality of ritual life in a temple is also linked to the availability of a repertoire of rituals commonly shared with Buddhist and Daoist temples of the same region. Discovering these research results, I couldn’t help thinking that the density of personal rites—apart from the special exam period when students come to the temple—seems to remain extremely modest compared to what can be observed in Buddhist, Daoist or popular religion temples. And when density is somewhat higher, the link with commodification and tourism is really strong. I believe that, in addition to personal rites—understudied so far, it is noteworthy that Sun’s research on this topic is pioneering—an overall assessment of the role of Confucius temples in today’s society also needs to take into account collective ceremonies, especially if they are organized or co-organized by minjian organizations as well as the increasingly prominent educational function of the temples (organization of guoxue lectures, presence of popular religious groups, etc.). Ritual life is nowadays vibrant as well in a classical institution often associated with Confucian culture, lineage temples or ancestral halls (citang 祠堂). Chen Bisheng’s work focuses on the revival of these temples in southern China with the case of three halls located in Shantou, Guangdong province. His presentation of the situation includes a detailed account of the history of these temples and of their fates in modern and contemporary China. He explains that the start of the new century is marked both by rehabilitation and resumption of various activities, including new forms of ancestral worship that sometimes also gathers lineage members scattered in overseas Chinese communities. Chen explores the modernization of the ancestral hall system and

Introduction

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worship and, more generally, of lineage management that nowadays involves elder’s committees.16 Ancestral halls were often in the past premises for education of lineage youths and one of the places where they could become familiar with classical Confucian texts. But this was also possible in other types of institutions, namely the sishu or private schools that could take different forms (they could for instance be opened by independent teachers or by village communities). This is precisely to the contemporary revival of these traditional schools and to the motivation of educators opening them that Dutournier and Wang Yuchen’s contribution is dedicated. After an overall introduction to the current revival of traditional Confucian education, the authors focus on the specific case of a sishu located in North-Eastern Hunan and on the itinerary of its founder. They analyze how the relevance of the project was justified and explained to local actors in order to gather enough support and how it was positioned both within the local educational field and within the wider field of alternative education. Finally, Fabrice Dulery’s chapter leads us to the new deterritorialized realm of Confucianism, namely the mass-media and the Internet. The focus of his enquiry is a highly popular TV program—Lecture Room or Baijia jiangtan 百家講壇—that started in 2001 and has considerably evolved over time. Dulery shows how this program, through its increassing promotion after 2007 of primarily Confucian classics or the presentation of exemplary figures of the past such as Zeng Guofan, has been used as a tool to raise people’s suzhi (“overall level”) and advocate a Confucianism-inspired orthopraxy. Speakers of the program (renowned “public scholars”) often consider themselves at the forefront of a civilizing mission. Their lively explanations of the classics are peppered with stories drawn from their personal experience (i.e., encounters with inmates, workers in the coalmine, rural teachers, etc.) and enhanced by the participation of various guests. At stake is the relevance of traditional culture and Confucianism to a harmonious society and a meaningful contemporary life: to some extent, the audience is invited to a real “conversion” to the values and ways of life introduced by the Classics. This program obviously echoes (and takes part to) governmental propaganda but it also bears testimony of the increasing involvement of the elites in a Confucian revival that is also grounded in popular demand. 16  This echoes the findings of other scholars in other locations. See for instance Pan Hongli’s study of the situation in Fujian province. Pan Hongli, “The Old Folks’ Associations and Lineage Revivals in Southern Fujian Province,” in Southern Fujian, Reproduction of Traditions in Post-Mao China, ed. Tan Chee-Beng (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 2006), 69–96.

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Several considerations were taken into account in order to organize the volume. Geographically, chapters introducing the situation in a similar area have been put together. This is especially the case, on the one hand, of Wang Chienchuan and Chung Yun-ying’s contributions (focusing on Yunnan) and, on the other hand, of Nakajima and Ishii’s contributions (Northeast). Thematically, a few prevailing topics have also determined the flow of contributions. A very interesting dimension of the Confucian revival that has been underscored by several authors was the way such a revival was often closely intertwined with other religious traditions and chapters dealing with these interactions have been positioned at the beginning of the book. The situation of Confucius temples was also a major focus of several of the chapters that were subsequently grouped together. As for the end of the volume, it tends to focus more on the moral and educational dimensions of the revival. This being said, the chapters often respond to each other in various ways and could be read in a completely different order, depending on the reader’s specific interests.

chapter 1

The Birth of a New Religion: The Development of the Confucian Congregation in Southeast China Chen Na, Fan Lizhu and Chen Jinguo 1 Introduction This chapter is an ethnographic report on an emerging religious group in China. It focuses on a specific case of Confucian revival at the grassroots level, the newly established Confucian Congregation (Rujia daotan 儒家道壇, Rujiao daotan 儒教道壇) in Mintong County,1 Fujian Province. The revival of Confucianism has been a general and gradual trend since the post-Mao reform started in December 1978. During the 1980s, many people resumed the practice of traditional customs.2 In academia, scholars began a cautious reevaluation of Confucian tradition.3 But the prevailing trend remained anti-Confucianism, in the vein of the dominant social ideology that prevailed since the New Culture Movement in the early 20th century.4 *  The authors want to express their special thanks to Dr. James Whitehead and volume editor Sébastien Billioud for their help with an earlier version of this chapter. This chapter is a completely revised and much enlarged version of an earlier paper titled “Confucianism as an ‘Organized Religion’: An Ethnographic Study of the Confucian Congregation,” coauthored by Na Chen and Lizhu Fan and published in Nova Religio 21 (1) (August 2017): 5–30. 1  The name of the county is fictitious. In this chapter, most proper names of places as well as names of our informants are fictitious in order to protect the identity of the informants. 2  Here “traditional customs” mainly refer to the customs of the Confucian tradition. Though both Daoism and Buddhism are important elements of traditional Chinese culture, it is generally accepted that Confucianism is the core of it. This claim, however, remains controversial and John Makeham has analyzed the importance of this kind of narrative in Confucian circles. See John Makeham, Lost Soul: “Confucianism” in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008). In this chapter, when we talk about the Chinese tradition, we are mainly talking about the Confucian tradition. 3  The Academy of Chinese Culture [中國文化書院] established in Beijing in 1984 was a leading force in the reviving study of Confucianism and traditional Chinese learning. Also see, for example, Keli Fang, “On Some Issues in the New Confucianism Research,” Tianjin Social Sciences (4) (1988), 18–24. 4  To a great extent, the documentary movie The River Elegy [Heshang 河殤] released in 1988 was the epitome of an anti-tradition trend and marked a turning point of the general trend of attitude with regard to tradition.

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Chen, Fan and Chen

The 1990s saw the rise of an increasingly positive attitude toward Confucian tradition, with more instances of its revival coming to light.5 Yet the revival of Confucianism did not emerge as a broad societal trend until the 21st century. Promoted personally by the top leaders of the party state, especially President Xi Jinping, Confucianism is now understood as an essential component of the Chinese cultural heritage.6 For the first time in over one hundred years, Confucianism seems to gain a solid positive position in China. Before turning to a detailed discussion, it is necessary to clarify the meaning of Confucianism. According to Tu Wei-ming, “Confucianism, a generic Western term that has no counterpart in Chinese, is a worldview, a social ethic, a political ideology, a scholarly tradition, and a way of life.”7 In this study we take Confucianism as a term that covers at least three concepts related to Confucian tradition in Chinese—ruxue (儒學), rujia (儒家), and rujiao (儒教). Roughly speaking, Ruxue—which literally means “Confucian studies”—is chiefly used to refer to Confucianism as a philosophy or academic field. Rujia, which literally means the “Confucian school of thought,” often refers to the sociopolitical theory that supports the traditional imperial system; this term is also used to designate “institutional Confucianism”; Rujiao—which literally means “Confucian teaching”—refers to the education and cultivation aspects of Confucian tradition and is often used to identify the religious dimension of Confucianism (or “diffused religion”8 as identified by C. K. Yang).9 For thousands of years, these three aspects were organically bound together as the dominant Chinese tradition, which in the late 16th century in the west came to be identified by the general term Confucianism. With the collapse of the 5  The 1990s saw the rapid development of academic studies about Confucianism and other traditional Chinese learning. As a key indicator, a range of academic journals were regularly published in the area of Confucian studies and traditional Chinese learning. For a list of these journals, see Note 7 on p. 61 in Makeham (2008). 6  Hu Jintao, the former Chinese President (2003–2013), initiated in 2004 the proposition to build a “harmonious socialist society” in China, thus vaguely alluding to the Confucian value of harmony. Xi Jinping who succeeded Hu as the Chinese President proposed at many public occasions to promote Chinese cultural heritage of which Confucianism is an important part. 7  Tu Weiming, “The Confucian Tradition in Chinese History,” in Heritage of China: Contemporary Perspective on Chinese Civilization, ed. Paul Ropp (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990), 112. 8  Cf. C. K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1961). 9  This is a very rough conceptualization of Ruxue, Rujia and Rujiao, which is of significance in the current study as the development of the Confucian Congregation involves all the three aspects of Confucianism. This trichotomy definition of Confucianism has been used by many scholars though there are limited variances in the details from one person to another. For an extensive discussion of the three aspects of Confucianism, see Yao Xinzhong, An Introduction to Confucianism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 16–47.

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imperial system in 1911, institutional Confucianism lost its political support, but the related values and ideas remained. Confucianism was harshly criticized as a feudalist residue and suffered “death sentences” by advocates of the New Culture Movement and later during the Communist revolution. Nevertheless, it is our contention that Confucianism remained as the core of China’s cultural tradition and has been functioning, consciously or unconsciously, positively or negatively, throughout the history of modern China. In our discussion of the revival of Confucianism, it is to this renaissance of Confucian tradition that we refer: the rediscovery—under the influence of both a positive and a critical attitude—of Confucianism as China’s cultural heritage. To this point, most studies of the revival of Confucianism in China focus on ruxue and rujia. In the research literature on rujiao, there are case studies on a range of topics. Some examine the revival of folk religion, often tracking the overlap of the Confucian tradition with Daoism.10 Other investigations trace the revival of family-clan tradition and ancestor worship; in these studies Confucianism is most often considered an expression of culture rather than religion.11 There are also studies focusing on ritualistic aspects of Confucianism, such as those practiced at the Temple of Confucius.12 10  See for example, Adam Yuet Chau, Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in Contemporary China (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2005); Gao Bingzhong, “One Museum: Ethnography of Temple Construction: On Double Names as a Political Art,” in Rural Culture and Construction of New Countryside, eds. Li, Xiaoyun, Zhao Xudong and Ye Jingzhong (Beijing: Social Science Academic Press, 2008), 182–198. Over the last a few years, there are a series of articles on Rujiao in the annual bluebook on religion published by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. For example, Wang Zhiyue, “On the Various Forms of Rujiao in Chinese Society,” in The Bluebook on Religion 2010, eds. Jin Ze and Qiu Yonghui (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2010), 139–51; Xiao Yan, “The Theory and Practice in Rujiao Research,” in The Bluebook on Religion 2011, eds. Jin Ze and Qiu Yonghui (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2011), 173–96; Hongbin Zhang, “The Status Quo of Rujiao in Chinese Society and Its Implications,” in The Bluebook on Religion 2012, eds. Jin Ze and Qiu Yonghui (Beijing: Social Sciences Academic Press, 2012), 142–60. 11  See, for example, Jing Jun, The Temple of Memories: History, Power, and Morality in a Chinese Village (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); Wang Mingming, “The Clan, State, and Society from a Village’s Perspective,” in The Order, Justice and Authority in Rural Society, eds. Wang Mingming and Stephan Feuchtwang (Beijing: China University of Political Science and Law Press, 1997), 20–127. 12  See, for example, Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval, “Lijiao: The Return of Ceremonies Honoring Confucius in Mainland China,” China Perspectives No. 4 (2009): 82–100. For an overview, see Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval, The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2015). This book covers a number of issues including education, self-cultivation, religion, rituals, politics as well as the development of redemptive societies (such as Yiguandao, Wanguo Daodehui, etc). See also Anna Sun, “The Revival of Confucian Rites in Contemporary China,” in

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Our current study is unique in its focus on the metamorphosis of Confucianism in a “Confucian Congregation.” Initially a folk religion providing shamanistic healing services, this tradition might understandably be identified as mixin (迷信) or “superstition”13 by the authorities. Early in its evolution, it merged with the Confucian tradition, thus functioning as a system of both healing and moral cultivation. Gradually this movement adopted popular Confucian classics as its scriptures and designed its own rituals of worship of Confucius. With time, this popular tradition developed into an “organized religion”14 with its own “institutional organization” and “House of Dao” (Daotan 道壇). In 2013, this Confucian Congregation achieved legal status as the “practice base” of a so-called “Research Council of Confucianism,” which was officially registered in the county government as a civil organization. Since 2010, the authors have made four field trips to investigate the situation of the Confucian Congregation. In addition, we had long interviews with Congregation leaders on two occasions away from the field site. Our research methodology has included participatory observation, personal interviews, and archival studies. In this report, we give an account of the metamorphosis of the Confucian Congregation—how this initially illegitimate group has struggled against the odds in its negotiation for survival, development and legalization— and discuss the implications for its uncertain future. The introduction is followed by six sections: After a presentation of Mintong and its historical background, we introduce the origin and the early development of the Confucian Congregation, its sets of beliefs and rituals, the way the Congregation is organized and its development strategy. A final discussion Confucianism and Spiritual Traditions in Modern China and Beyond, eds. Yang Fenggang and Joseph B. Tamney (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 309–328. Sun also published her Confucianism as a World Religion, Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013). Her focus is largely on the revival of rituals in Confucian temples, which is also the topic of her chapter in this volume. 13  The word “迷信” (“mixin”) in modern Chinese was an imported Japanese neologism at the turn of the 20th century. In late 19th century the Japanese translated the Western concept of “superstition” into “迷信.” When the term was adopted in the Chinese language, its connotation further developed and became a politically-charged label, which may refer to almost anything “backward” or “unscientific.” Therefore, the Chinese word mixin is much different from the English term “superstition.” Yet they are generally treated as “equivalents” in translation and intercultural communication. One way to solve this problem is to use the transliteration of “mixin” in specific Chinese contexts. It takes time to develop such a coinage. 14  The term “organized religion” is used here versus the “unorganized” rujiao. We believe it is a more appropriate term than the “institutionalized religion” for the description of Confucian Congregation. Of course, we are aware that there have been numerous attempts to organize and structure rujiao throughout the last one hundred years or so.

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focuses on specific features of the Congregation within the broader context of the Confucian revival and on possible implications for the long run. 2

Mintong and Its Historical Background

Mintong, a county in the northeast part of Fujian Province, is situated in southeast China, facing the Taiwan Strait and the island of Taiwan. In 2013 the population of Mintong reached 530,000. As a coastal county, Mintong has been famous for its sea products. Local tradition holds that a large percentage of the population, especially those in the coastal area, makes a living directly or indirectly from fishing and other businesses related to the sea. In fact, today there are more people in fishing villages working on farms to raise fish and grow kelp than fishing on the high sea. Geographically Mintong area is high in the west inland area with a range of mountains which peaks at more than 1,000 meters; the landscape descends eastward to the sea level within a span of 60 kilometers. On the whole, Mintong’s mountainous terrain makes transportation difficult. Traditionally, boating, either in the rivers or by sea along the coast, was the major means of transportation. Over the last twenty years or so the local transportation system has drastically improved, due to the recent development of highway networks and high-speed railways. Although it remains a relatively remote and isolated area, Mintong has a long history as an administrative district. According to the local County Gazetteer, Mintong was first established as a county in the third year of the Taikang Era of the Jin Dynasty (晉太康三年, 282 CE). The county also has a long history of religious development, especially regarding traditional Chinese religions. A local legend suggests that the famous Daoist master Ge Hong (葛洪, 284–364 CE) once practiced alchemy in the local mountains, initiating the local tradition of Daoism in the fourth century. By the 1990s, as recorded in the Gazetteer, there were twenty-two professional Daoist priests of the Quanzhen Daoist School (全真道教). As early as the Jianyuan years of the Southern Qi Dynasty (南齊 建元年間, 480–482 CE), Buddhism spread in the Mintong area. In the 1990s, there were 109 Buddhist temples with 161 ordained monks and nuns. Since the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127), Mazu (媽祖) worship has been popular in Mintong. Today Mintong is proud to be the seat of the second largest Mazu temple in Fujian Province, as well as of more than 30 other Mazu temples. In addition to the officially recorded religions, Mintong has a rich tradition of folk religions and other local belief systems. As in most of China, the rujiao aspect of Confucianism has been the most widely spread popular belief system

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(described by C. K. Yang as “diffused religion”15) in everyday life among the people in grassroots level communities. The “Three in One” Religion (sanyijiao 三一教), a belief system based on the “three teachings” of Confucianism, Daoism and Buddhism, had earlier been an important part of local religious tradition.16 Today the reconstruction of ancestral halls and recompilation of the lineage books are very common in this area as in other areas of southern China (see the chapter by Chen Bisheng in this volume). Local deities of different origins are worshipped regularly by people and on the specified dates in their religious calendar. In many rural communities, the belief in miracle workers or spirit mediums (wushi shenhan zhi lei 巫師神漢之類) is an institutionalized tradition, allowing for smooth transfer of mysterious spiritual power between generations, through long established rituals and ceremonies. One of the major informants in our study told us a story about his own brother, who competed with another person for the position as the local spirit medium through mysterious rituals in late 1990s. His brother finally won and became an honored spirit medium providing “professional service” in the community.17 Despite of decades of efforts by the authorities to wipe out “superstition,” the majority of the local people resort to deities and supernatural power, as a normal practice, to solve a wide range of personal problems—from the cure of disease to avoidance of a threatening event. As a matter of fact, Mintong is a place where religious symbols and codes are frequently observed both in the county seat and in the countryside. Walking through the streets, especially in side streets, one may often see small shrines, fengshui (風水) symbols or religious tablets set up at the street corner or by the roadside. When one enters a village, the temple of the local land god and shrines for other deities are also an inseparable part of the landscape. Compared with many other areas in China, Mintong appears to possess an unusually fertile soil for religion. Mr. Lu, a self-made religious ritual expert, told 15  C. K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1961). It is true that the popular belief system at the grassroots level is almost always a mixture of the “three teachings,” but the core of it is generally Confucian. 16  According to our informants, the “Three in One” religion has never been really wiped out in Mintong area since the government crackdown in the 1950s, though at a relatively small scale. 17  The informant’s brother is a self-made spirit medium. In Mintong, people claim “medium capacity” either through apprenticeship or self-inspiration. This is different from the report by Jean DeBernardi where “[one] foundation that ensures the conventionality of spirit mediumship is its transmission within small family groups.” See Jean DeBernardi, The Way That Lives in the Heart: Chinese Popular Religion and Spirit Mediums in Penang, Malaysia (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 167–8.

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us, “People in this area18 are particularly religious. If you do not have a religion, you have to find one. One has to believe in one thing or another. Otherwise one would feel uneasy. That is the way of life.” This seems to go against the general trend in China, where most people would claim no religious affiliation at all.19 The post-Mao reform has brought about a substantial “big leap forward” in the local economy and the recent improvement of transportation has greatly shortened the distance between Mintong and the rest of the country. Yet, in terms of social ideology and way of thinking, the gap remains wide between Mintong and more developed regions where marketization and commercialization have drastically undermined the traditional beliefs and values. When we first visited Mintong in 2010, we experienced some “culture shock.” Arriving at the county seat of Mintong after six hours of high-speed train from Shanghai, we experienced the slowed rhythm almost immediately. Looking down from the hotel window, we saw two lines of colored advertisement banners fixed on the lampposts along the streets, on which were the words “The Xianghe Pharmacist’s Provides Pharmaceutical Products with Conscience.” Then, on the wall in a supermarket at the street corner, we read a poster warning people not to steal—“Stealing means self-destruction and crime, which equals demoralization. For your future and family please reserve your moral integrity.”20 In both cases, either to advertise oneself or to warn others, the authors directly resort to the Confucian tradition—to do business with conscience, self-cultivation, family values and moral integrity. Coming from Shanghai, we did not expect to find such public announcements—resorting to conscience and moral integrity for legal issues—surviving as a normal practice ten years into the 21st century. Based on this first impression we could not draw any conclusion at that time. But upon further reflection, we recognize this early experience contributed to our understanding of the sociocultural environment in this county seat city and in the Confucian Congregation. 18  What Mr. Lu means by “this area” is an area that covers both northern Fujian and southern Zhejiang Provinces. Mr. Lu was a self-made “rural intellectual” from southern Zhejiang and had been invited over to Mintong to help with the development of Confucian Congregation. 19  According to “Global Religious Landscape: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Major Religious Groups as of 2010” by Pew Forum December 2012, China has 52.2% unaffiliated population, http://www.pewforum.org/2012/12/18/global-religious -landscape-exec/, accessed on Oct. 24, 2014. Of course, results always depend on how the “religious affiliation” is defined and how the survey is designed. Therefore, other surveys show much higher rates of unaffiliated population in China. 20  The poster is in both Chinese and English languages. The English quoted here is directly from the poster with slight editing.

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The Origin and Early Development of the Confucian Congregation

At the time of our first visit to Mintong in 2010, the Confucian Congregation had already developed into a systematically organized religious group, with its headquarters in the county seat of Mintong city and six other branches in nearby townships and villages. The head of the Congregation, Mr. Li Yusheng (李玉生) known as Master Li, was not only the leading organizer of the group; he was worshipped by the members as a deity with supernatural power. His composed and relaxed manner impressed people, who credited him to be an enlightened person with great confidence. After we had earned his confidence, Master Li accepted to answer our questions about the Congregation’s history and its plan for future development. It became clear to us that Master Li had come a long way to reach his current status as a mature leader with charismatic personality. Tracing the origin of the Confucian Congregation takes us back to 1976, when the Cultural Revolution was moving toward its end and China was turning a new page in her history. In this year a 45-year-old man named Hai, living in the neighboring Nante County, experienced a serious mental disturbance. Suffering from what the local people believed to be a kind of “bewitched illness,” Mr. Hai initially could find no cure. Later in the year, however, he met a folk healer named Tao. Mr. Tao observed that Hai was not an ordinary person but a possessed man with supernatural potential. Mr. Tao conferred on him a divine title as “True Man of Linshanshui” (“林山水真君”). Soon afterward, Hai recovered and was even able to provide service to treat others who were suffering from illness. Then, as a man with supernatural power, “Master Linshanshui” started to recruit apprentices. Since the late 1970s, Mr. Hai has been preaching and practicing the Way or the Dao (道) of “Xindejiao” (心德教, the “Teaching of Heart and Morality” or the “Religion of Heart and Morality”), which is supposed to have been personally founded by the God Shennong (Shennong shangdi 神農上帝).21 The original teaching of the Xindejiao is based on Confucian values and ideas. The general principle of “Heart and Morality,” which emphasizes the ethics of parents-children relationship, aims to teach and cultivate the masses. People would approach Mr. Hai to receive the teachings. A belief prevailed 21  Shennong [神農 or 神農上帝] is a legendary figure in prehistoric China. Two major inventions are attributed to him: agriculture and medicine. Therefore, Shennong has been worshipped as the god in charge of agriculture and medicine, two basic aspects in human life. The Dao or Xindejiao [心德教] is a mixture of Confucian moral cultivation and supernatural healing.

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that those who had suffered from miseries would recover by acting according to the teachings. Hai himself was illiterate; his oral preaching was considered as a “Heavenly Book without Written Words” (wuzi tianshu 無字天書), which emerged through inspiration. Since late 1970s this “Xindejiao” has spread to more than ten counties and cities, guided by Master True Man of Linshanshui and his followers. Some of the followers later became independent practitioners themselves, starting to take their own followers. Among these followers in a later generation was a man named Li Yusheng (李玉生), who subsequently became the founder of the Confucian Congregation. Li Yusheng was born in 1965 in a peasant family in Gelingcun Village of Mintong County. He received junior middle school education in the countryside. At the age of 26, Li moved to the Mintong county seat in order to look for better life opportunities. For a while he drove a three-wheeled pedicab to make a living. But this work exhausted him, leaving him in serious ill health at the age of 31. After many medical interventions unable to cure him, Li returned to his home village where he was treated by Master Han, a disciple of Master True Man of Linshanshui. Over the course of five months, Li experienced miraculous healing and eventually recovered totally. During this same period, a woman named Wan Aiping (萬愛平), who suffered from severe mental and physical problems, also came to Master Han for treatment. But she left in less than a month without being cured. After being cured by Master Han, Mr. Li became his disciple and learned how to practice the Teaching of Heart and Morality. Soon, he felt that he was called to preach this teaching. In 1998, he rented a house in the Westmont Village in the suburbs of Mintong. There he made a pledge to God in the name of all his family members (eight people) and started his own business to provide teaching and healing as a master of the Teaching of Heart and Morality. By this time Ms. Wan Aiping’s condition had worsened. She suffered from three serious conditions—paralysis, epilepsy, and metrocarcinoma—and had made several suicide attempts. In a desperate move, her family carried her to Master Li for treatment, soon after the Chinese New Year. After being treated by Master Li for 24 days, she was able to make her first step out of bed. In seven months, she was cured from all conditions. On the day that she felt fully recovered, Ms. Wan made seven vows to the Gods—the God Shennong, the God and Goddess of the Land, and other deities, immortals and Buddha—pledging to give up her family life and to follow Master Li wholeheartedly in the service of the Dao.22 22  Ms. Wan made very serious vows to put the Dao in the priority of her life; in her seventh vow, she said, “If I leave Master (Li), I would not die a good death” and “so far as my life lasts, I will be dedicated to the Dao.”

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Thus, Ms. Wan became Master Li’s first follower. A few months later in October, Ms. Wan suddenly said to herself, “I am Pan Yu (潘雨). I am Lan Xiang (嵐香).”23 This was considered a divine omen and she took “Pan Yu” and “Lan Xiang” as her sacred titles. Meanwhile she also became empowered with supernatural capacity—unusually energetic and eloquent. Master Li’s group continued to grow, expanding over a year into a group of 13 followers. But a series of misfortunes followed. First, a fire destroyed Li’s House of Dao and put him in debt of over 10,000 Yuan. Then, in 1999, Mr. Li fell seriously ill to the point where he even spit blood. Subsequently, he was arrested by the police, first in the year 2000 and then in 2002.24 A Chinese saying suggests that “when the tree falls all monkeys on it will scatter (shudao husunsan 樹倒猢猻散).” And in fact, experiencing the deteriorating situation, one after another his followers left Mr. Li. In the end, only Pan Yu remained. In the face of such a misfortune, Pan Yu and Master Li formed a close relationship dedicated to the further development of the Dao. In 2003 Pan Yu helped to raise 40,000 Yuan, which provided funds to purchase a house in the Mintong county seat. This became the first establishment, and later the headquarters of the forthcoming Confucian Congregation. At the same time, Master Li started to refocus the mission of promoting the Dao. When he was a follower of Master Han, Li learned about the doctrines of “Three Principles and Eight Points”25 and “The Twelve Rules to Observe the Teaching of Heart and Morality.”26 These commandment-like statements for moral discipline and self-cultivation were first established and passed down by Master True Man of Linshanshui. Li had adopted these doctrines in his earlier practice. Later, he added some popular Confucian classics, including the 23  Like other proper names in this article, both Pan Yu 潘雨 and Lan Xiang 嵐香 are pseudonyms. We tried to retain their original meanings of the real names when we made up the pseudonyms. The basic meaning of Pan Yu is raining and water, which would quench one’s thirstiness, and that of Lan Xiang is fragrance of mountain mist, which sounds feminine and somewhat mystic. 24  The first time, Li was arrested on the accusation of maltreatment of a dying girl who suffered from leukemia. But later Li was cleared of the accusation based on forensic examination. The second time, Li was arrested by mistake as a leader of the illegal cult of Falungong. 25  The “Three Principles and Eight Points” is a set of commandment-like rules for behavior. On the whole they reflect Confucian ethics and moral principles but some of them specifically target contemporary social issues, e.g. the last one of the Eight Point goes like this: [if you work as an official] you shall not hoodwink those above and bully those below, and you shall not false official documents [瞒上欺下，篡改文件]. 26  The Twelve Rules are detailed codes for behavior in personal, family and social life. They promote major Confucian values such as filial piety and family harmony, and also ban cursing, stealing, using violence, or practicing sectarianism within the group, etc.

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Three-Character Classic (Sanzijing 三字經), The Rules of the Disciple (Dizigui 弟子規), and The Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing 孝經). In addition, the local folk scripture The Classic of the Saints (Shengrenjing 聖人經) was also added to the list.27 This new assemblage of texts, which was much more directly linked to the Confucian tradition than before, laid a foundation for the development of the Confucian Congregation. Compared with the earlier practice of the Dao, which emphasized both supernatural healing power and ethical cultivation, the new practice based on the new literature package seemed to pay more attention to self-cultivation and Confucian values as a whole though the supernatural healing power nevertheless remained an inseparable part of the practice of the Dao in the Confucian Congregation. Another important person in the organization and development of the Confucian Congregation was Mr. Chang Shibiao. In 2004, Mr. Chang’s wife suffered from severe back pain. They went for medical treatment in the local hospital but the symptom did not seem to improve. One day, on the way back from the hospital, they met a relative who suggested that they try the Confucian Congregation. They went to the Congregation for treatment and in about a month Chang’s wife totally recovered. The efficaciousness of the treatment gave Mr. Chang enough reason to be interested in the Confucian Congregation. Consequently, he became an active member working together with Master Li and Pan Yu. Mr. Chang and his family used to go to the local Christian church as some locals did in the area since the 1990s. After he joined the Congregation, he stopped in spite of the invitation of some of his Christian friends. In the Confucian Congregation, Mr. Chang was considered a well-educated person as he had received a high school diploma. After graduation, he returned to his home village and for quite a few years, he was the Secretary of the Communist Party Branch at the village. As an experienced cadre in the local administration, Mr. Chang was familiar with the bureaucratic system and knew well how to deal with the government officials and break the red tape. Mr. Chang was very much attracted by the religious piety of the Confucian Congregation and he sincerely believed that both Master Li and Pan Yu were Deities (shenming 神明) endowed with supernatural power or at least empowered by some divine being.

27   The Classic of the Saints [Shengrenjing 聖人經] is a short popular text with a mixture of Confucian and Daoist ideas and less than 400 Chinese characters. It has been popular in many places in Fujian Province. See Zheng Lisheng, Zheng Lisheng wenshi conggao [Essays of Zheng Lisheng] (Fuzhou: Haifeng Publishing House, 2009), 72–73.

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“If they had not been Deities, how could they know so much and how could they talk so eloquently?” Mr. Chang asked us on several occasions. He also emphasized that “they did not have much education.” Through these developments a “triumvirate” was formed and became the core leadership of the Confucian Congregation. Master Li is a man with charismatic personality. He looks calm and well composed. With a controlled and unhurried manner, he talks with persuasive eloquence, without having to pause often to search for words or expressions. He does not pretend to be sophisticated, thus his simple style gives people an impression of sincerity and trustfulness. Among the three, Li appears to be more reserved; he does not often initiate discussion with others. When asked, he claims to be inspired by divine power and to act according to the will of the divine beyond his own control. He does not hesitate to express his deep belief in the gods and the supernatural, and to state his understanding of the Dao. Pan Yu is a woman of medium height in her early forties. She is in good physical condition and does not look her age. The first impression of Pan Yu is her shining eyes and energetic presence. There is a sharp contrast between Master Li, whose general manner is relaxed but dignified, and Pan Yu, whose inner energy is visible. At times she may burst into laughter and when that happens she becomes visibly shy—at least while in the presence of outsiders. She speaks more often than the other two at Congregation gatherings and tends to express herself emotionally and passionately. There is no doubt that she is an experienced organizer. It is Pan Yu who initiates and leads the group chanting sessions of popular Confucian classics, the major ritual of the Congregation. She attributes her energy and passion to the divine being. “I used to be a shy person,” she would say. And she is ready to speak about the tremendous changes the Dao has brought for her. Compared with the two other members of the triumvirate, Mr. Chang is a this-worldly person. In fact, he never claims to possess any supernatural capacity. He is often our main informant about the development of the Congregation. This is perhaps because he is more experienced in communicating with people from other institutions, whether governmental or academic. But when talking about the details of the Dao and the Congregation, Chang would often turn unconsciously toward Master Li, as if to seek for his opinion or consent. Meanwhile Li himself would often sit still, assuming the role of a good listener. For us as observers, this confirmed the authoritative status of Master Li in the Congregation. But in handling external affairs, especially when dealing with local officials and government bureaucracy, Chang is definitely a competent expert. His knowledge of the social structure and his pious belief in the Dao make him a valuable diplomat for the Congregation.

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In learning about the development of the Congregation, we were told that it was the will of the divine and their own yuanfen (緣分)28 that led the members of the triumvirate to meet each other and form such a competent team. It constitutes a close-knit triad based both on religious devotion and complementary personalities. Over the last ten years, this triumvirate managed to develop and transform the Confucian Congregation from its early reputation as a sorcerer group composed of a master preacher and some apprentices into a systematically organized religious organization. 4

Beliefs and Rituals at the Confucian Congregation

Today’s Confucian Congregation has benefitted from more than ten years of development. When we first visited the Dadao Branch of Confucian Congregation in the fall of 2010, we entered the building through a front gate, on top of which was a signboard with the words rujia daotan 儒家道壇 (“Confucian Congregation”29). But once inside the building, there was evidence that the title of “Confucian Congregation” was only about two years old. On one of the award banners hanging on the wall were the following words: Awarded to Brothers and Sisters of the Dadao Shennong Temple For Outstanding Performance in the Competition of Chanting The Rules of the Disciple The Mintong County Headquarters Spring of 2008

28  The Chinese term “緣分” (yuanfen or yuan fen) can be roughly understood as chance or fateful coincidences. The notion of yuanfen is most directly rooted in the Buddhist faith in karma; in a karmic view of reality there are no pure coincidences. The term is often used as a rough equivalent to the English phrase “luck” with an emphasis on certain potential relationship. Chinese are likely to sdescribe any happy coincidence—the chance meeting, for example, of a good friend at a foreign airport—as yuanfen. There is, of course, also “bad yuanfen”—what in English one might name “an unlucky break.” For a detailed discussion of yuanfen, see Fan Lizhu, James Whitehead and Evelyn Whitehead, “Fate and Fortune: Popular Religion and Moral Capital in Shenzhen,” Journal of Chinese Religion 32 (February 2005): 83–100. 29  Here the “Confucian Congregation” stands for the Chinese name rujia daotan 儒家道 壇, that is, the “Rujia House of Dao.” Later the Chinese name changed to rujiao daotan 儒教道壇, that is, the “Rujiao House of Dao” though the English remains “Confucian Congregation.”

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So, at least as late as in the spring of 2008, the members of the Dadao Branch were still addressed as “Brothers and Sisters of the Dadao Shennong Temple” (Dadao shennong guan zhong xiongdi jiemei 大島神農觀衆兄弟姐妹). Here the Chinese word for “Temple” is “觀,” which usually stands for a Daoist temple. In academic settings many researchers tend to make clear distinction between beliefs of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. But in the tradition of China’s folk religion, these three traditions are often interwoven, along with beliefs in certain local gods and deified beings. This inclusive nature of syncretism is the basic, if not the universal, characteristic of the folk religions among ethnic Han people. The Dadao Shennong Temple is not an exception. While Shennong is the major god of the temple, many other gods and deities are also worshipped. Even after the group has been renamed the Confucian Congregation— which implies that primacy is now ascribed to Confucius—the figure of Shennong remains important, both for his historical importance for the development of the group and as a major god for worship in the Congregation. In fact, the organizational development of the group includes many gods. When the group changed from the Teaching of Heart and Morality to the Shennong Temple, it carried the beliefs and doctrines from the former to the latter; and when it further evolved into the Confucian Congregation, it incorporated the old beliefs and rituals into the new establishment. As a result, a long list of gods and deities exists, whose birthdays are officially observed in the Confucian Congregation. table 1.1

Gods and deities whose birthdays are celebrated in the Confucian Congregation

Sacred title (Chinese)

Sacred title (English)

Notes

神農上帝 太上老君

Shennong God The Supreme God of Daoism

觀世音菩薩

Arya Avalokiteshvara

韓元帥 南山老君 潘雨 嵐香 至聖先師

Marshal Han Lord of Southern Mountain Pan Yu Lan Xiang The Greatest Sage and Teacher

a folk religion god i.e. Laozi, legendary founder of Daoism a.k.a. The Mercy Bodhisattva or Guanyin a Daoist deity i.e. Master Li i.e. Wan Aiping i.e. Wan Aiping i.e. Confucius

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Table 1.1 provides a very good example of such a syncretism: The list includes sacred figures of Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism, as well as those of folk religion and deified figures of the Congregation. Members treat them all as divine beings with supernatural power. They pay tribute to these deities and celebrate them on particular days and occasions, such as certain festivals and the birthday of a particular deity. They pray to them for blessings and protections. This syncretism also translates into an accumulation of scriptures and texts originating from various sources and adopted by the Confucian Congregation. All the listed pieces in Table 1.2 are printed in large characters and posted on the walls in the main hall of the House of Dao or other Congregation buildings. Although the listed literature is highly syncretistic, it is not simply borrowed from the “three teachings”—Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism—as is the case in the list of gods and deities in Table 1.1. Rather, it consists mainly of pieces drawn from popular Confucian classics, in addition to short texts and table 1.2

Major literature of the Confucian Congregation

Title (Chinese)

Title (English)

Notes

《三從八德》

Three Principles and Eight Moral Issues Twelve Points for Observing the Teaching of Heart and Morality The Rules of the Disciple The Three-Character Classic The Classic of Filial Piety The Classic of the Saints Eight Glories and Eight Shames

Originally set up by Master Hai Originally set up by Master Hai

《遵守心德十二條例》

《弟子規》 《三字經》 《孝經》 《聖人經》 《八榮八恥》

《修心八法》

Eight Points for Self Cultivation

Popular Confucian literature Popular Confucian literature Popular Confucian literature Folk religion literature Principles of socialist values put forward by the governmenta Folk mottos for self-cultivation

a “The Eight Glories and Eight Shames” first appeared in a 2006 speech by Hu Jintao, the top leader of China from 2003 to 2013. It was then set up by the government as the principle for moral development in the framework of socialist cultural construction.

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sets of maxims produced by the masters of the group or drawn from folk tradition and government documents.30 When asked, the Congregation leaders would claim that the Daoist classic Daodejing (道德經) by Laozi is also part of their religious literature. However, Daodejing is not printed and posted on any of the walls in the Congregation buildings; nor are any Buddhist sutras posted on the walls. On the whole the general orientation of the listed literature is Confucian, with an emphasis on Confucian ethics and values. This is also the basic theme of preaching in the Congregation—how to honor the Confucian values, how to be a decent person through self-cultivation and selfdiscipline, etc. The items in this literature package are presented in relatively simple style. Some of them, such as Three Principles and Eight Moral Issues, and Twelve Points for Observing the Teaching of Heart and Morality are short texts of less than twenty lines. Some others, such as The Three-Character Classic and The Rules of the Disciple are traditional Confucian literature of about three or four printed pages each. But these popular Confucian classics are written in such a way that they are rhymed and very musical, easy to chant and easy to memorize. Traditionally they were used as reading materials for beginners to develop literacy and learn about Confucian core values. Now in the Confucian Congregation, members are required to learn these popular classics off by heart. In fact, group chanting of these classics (as well as other listed literature on the walls), either in the form of reciting or singing, is a very important, if not the most important, collective ritual in the Congregation. When a group of about thirty people dressed up in uniforms are chanting the classics in chorus, it is impressively musical and highly ritualistic. Such collective chanting rituals, very much like the practice in Buddhist temples, as well as other collective activities distinguish Confucian Congregation from many other traditional folk religion gatherings. Other folk religions are typically localized within one village or a few neighboring villages. Visits to folk religion temples tend to be individual and instrumental. In contrast, the Confucian Congregation operates branches in different villages and even in different counties. It forms a highly organized religious group with a much wider network. The collective activities, including the common divinity and shared literature, unified dress code for collective activities, chanting in chorus, and interactions between branches, all contribute to the formation of a common identity. Such an identity emphasizes collective worship and moral cultivation, and it provides a strong sense of belonging and promotes solidarity 30  Later, in our analysis of the development strategy of the Congregation, we will discuss the significance of including government slogans in the literature.

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among the members. Although many Congregation members may not fully understand the whole meaning of these classics, group chanting nevertheless generates a feeling of unity and of a shared access to some sort of mysterious power. We were told by some members that “such collective chanting made them [makes me] more relaxed and also more energetic.” As the Congregation leaders admit, they do try to learn from other religious groups, including local Christian churches, in organizational development, rituals and other activities. In a way, then, they are engaged in an enterprise of revival and reinvention of fragments of the Chinese religious tradition. In Chinese history, there were some religious groups or “redemptive societies” that developed cross-regional networks and managed to assert strong collective identity (see discussion on this topic in the introduction). Yiguan Dao (一貫道, The Way of Pervading Unity) is an example of these groups. But they have been largely suppressed by the Communist authorities in mainland China. On the other hand, the Confucian Congregation is also a sacred space for traditional individual rituals. The Huishan Branch provides a good example. The House of Dao in Huishan, that is, the building of the Confucian Congregation in Huishan, is a three-storied building. The first floor provides a big hall, in which there is a shrine containing a life-sized statue of Confucius sitting on a chair accompanied by two disciples standing next to him on each side. This is where the Congregation meetings and rituals like collective chanting take place. On the second floor are a meeting room, an office and a storeroom. On the third floor there are two sections. The northern section is roofed and functions as a temple where the icons of the listed gods and deities plus some other immortals are situated on a platform facing south toward the space for worship. For Master Li and Pan Yu there are no statues, but their respective sacred titles and birth times are inscribed on two tablets. For example, on the tablet of Master Li is written “Lord of Southern Mountain,” “The Second Date of the Second Month” and “Sacred Birthday.” The southern section of the third floor, outside the door of the temple, is a railed open space that allows scores of people to gather for ceremony. People with specific personal issues would visit the third-floor temple, behaving just as people would in any other folk religion temple—burning incense sticks, kneeling down to the gods and deities to pray for blessings, etc. In addition, people often come to Master Li (or Pan Yu) for personal services. The most frequent cases are those who suffer from miseries either emotionally, mentally or physically. Supplicants include both members and non-members of the Congregation. As it is the case for many other religious groups in history or even today, providing healing services to cure patients or relieve miseries is an important asset for the development of the Congregation. A complicated

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figure 1.1 The third floor of the Confucian Congregation in Huishan © Chen Na

ritual process is often involved. First, Master Li checks with the person to be treated some personal information about his/her birth time, lineage, and personal sufferings. Then, after calling upon the Gods for help, Master Li operates as the Lord of Southern Mountain. Healing takes place through the interaction between the Lord of Southern Mountain and the treated person. The role of Master Li is to make certain mysterious revelations, raise moral challenges, and preach Confucian moral teachings. As for the person being treated, he/ she would undertake self-examination of his/her moral behavior and confess any wrong doings. To some extent, this interaction echoes a session of psychoanalysis or psychiatric treatment. Master Li acknowledges that many who come for help are suffering from emotional and mental disorder. But he emphasizes the importance of supernatural power and Confucian ethics in his treatment. Like Master Li, Ms. Wan (Pan Yu) also receives clients and provides counseling and healing services. But there is one thing particular with Pan Yu. From time to time, when she enters into a state of trance she becomes inspired and starts to articulate words in versed lines, similar to those found in shanshu (善書 morality books) teaching Confucian morality. Sometimes, she declaims long verses that are so good that they are copied on the paper and put on the wall in the House of Dao. The fact that Pan Yu is a charismatic female healer provides an alternative for the client who can choose between a male and female

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healer. This contributes immensely to the development of the Confucian Congregation as the majority of the members are female. Apart from personal counseling sessions, there are two more rituals in the treatment. One is magic drawing (or talisman drawing). Master Li completes a drawing on a piece of paper that can either be kept or burned, put in a cup of water and drunk by the client. In some cases, Master Li simply blesses the water without providing any visible talisman and the client drinks it. This practice can be traced to Daoism or other spirit mediumship traditions. Another ritual is a physical exercise that seems to be a kind of Qigong. The client is asked to sit straight on a chair and repeat two simple movements in turn—using his/ her own palms to clap on the lap and raising the feet to step on the floor. The mechanism for this physical exercise is supposed to promote and regulate the circulation of qi (vital energy). It is believed that the regular and balanced circulation of the qi is fundamental for a healthy body. Any experienced misery is understood to be accompanied with irregularity of qi. In this sense, this physical ritual can be considered as a kind of Qigong exercise. In many ways, the beliefs and rituals of Confucian Congregation are similar to those of other traditional folk religions. What distinguishes the Confucian Congregation from others is its emphasis on the Dao of Confucianism and its collective rituals; therefore, the Congregation is more like a group fostering moral cultivation than a group practicing instrumental worship. In fact, when the Congregation is introduced to visitors or researchers like us, local informants always try to highlight its Confucian dimension and downplay its sets of mysterious practices that could remind of traditional folk religion. The focus on Confucianism is an important part of the Congregation’s development strategy, which we will discuss later in this chapter. 5

The Confucian Congregation as an Organization

For all religious organizations based on esoteric beliefs, the initial development depends on the claimed supernatural power of a charismatic personality. In the case of the Confucian Congregation, this personality is Master Li. It is Li’s charisma, his eloquence, and the miracles he performed that attracted the earliest believers and followers. But the success of the Confucian Congregation and its expansion into a systematically organized group with hundreds of followers31 is due to the team effort of the triumvirate—Master Li, Pan Yu and 31  Mr. Chang told us that there are about 150 members in each branch of Confucian Congregation. Of the seven branches, two are not located in the rural area. One is the

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Mr. Chang. By 2013, the Confucian Congregation had not only established seven different branches but was also officially registered as a legally recognized civil organization: Mintong County Research Council for the Practice of Confucianism (Mintong xian ruxue shijian yanjiuhui 民同縣儒學實踐研究會). We will offer here an overview of the establishment of the Huishan branch, as an example of the organizational growth of the Confucian Congregation. November 3, 2010 was an unusual day in the Huishan Village of Mintong County. A recently constructed three-storied house was colorfully decorated and streamers and banners were hung to reach the ground from the third floor railing. In front of the house, to the left of the porch, a band of six musicians played loudly on Chinese suona horns (嗩呐) and other instruments; to the right of the porch a makeshift stage had been set up for this special occasion. The road leading from the entrance of the village to the new building was decorated with banners and signboards. Many people, including teenagers from the local school, lined along both sides of the road to welcome guests coming from different places. High above the road banners were fixed on lampposts and stretched across the road, with messages welcoming the VIP guests. This celebration marked a special event in this small community of Huishan village—the opening ceremony for the House of Dao of the Huishan Branch of the Confucian Congregation. The significance of the event was reflected in the smiling faces of the proud Congregation members, who had been expecting a dedicated House of Dao in their own village for years. Our drive from the county seat of Mintong to the consecration ceremony took about one and a half hours on a narrow country road. Several times we had to stop and move our car closer to the edge of the road so that the vehicle from the other direction could slowly pass by. It was a bit scary because next to the edge of the narrow road was a steep fall into the sea. Finally, we arrived at Huishan, a small village situated on a peninsula with little access to the surrounding territory. When we asked why such an inconvenient location had been selected for the development of the Confucian Congregation, we were told that although this setting of an out-of-the-way place had presented challenges, the leaders of the Confucian Congregation had interpreted these challenges as reflections of divine will. As we learned more about the village, we came to understand better the extent of the challenge. Huishan Village is a traditional fishing community with a population of seven hundred people. headquarters in the downtown of Mintong and the other in the downtown of the neighboring county seat, which are relatively small congregations. Therefore, a reasonable guess is that the total of the Confucian Congregation members ranges from eight to nine hundred.

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figure 1.2 Lining up to welcome guests for the opening ceremony of the House of Dao of the Huishan branch of the Confucian Congregation. © Chen Na

And while increasingly less people are directly engaged in fishing, the overwhelming majority of the villagers still make their living from activities related to the sea, such as sea-farming and transportation to markets. Perhaps due to the uncertainties and risks of making a living on the sea, religion has been an important and inseparable part of the community life. On the main road through the village stands a small temple housing the village Earth God and Goddess. Fresh ashes from the offering of incense sticks and imitation paper money32 can be seen in and out of a burner in front of the temple. About one hundred meters from the beach is the village temple of the Sea God; this facility had been shut down during the Cultural Revolution and reopened in the 1980s. In the crowded area of the main street, a Christian church seems to have been squeezed in between the houses. Like many villages in Mintong, folk healing or shamanism has long been embedded in the local tradition. These activities regained popularity soon after the reform started. In terms of religious development, Huishan village seems to be too crowded a place to need or welcome new comers. But the leaders of the Confucian Congregation did not agree. In their opinion, many local rituals are mere mixin (superstitions). Therefore, 32  The “imitation paper money” is the paper sometimes imitating bank notes that is burned as an offering to the dead.

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they considered that since the Confucian Congregation represents the Right/ Genuine Dao (正道), it should guide local people to pursue the correct path of life. It was with such a sense of mission that the Confucian Congregation moved to Huishan. In 2005 a member of the local Su family was cured by Master Li. The Su family was very grateful and asked Master Li to help invite (literally in Chinese “請” as a respectful term rather than “買,” that is, to “buy”) a statue of Guanyin to their house. Guanyin (觀音) is a famous Buddhist bodhisattva commonly known as the Goddess of Mercy. She has been very popular among the Chinese, either Buddhist or non-Buddhist, and especially in east and southeast China. Before long, report of the efficaciousness of this Guanyin presence and of the supernatural power of Master Li spread among the villagers. Soon they would come to Su’s house to pay a tribute to Guanyin; many would also ask for help from Master Li when facing illness or other troubles. At first Master Li would travel to the village on call. On the spot, he would not only deliver his service but also preach the Dao of Confucianism. As many people, ill or not, came to listen to Master Li, the house of the Su family soon became a gathering place. The popular Confucian classics were distributed and people were encouraged to learn them by heart. Those who were illiterate or semi-illiterate were taught the classics word by word. And most of them were able to learn quickly, memorizing important texts within months if not weeks. It is likely that some of the villagers could not fully understand what they had learned to chant. But they nevertheless found the learning process and the sense of togetherness to be satisfying. When a group of people chanted together, the century-old lines echoing around the house would create an impressive atmosphere, musical and ritualistic. Such a collective activity had not been experienced in this community for years, that is, since the dismantlement of the people’s commune in the early 1980s. Although Mr. Li is not a well-educated person, yet his preaching appeals greatly to the members of this local community. Li shares with them a very similar sociocultural background. He knows well the kind of life they live and the kind of problems they face. He preaches about very traditional Confucian topics, such as how to be a decent person through self-cultivation and how to handle relations in the family and with other members of the community. His main teachings focus about how to encourage kindness (quanshan 勸善), including filial piety (xiaodao 孝道), tolerance and yielding (renrang 忍讓) and humbleness (qiangong 謙恭). These traditional Confucian values are often received as fresh ideas by the listeners, many of whom had been exposed during their childhood and youth to anti-traditional Maoism. With all the changes they have experienced over the last thirty years, villagers in

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a remote rural community like Huishan may find that these values still provide an effective approach to establish harmonious relations both at home and in the neighborhood community. The majority of the people in the audience were married female villagers. Most male villagers were busily engaged in their work away from home. Therefore, women were instrumental in introducing their husbands to the Congregation’s activities and its sets of Confucian texts and teachings. In promoting the development of the Congregation, Pan Yu proved to be an excellent organizer whose collaboration with female villagers was very efficient. Quite often, she would use her own personal story of misery and enlightenment to illustrate the reality of divine power. Her easy-toget-along personality and her passionate eloquence made her a popular and persuasive figure in the community. Although the government has greatly loosened its social control since the post-Mao reform, gathering in any non-officially authorized assembly remains highly sensitive. The Confucian Congregation was neither a legally recognized religious group nor a registered civil organization. However, it regularly assembles scores of people for activities of preaching and chanting. It is therefore natural that the local authorities—both the villagers committee and the police substation—would become concerned. In fact, the police had the authority to give warning to Mr. Chang and even to formally ban the assembly. These delicate circumstances required that Mr. Chang deal with the authorities diplomatically. As an experienced local Party official himself, Chang knew the government policies and regulations well, and he also had the skills to deal with the bureaucracy. On the one hand, he tried to emphasize the cultural aspect rather than the religious aspect of the Congregation; this cultural focus would identify the Congregation as a legitimate response to Party’s call to carry forward China’s cultural heritage. On the other hand, he worked diligently to develop all the possible guanxi (關係)33 relations with local authorities. In response, local officials would often take a one-eye-open-and-one-eye-shut stance with regard to the Congregation’s activities provided that some kind of justifiable reasons, mainly as an acceptable excuse, were given. Details about the development strategies of the Congregation will be discussed in the next section. As the Congregation became more popular among the villagers, more people—family members, relatives, neighbors and friends—joined in the 33  The term guanxi is the transliteration of the Chinese word 關係, which literally means connection or relationship. It refers to the social interactions between people, “in which personal relationships are considered more important than laws and written agreements.” See http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/guanxi?s=t, accessed on December 3, 2015.

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group. By 2008, the Congregation’s membership had reached one hundred. At this point a private house was obviously too small to hold most gatherings; pressure increased to build a House of Dao in the village. A fundraising campaign was conducted among the members. In less than two years, the sum of more than RMB 200,000 Yuan was collected. This total fell short of the intended goal by over 100,000 Yuan. But the construction could nevertheless begin, in part on borrowed funds. Much of the labor was donated by Congregation members working as volunteers in the construction; this factor contributed greatly to a reduction in costs. The completed house was the three-storied building standing in front of us though some detailed decoration both outside and inside the building was yet to be added. The opening ceremony began with an assembly on the makeshift stage outside the house; speeches from dignitaries, chanting of Confucian classics, and drama performances followed. An elaborate ritual of consecration was performed, with a series of announcements, sacrifice offerings, burning incense, and repeated ketou/kowtow. The unveiling of the Confucius statue marked the climax of the ceremony. This civic building had thus been transformed into the Huishan Village House of the Confucian Dao, now ascribed with a divine nature.34 Although the Congregation continues to identify itself as a secular collective learning group to promote the cultural heritage of Confucianism, its rituals and many other practices prove to be quite religious. A Chinese proverb states that “in a big forest, there are all kinds of birds (linzi da le, shenmeyang de niao dou you 林子大了，什麽樣的鳥都有).” As the Congregation developed, people of different capabilities became involved. In due time, the Huishan Congregation found a competent group leader—Tang Jinxia, a married woman who was forty years old at the time. Years earlier, Ms. Tang had suffered from physical and emotional troubles. She had suffered from severe insomnia but could not find a cure. Eventually she was introduced to Master Li, who helped her recover from these protracted miseries. Now, Ms. Tang is in charge of the Huishan branch of Confucian Congregation, assisted by a group of enthusiastic activists. She organizes the regular study of Confucian classics in the House of Dao. She leads Congregation members in volunteer efforts to clean public areas in the village. Ms. Tang does not claim any supernatural power herself. She draws instead on Confucian ideas and common sense, as well as on what she has learned from Master Li, as she offers advice and counseling. She credits all she has done as part of her personal cultivation to accumulate virtue ( jide 積德). Over the years, the Confucian Congregation 34  Cf. Catherine Bell, Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 26.

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figure 1.3 Offerings at the opening ceremony © Fan Lizhu

figure 1.4 Ketou/kowtow at the opening ceremony © Fan Lizhu

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has created a positive image in the Huishan village. Occasionally even some Christian villagers would come to the Congregation to ask for help. Such is the story of the Huishan branch of the Confucian Congregation. Since its formation in 2004, the Confucian Congregation has established seven branches, of which five were in Mintong county and two in the neighboring Shouxin county.35 The developmental processes of all the branches are more or less similar, though each has a unique story. Now each of these branches functions as a relatively independent unit. The three leaders from the headquarters circulate among these branches in order to provide services and help coordinate affairs. Today when visiting these branches—touring the Houses of Dao, observing rituals, and speaking with local members, discussing the future of the Confucian Congregation—one can only realize that a lot has been achieved. But how could this be possible, considering the overall social and political context? Now in China even legally recognized religious organizations remain under strict government control; to build a new temple or church often requires protracted negotiation and sometimes turns to be impossible. To answer the question, we have to examine the development strategies adopted by the Confucian Congregation. 6

Development Strategy of the Confucian Congregation

If we trace the early history of the Confucian Congregation from the time when the triumvirate was first formed, evoking a “development strategy” might understate the difficulties that had to be overcome. To a great extent, speaking of a “strategy for survival” would be more appropriate. Although China’s Constitution gives its citizens freedom of religious belief, its definition of religion is limited to five institutionalized groups—Daoism, Buddhism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and Islam. Under the current law, therefore, Confucianism and other belief systems are not recognized as religions. The term more generally used to identify these groups is “mixin” or “superstition.” And these groups suffered under the harsh supervision of state authorities until the post-Mao reform.36 In 1982, the Communist Party Central Committee 35  Now in Shouxin city, the Shouxin City Research Council for the practice of Confucianism [Shouxin shi ruxue shejian yanjiuhui 壽新市儒學實踐研究會] has also been officially registered. 36  The crackdown on illegal “non-religions” follows the old track initiated by the Republic of China founded in 1912. In the 1950s and early 1960s, there were nationwide campaigns to

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promulgated a document on religious affairs titled “The Basic Viewpoints and Policies on the Religious Question during Our Country’s Socialist Period.”37 This official statement, known as Document 19, has since been the major official policy on religion in China. Though Document 19 has returned to the basic policy of pre-Cultural Revolution years and has even taken a more flexible attitude toward religion, yet its definition of religion remains the same as that in the Constitution. This means that an organization like the Confucian Congregation is not protected by the law; any gathering of the Congregation can be considered an illegal assembly and possibly have serious consequences. Therefore, the first thing for the triumvirate was and still is the very survival of their organization. A popular Chinese saying mentions that “whenever there is a policy from above, there will be a countermeasure from below” (shang you zhengce, xia you duice 上有政策，下有對策). This may express the “typical” tug-of-war that exists between the state and society in China. Unless it is absolutely overpowered by the state —as in the years of the Cultural Revolution—the social sphere struggles to find a way to maintain its position. The most dangerous stance is to ignore the policy, which means to go underground and suffer from an illegal status. But more often, people would try to find a compromise; this means not fighting head on against the government policy, but finding ways to circumventing it. An euphemism for the latter is to “make full use of the policy” (yongzu zhengce 用足政策). In our case study, the local community adopted the latter stance. The strategy—to identify themselves as a Daoist group—may sound very simple. But this claim has only a marginal basis. When Master Li first assembled his own branch of The Teaching of Heart and Morality, it functioned as a “typical” sect or folk religion. In the government framework, this would identify his group as a mixin that is, a superstition. But on the other hand Daoism in China has long been a loosely defined religion. Its traditional pantheon includes hundreds of gods, deities and immortals. Its syncretistic nature would allow for the deification of many beings, living or dead. After decades of turmoil, the whole system of Daoism suffered severe damages. Even in some traditional Daoist temples, especially those at the grassroots level, there was sometimes not a single professionally trained Daoist. This further blurred the demarcation between Daoism and “superstitious” sects. As a matter of fact, wipe out the superstitions. During the Cultural Revolution, both the “legal religions” and the “superstitions” were treated as residues of feudalism and suffered immensely. 37  Zhonggong zhongyong 中共中央 (1982), Guanyu wo guo shehuizhuyi shiqi zongjiao wenti de jiben guandian he jiben zhengce 關於我國社會主義時期宗教問題的基本觀點和 基本政策. For an English translation of “Document 19,” see Donald E. MacInnis, Religion in China Today: Policy and Practice (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1989), 8–26.

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one of the major approaches for the revival of popular religion in China was to take a “free ride” with the revival of Daoism, which was one of the five statesanctioned institutional religions.38 Even though Mr. Li has never received any official Daoist training and his congregation does not refer to the “typical” Daoist canon39 or perform “typical” Daoist rituals, yet the Congregation does honor some Daoist deities and the triumvirate originally claimed for their congregation a Daoist identity. By doing so their congregation gained a legal or semi-legal status. These actions thus solved the immediate problem of survival. Being identified with Daoism may prevent from being labeled a “superstitious cult.” This self-claimed identification may also offer an acceptable excuse for the local officials to offer support or give a convenient “let go”—if they are willing to do so. But to a great extent, it is only a game of names that will probably continue in the future. With survival no longer an immediate concern, the dedicated triumvirate could focus on their strategy of development. In reviewing decade-long development of the Congregation, we see that many of the events appear to have happened in a contingent manner, rather than as the result of a strategic plan. But underneath all the seemingly unplanned happenings we can discern a consistent principle. The Congregation leaders make use of all possible factors to justify and consolidate the development of the Confucian Congregation, always keeping in mind their long-term goal of achieving officially recognized legitimacy. For that purpose, they have been highly persistent but not without humility, patience and flexibility. Though their congregation is supposed to be “Confucian,” their strategy rather reminds of Laozi and Daoism—with waterlike features of softness and penetration. The following points will help better understand their development strategy. (a) Stick to the general social trend set by the authorities Rather than overtly confronting the political/administrative system (a strategy frequently encountered in analyses of state-society relationship), the Confucian Congregation prefers to avoid direct conflict with the authorities. 38  For a discussion about the “free ride,” see Fan Lizhu and Na Chen. “The Revival of Popular Religion in China, 1980–Present,” in The Modern Chinese Religion II: 1850–Present, Vol 2, eds. Vincent Goossaert, Jan Kiely and John Lagerwey (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 923–949. 39  Even though it is claimed that Daodejing 道德經 is one of the scriptures of the Confucian Congregation, there is not much evidence that this text plays any significant role. As far as we know Daodejing is neither posted on the walls of any of the Houses of the Dao nor chanted in any of the rituals. Unlike those popular Confucian classics, Daodejing is much more scholastic and may be too difficult for the Congregation.

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Instead they try to take advantage of any favorable social trend set by the authorities. In 2004, the Communist Party Central Committee proposed to build socialist “harmonious society” as a strategic goal of China’s socialist development.40 The triumvirate immediately followed up and adopted “harmonious society” as a major slogan for the Congregation. After all, “harmony” is one of the fundamental values of Confucianism. While the Communist Party was vaguely alluding to China’s cultural tradition for directions in the on-going societal transformation, the slogan suited the Confucian Congregation just as well. In 2006, China’s President Hu Jintao personally proposed the “Eight Glories and Eight Shames” as the essentials of socialist moral standard.41 The Confucian Congregation moved immediately to adopt the “Eight Glories and Eight Shames” as one of their own mottos. In all the Houses of Dao, the “Eight Glories and Eight Shames” are posted on the wall, in juxtaposition with their own original “commandments” such as the “Three Principles and Eight Points.” Both are regularly chanted in chorus as part of the congregation’s rituals. When we participated in the opening ceremony of the House of Dao of the Huishan branch in 2010, we were impressed by the extent to which the official ideology seemed to have been internalized as an organic part of the Congregation. On the stage set up for speeches and performance, the backdrop was a huge painting of China’s motherland landscape with the Great Wall zigzagging across it. In addition, on the painting were two lines of large Chinese characters: “Carry forward Confucian Culture and Promote Social Harmony” (hongyang rujia wenhua, cujin shehui hexie 弘揚儒家文化，促進社會和諧). On the wall next to the stage these characters appeared in even larger size: “Love the Party, Love the Country and Develop the Congregation; Construct a Harmonious Society” (aidang aiguo xingjiao, goujian hexie shehui 愛黨愛國 興教，構建和諧社會). Were it not for the words “Develop the Congregation,” one could nearly have the feeling to attend an event sponsored by the propaganda department of the local Communist Party organization. Later we found that these slogans were present in all the Congregation branches as if they were their own motto. 40  Hu Jintao personally promoted the idea of “harmonious society” in his speeches and articles. In fact, Hu took it as his major contribution to the Communist Party’s ideological development in the reform. Cf. Hu Jintao 胡錦濤, Lun goujian shehuizhuyi hexie shehui 論構建社會主義和諧社會 [On the Construction of Socialist Harmonious Society] (Beijing: The Central Literature Publishing House, 2013). 41  Hu Jintao, “Laogu shuli shehuizhuyi rongruguan” 牢固樹立社會主義榮辱觀 [Develop Solid Socialist Values on Glory and Shame], March 4, 2006. http://politics.people.com.cn/ GB/1024/4336318.html Accessed November 26, 2014.

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figure 1.5 Slogan on the wall: “Love the Party, Love the Country and Develop the Congregation; Construct a Harmonious Society.” © Chen Na

(b) Develop good guanxi with the local authorities and the community In dealing with the bureaucracy in China, people often say, “A higher-rank official may not be as important as a person immediately in charge” (xianguan bu ru xian guan 縣官不如現管). Since the Confucian Congregation sets its branches in villages, the head of the villagers’ council is the person immediately in charge. Though the village head has a position even lower than the lowest rank in China’s civil servant system, he is the person known as the “parent official” ( fumuguan 父母官) in the village and is the one who has the final say in the local community. “Without the support, or at least the consent, of the village cadres, we would not be able to develop the Congregation branch in a given village.” Mr. Chang told us, and he added, “This is true in any village.” At the grassroots level, the development of a Confucian Congregation branch is almost always an issue of guanxi rather than one of principle or policy. As we discussed above, the Confucian Congregation has a fairly marginal status. Just because of such a status, however, the village head could have much leeway in making decision for its local development. “Yes or No” is at the discretion of the person in charge, and depends on guanxi. The triumvirate has to try all possible means to develop good guanxi with the villager cadres. It is generally important that a person with established close guanxi in the village

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initiates contacts with local officials in order to introduce the Congregation. Detailed exchanges between the Congregation and local officials are indeed necessary to reach mutual understanding. But the fundamental point is for the Congregation to show sincere respect and humility, and be cooperative with the local authorities. After all, it is the local cadres who have to assume the responsibility and even face possible negative consequences if any problems develop in the local Congregation branch. Thus it is Mr. Chang’s task to handle the diplomatic affairs skillfully and successfully. Another important constituent of the local authorities is the district police substation. One police district usually covers several villages. Again, it is always good for someone with established guanxi with the local police or someone with sufficient “face” (面子 mianzi)42 to work as an introductory agent for the Congregation. On the part of the Congregation, it is important to report their activities to the police in a timely manner. “We always give the police a written report about our event beforehand,” said Mr. Chang. “And we would also invite them to come to the site and give us directions. In the first few times, they came and investigated what we were doing. But later they received our report and would not show up any more. We know the limits. We try not to create any inconvenience or troubles for the police.” Equally important for the Congregation is to maintain good guanxi with local communities. Since traditional culture is still influential in rural communities, it is therefore not difficult for villagers in general to accept Confucian values preached in the Congregation. From a more practical standpoint, we were told that Confucian values and moral cultivation helped Congregation members improve their relationship among their own family members and in the neighborhood. On the other hand, the Congregation encourages its members to take part in activities contributing to public good, both as part of their own self-cultivation and as an approach for accumulating merits. These activities may also be seen as part of the public relations campaign of the Congregation. Related examples include cleaning public space in the village, repairing hill paths damaged by flooding, etc. All these activities are positively valued and appreciated by villagers and local cadres alike. The changes in Laishui Village provide a convincing case. We first learned about Laishui from a retired official of the Mintong Public Security Bureau (see below) who mentioned that Laishui used to be a village with very bad reputation because many villagers were involved in gambling, violence and crimes. 42  Here “face” stands for the Chinese term “mianzi” [面子]. Literally it refers to [a person’s] “face” but its connotation is recognized social status or personal influence, which can be “accepted” or “rejected” in the negotiation of guanxi.

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However, the establishment of the local branch of Confucian Congregation contributed to changing the situation. The village leaders of Laishui confirmed the improvements and our interviewees shared with us lots of their personal stories of changes. Personal moral cultivation and family harmony were recurrent themes in our interviews. We were told that an increasing number of people in the village learned to do good things and to be “good persons” (好人 haoren). During the worst period of time, travelers would try to avoid taking roads passing through or by Laishui Village. According to Mr. ZY, a forty-six-year-old male informant “nowadays, the old bad habits/behaviors are mostly gone. And our Village has become a model village in the Movement of Constructing the New Rural Society.” (c) Explore any possible social capital for the development of the Confucian Congregation The first time we went to Mintong in 2010, we were welcomed by a group of four people at the train station. Two of them, both aged around sixty, had the manner of men with status and social experience. They proved to be two mid-level county government officials recently retired from their positions. They both worried about the declining moral standard in society and they enthusiastically supported the Confucian Congregation for its efforts to revive traditional values. One of them, extremely eloquent and persuasive in spite of his strong local accent, used to work in the county bureau of public security whereas the other had been employed in the government department of water management. Among the local population they belong to those who have seen much and know much of the world. Being experienced bureaucrats themselves, they know the bureaucracy inside out and are good at dealing with people from above. Though retired, they remain men with status and connections. They have helped Mr. Chang and the Congregation very much in its public relations work. At the county level they are the major “lobbyists” on behalf of the Confucian Congregation in its negotiation with the government. The three members of the triumvirate, as well as their congregation, stem from the grassroots level in a very real sense. They have limited social capital or resources useful for the development of the Congregation. However, they are eager to reach out for any possible social capital and they are good at networking. They try to explore any guanxi network from among the local people, including retired government officials. They tend to be aggressively smart in making use of whatever social capital to which they have access. In some cases they may have stretched things beyond normal extent. The following examples illustrate this point.

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As the Confucian Congregation developed rapidly, it drew the attention of scholars interested in the study of religion. In June 2010, several researchers from the Institute of World Religions at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) visited the Confucian Congregation. Soon after, photos of the visitors with Congregation members were hung on the walls of the Houses of Dao with the words: “The Leaders of the Institute of Confucianism, CASS with the Congregation Members” or “Dr. XYZ from the Chinese Institute of Confucianism with Pan Yu.” CASS is the national level research institution in China. Although there is no “Institute of Confucianism” (rujiao yanjiusuo 儒教 研究所) at CASS, a research center for Confucianism does exist as a subunit in the Institute of World Religions. But the leaders of the Confucian Congregation pay little attention to these details. The objective is obvious: using the title of “Institute of Confucianism” somewhat legitimates for them the very existence of a “Confucian Congregation.” Here the Chinese words for Confucianism is rujiao (儒教), that is, Confucianism as a religion. Captioned photos of scholars from Beijing together with members of the Congregation are powerful symbols on the walls of the House of Dao. Silently, they make a subtle and powerful statement to anyone who visits the Congregation’s building, especially to the local cadres and police. When we, two authors from Fudan University, initiated our research on the Confucian Congregation in November 2010, we were surprised to see members lined along the street leading to the House of Dao to welcome us. And we frowned at the red banners spanned across the street with the words “Warmly Welcome Leaders from School of Social Development, Fudan University to Give Directions!” and “Warmly Welcome Leaders from School of Journalism, Fudan University to Give Directions!”43 When we told the Congregation leaders that the welcome banners were inappropriate as we were neither leaders nor in a capacity to give directions here, they simply brushed it away, saying, “Oh, yes, you are leaders. You are from Fudan University, you are from the identified units there, right?” Of course they knew what they were doing. The banners and the spectacular scenes were designed to make a show and had a double objective: on the one hand, to express their hospitality to the visitors; and on the other hand, to impress both local cadres and villagers. Perhaps the latter goal weighed even heavier in their consideration, as it provided an occasion to demonstrate their important guanxi with national research institutions and some supposedly support from above. No doubt, this display functions as a powerful expression 43  At that time, Chen Na worked at the School of Journalism, Fudan University.

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of their “soft power,” which is of great value in consolidating their position in the village and even in the county. Their efforts for social capital were well rewarded. The visits of the researchers from CASS and Fudan University have not only brought the Congregation immediate “soft power” but also impact of far-reaching significance. When back in Beijing, the CASS researchers sent the Congregation books and other materials on Confucianism. They also helped arrange interactions between the Confucian Congregation and other Confucian or religious groups in China. And they helped spread the name of Confucian Congregation in the academic circles. The Fudan researchers brought more scholars into the field and they helped arrange a visit of Dr. Tang Enjia (湯恩佳), a Hong Kong businessman and President of the Hong Kong Confucian Academy, to the Confucian Congregation in October 2011. Dr. Tang enjoyed his visit and announced a donation on the spot to support Confucian Congregation. Later in the year, leaders of the Congregation were invited to Hong Kong to join in the celebration of Confucius and to exchange experience in promoting the revival of Confucianism. (d) The game of names and the status of legitimacy The so-called “game of names” refers to changing names of the organization to seek status of legitimacy for the Confucian Congregations. In a sense, the development of Confucian Congregation has followed Deng Xiaoping’s (1904–1997) strategy designed for China’s post-Mao reform—to cross the river by feeling the step-stones in the water, that is, with an attitude of tentative gradualism. Over the last ten years, the Confucian Congregation has taken many tentative steps in its move toward the status of a legitimate religious organization. In this effort, they have conducted organizational reforms resulting in structural changes. Beyond that, they have played a game of names. So far this calculated effort seems to be successful. When Mr. Li first established himself as a master of the Teaching of Heart and Morality based on the “Three Principles and Eight Points,” he was seen as involved in the “business” of folk religion or folk healing, which was considered by the authorities as mixin or “superstition.” He could expect no recognition from the government, to say nothing about a legal status. When the triumvirate was formed in 2004 and adopted popular Confucian classics as their scriptures, a foundation was laid for the development of a congregation. Then, in 2006, the congregation vaguely claimed to be a Daoist group by naming itself “Shennong Temple” (Shennong guan 神農觀). This shift was undertaken as a strategy to identify with one of the legally recognized religions.

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Between 2008 and 2009, the group adopted a new name “Rujia Daotan” (儒 家道壇). The Chinese character “道” (“Dao” or “Tao”) literally means the “Way.”

As a philosophical concept it is more or less similar to the “logos” in the Greek tradition. While Daoism is the ism of Dao, each ism has its own Dao. Thus in Confucianism, there is the Confucian Dao. The phrase “道壇” literally means an altar to preach the Dao and can be simply understood as a place for the Dao; in our text, “道壇” (House of Dao) refers to both the building and the organization or congregation, similar to “church” in the Christian tradition. When the old name “Shennong Temple” (神農觀) turned Rujia Daotan (儒家 道壇), the new name vaguely implied an affiliation with Daoism, which is in consistence with its Daoist claim in the earlier days. Meanwhile, the term rujia (儒家) means Confucianism as a school of thought. As a result the new name of Rujia Daotan alludes to a combination of Daoism and Confucianism. The key point is that the new name shifts toward the direction of Confucianism but the change in the name does not sound too abrupt. In 2010, the Congregation started to adopt the name “Rujiao Daotan” (儒教 道壇). The term rujiao (儒教) can be understood to identify either Confucian teachings or Confucianism as a religion. It all depends whether one takes jiao (教) as “teaching” or “religion.” Its use by the Congregation was particularly intended to strengthen its connection with Confucianism as a religion. Ever since the modern conception of zongjiao (宗教religion) was introduced to China at the turn of the 20th century,44 many people have tried to treat Confucianism as a religion; even more, as China’s national religion.45 However, this opinion has never prevailed either academically or politically in China. This partly explains why Confucianism was not included in the five religions as defined in China’s legal system.46 This change of name makes no difference in English as both “Rujia Daotan” (儒家道壇) and “Rujiao Daotan” (儒教道壇) are translated as Confucian Congregation in English. But it makes

44  For a detailed discussion about the conceptualization of zongjiao [宗教 religion] in China, see Fan Lizhu, “The Dilemma of Pursuing Chinese Religious Studies in the Framework of Western Religious Theories.” Fudan Journal on Social Sciences 2 (2009): 29–48. 45  Among those who tried to establish Confucianism as China’s national religion in the early 20th century, the most famous was Kang Youwei 康有爲; in recent years, those who propose to set Confucianism as the national religion include Kang Xiaoguang 康曉光, Jiang Qing 蔣慶, and Zhou Beichen 周北辰. 46  For another perspective on why Confucianism is not a religion in China, see Chen Na, “Why Is Confucianism Not a Religion? The Impact of Orientalism,” Zygon 51 (1) (March 2016).

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a big difference in Chinese as the change from “Jia” (家) to “Jiao” (教) is a substantial move from non-religion to religion. With the play of words in the game of names, the key issue is the justification for the very existence of the Confucian Congregation. The issue here is two-fold. One goal is for the Congregation to be recognized as a religious group. The other is for the Congregation to gain a legal status as officially registered in the government. Unless there are major changes in the Chinese law, it would be impossible for a Confucian Congregation to be recognized as a religious group. However, by placing the title of “Rujiao Daotan” above the gate of the House of Dao and by scheduling regular gatherings and activities, the Confucian Congregation has become a de facto religious group. Even so, its legal status remains a problem. But with an unexpectedly deft move, this problem was finally resolved. In 2013 the triumvirate, together with their enthusiastic supporters, applied to the county government to establish the “Mintong County Research Council for the Practice of Confucianism” (Mintong xian ruxue shijian yanjiuhui 民同縣 儒學實踐研究會) as a civil organization. Here the English word Confucianism stands for the Chinese term ruxue (儒學), which means Confucianism as scholarship or philosophy. The strategic phrasing of the “Practice of Confucianism” is a skillfully designed underlay for the legalization of the branches of Confucian Congregation. When they succeeded in registering the “Research Council” as a civil organization, all the branches of the Confucian Congregation were conveniently identified as the “Practice Bases” of this legally registered research organization. In 2014, we revisited the Huishan branch of Confucian Congregation. At the House of Dao where we had witnessed its opening ceremony more than three years before, there were two signs at the gate of the building. On the top of the gate one could read “Rujiao Daotan” (儒教道壇) with the four Chinese characters laid out horizontally in bright yellow matched by a rich red background; and to the left of the gate it was referred to “The Huishan Practice Base of the Mintong County Research Council for the Practice of Confucianism” (Mintong xian ruxue shijian yanjiuhui Huishan shijian jidi 民同縣儒學實踐研究會匯山 實踐基地). Sixteen black characters were laid out vertically on a piece of shining stainless steel. 7

Discussions and Implications

Even in light of the rapid and comprehensive revival of religion in China, it is very unusual that a folk religion group could develop so rapidly, expanding into

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a “franchise” with half a dozen branches, and even gaining legal status from the government. The story of the Confucian Congregation provides a unique case for understanding the revival of Confucianism and the development of religion in China today. There are many factors that contribute to the phenomenon of the Confucian Congregation. The macro social context of the reform era—the reduced emphasis on Maoist ideology, loosened social control in general, and the religion resurgence trend nationwide—is an important background factor, forming a favorable “sociopolitical ecology”47 for the emergence of the Confucian Congregation. But in this specific case, the micro social context, that is, the highly religious local culture and the strong Confucian tradition in a remote area, creates a microclimate factor of decisive importance. In many other places,48 it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to see the emergence and development of such an out-of-the-system folk religion group. Therefore, it is the local cultural tradition shared by the leaders and members of the Congregation, the retired government cadres, the village and police officials, and the villagers in general that provides the fertile local soil for the growth of the Confucian Congregation. Given the environment, one must acknowledge the essential role played by the core members of the Congregation, that is, the charismatic personality of Mr. Li and his trio work team. This is not an easily replicable factor. While Mr. Li and his team achieved one success after another, his own former master, Mr. Han was still stuck with the old business of The Teaching of Heart and Morality and struggling to find a strategy for development or even survival. When the opening ceremony of the Huishan House of Dao ended, we were told that Mr. Han, Li’s former master, together with his current followers had been in the audience during the ceremony but had left immediately

47  For a more detailed discussion about such a “sociopolitical ecology,” see Sébastien Billioud, “The Hidden Tradition: Confucianism and its Metamorphoses in Modern and Contemporary China,” in The Modern Chinese Religion II: 1850–Present, Vol 2, eds. Vincent Goossaert, Jan Kiely and John Lagerwey (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 767–805. 48  We have three other rural research sites located in Jiangsu Province, Hebei Province and Zhejiang Province respectively. In the Jiangsu site, our focus is on the rural guanxi tradition and its social impact. The Hebei site provides cases of folk religion revival in various forms. The Jiangsu and Hebei sites are unlikely to develop a religious group like Confucian Congregation. The Zhejiang site, which is about 90 kilometers to the north of Mintong in Fujian, also has a strong tradition of religion and Confucianism similar to that in Mintong but the Zhejiang site is much more open to the market and much more commercialized. In the Zhejiang site, our focus is on revival of family-clan tradition and reconstruction of ancestral halls.

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after its completion. We regretted having missed the legendary teacher of Master Li, and the opportunity this might have provided for us to gather pertinent information. Although the Confucian Congregation may be considered as an example of a folk religion, it has many distinguishing characteristics. Several features differentiate the Confucian Congregation from other folk religions. In most cases, people gain access to folk religion, that is to its objects of worship,49 temples, masters, rituals and performances, on an individual basis—seeking personal healing or blessing, or simply celebrating a private occasion. Even if an audience forms, most people in the group remain independent of one another. In contrast, members of Confucian Congregation come not only for immediate instrumental purposes but also for collective worship and moral self-cultivation. Participants have a strong sense of community and collectivity. It is true that there are some folk religions that also form their own community groups to worship and celebrate festivals or events. These groups may meet once a year, or on several occasions a year, or once in a few years. However, they tend to be loosely organized and the nature of their organization tends to be ad hoc. In contrast, the Confucian Congregation is a long-term establishment with regular meetings and routine rituals. The House of Dao is their site of worship and serves in a sense as their community center. As a result, members of the Confucian Congregation have a strong sense of belonging and solidarity as a congregation. In some aspects, the Confucian Congregation is similar to some other “organized” folk religions or sectarian groups50 in Chinese history such as Luojiao (羅教), Sanyijiao (三一教), and Yiguandao (一貫道).51 We see, for example, 49  Here the objects of worship include gods, deities and immortals, and may also include other things such as a tree (a case in the suburbs of Shanghai), a rock (a case in Sanya, Hainan), etc. 50  For a detailed discussion about China’s traditional sectarianism, see David Jordan and Daniel Overmyer, The Flying Phoenix: Aspects of Chinese Sectarianism in Taiwan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), especially 7–12. 51  All of the three—Luojiao [羅教], Sanyijiao [三一教], and Yiguandao [一貫道]—are influential Chinese folk religion sects. The Luojiao (aka. Luoism) was started by Luo Menghong 羅夢鴻 [1442–1527] around 1500. Luo developed his belief system mainly from ideas of Buddhism and Daoism. The Sanyijiao which literally means “the Teaching of Three-in-One” was founded by LIN Zhao’en 林兆恩 [1517–1598] in the mid-16th century. Lin combined the three teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism into his belief system but with Confucianism as the core. The Yiguandao literally mean the Consistent Way. It claims an origin traced back to pre-historical legendary figures and associations with many different schools of thought or religion in Chinese history. Its substantial development as an organized sect started in late 19th century and it became the most influential organized folk religion in China in the first half of 20th century. Each of

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the mysterious experience of the charismatic personality leading to supernatural power, an emphasis on moral issues in healing, etc. But on the whole the Confucian Congregation is relatively underdeveloped. There is no articulate and creative founder who would produce voluminous scripts far beyond the small syncretistic package of literature as presented above in Table 1.2. The Confucian Congregation does not claim a complex system of theology. Master Li embraces a mission to save and enlighten people, but he does not preach an end of time characterized by incoming disasters or an inexorable doom. He seems to have a more optimistic view about the future. In this sense, the Confucian Congregation is not a religion of salvation. It is possible that such a this-worldly orientation has helped the Congregation find acceptance from secular authorities. Of reported revivals of folk religion over the last three decades in China, lots of cases have been based on previously existent religious traditions.52 The goal has been to revive or recreate something that had once existed in the local area but was subsequently lost in recent experience. The Confucian Congregation, especially its more advanced version, is on the whole a new system and its worship focuses on Confucius and the ritualistic chanting of popular Confucian classics. When a franchised branch starts in a village, its goal is not to revive a local religious tradition but to set up a new establishment. Of course, as mentioned above, an important reason explaining why this new organization is able to successfully enter a new site is that the setting is already steeped in the cultural tradition of Confucianism. Following this reasoning, we may say that the Confucian Congregation is essentially an organized religion or institutionalized religion based on Confucianism. No doubt, the Confucian Congregation is not “purely” Confucian, since elements from Daoism and Buddhism are also evident. Yet this aspect of inclusiveness—which comes with syncretism—is an embedded feature of Chinese religion. When properly controlled, this inclusiveness may support flexibility and vitality in its development. Furthermore, this “impurity” fits well in the local cultural soil which is embedded with the tradition of the “diffused religion” of syncretism. It is widely reported that many folk religions that revived or emerged on the mainland in the reform years are promoted by local governments for economic reasons. The policy, known as “to play the drama of economy on the stage of the three folk religion sects went through ups and downs in history especially in the 20th century. The last few decades saw revival of them all both within and out of mainland China. 52  See Fan Lizhu and Na Chen, “The Revival and Development of Popular Religion in China, 1980–Present,” in Modern Chinese Religion II, 1850–2015, eds. Vincent Goossaert, Jan Kiely and John Lagerwey, Vol. 2 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2016), 923–948.

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culture” (wenhua datai, jingji changxi 文化搭臺，經濟唱戲), aims to develop folk religion as sites of culture (building temples, towers, museums, etc.) so as to attract tourism.53 In the case of the Confucian Congregation, however, although they do claim to carry forward traditional culture, their negotiation with the local authorities does not promise any economic interest. Of all the Congregation branches we have visited so far, none of them is positioned for tourism and there is no evidence whatsoever of religious commercialization. Thus this new religious group embodies many adaptations and innovations. The Congregation leaders do not hesitate to admit that they have looked into other religions for examples of effective management and development. Obviously, their organizational system and franchised branch development strategy carries features of the Christian church. The group chanting ritual and the interactive style between the Congregation leader and the audience also entail a mixture of elements from both Christian and Buddhist tradition. On the other hand, there are also traces of influence from the Communist Party methodology in its work of organization, propaganda and mobilization. Mr. Chang’s personal knowledge of both the Christian church and the Communist Party may be a contributing factor in these aspects, even while the flexible and innovative thinking of the triumvirate has made these developments seem natural within the Confucian Congregation. From the case of Confucian Congregation, we can draw some significant implications. Two immediate insights can be inferred from the spontaneous emergence and development of the Confucian Congregation. First, among the people at the grassroots level in the People’s Republic of China there exists an innate desire for religion or, to put it more broadly, for a belief system to guide them and give meaning to their lives. In the Mao era, the communist ideology attempted to provide such a belief system, but it proved to be superficial and ineffective. With the diminishing influence of Maoist ideology since the reform, a value vacuum or moral disorientation has been noted.54 In this setting it is only natural that people would investigate religions of all kinds, a societal trend that has led to religious revival. Second, there is the experience of the revival of Confucianism. It is assumed by many that the Chinese modernization, especially the New Culture Movement in the early 20th century and the subsequent emergence of communist movement, has severed all links 53  See, for example, Yang Fenggang, “Market Economy and the Revival of Religions,” in Chinese Religious Life, eds. David A. Palmer, Glenn Shive and Philip L. Wickeri (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 13–29. 54  For a detailed discussion on this issue, see Luo Xu, Searching for Life’s Meaning: Changes and Tensions in the Worldviews of Chinese Youth in the 1980s (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002).

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with the Chinese tradition represented by Confucianism.55 But, like other studies included in this volume, the phenomenon of the Confucian Congregation suggests that this is not the case. Besides, one could also posit that even when the anti-traditional ideology prevailed during the Cultural Revolution, the basic values among the people at the grassroots level remained very much Confucian. Though often in a rather implicit or possibly unconscious way, traditional values such as the relationships among family members, the sense of community and the state, and the meaning of life, survived in what sociologist Peter Berger has identified as “vulgarized Confucianism.”56 With the political pressure removed in the post-Mao reform, elements of the Confucian tradition returned spontaneously.57 The history of Confucianism in China explains in part why, against all the odds, the Confucian Congregation could develop and prosper. Therefore, it may be justified to make the statement that, since the New Culture Movement, Confucianism has been criticized and beaten but never totally wiped out in Chinese society. We can further infer that, in a sense, the revival of Confucianism has served to reduce the tension or contradiction between China’s official ideology and its traditional culture. Under the theoretical framework of communism, traditional Chinese culture was labeled a residue of feudalism which should be condemned as a whole. In its place a new [cultural] system based on 55  For long time since 1950s, this has been an important view in the academic circles outside of China. See, for example, Joseph Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: The Problem of Historical Significance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965); especially the discussion in “The Conclusion.” Even today, some scholars in the West still hold this view. A representative figure is historian Yu Yingshi. At various occasions in 2014, when he commented on the recent revival of Confucianism in China, Yu said, “in my opinion, it is kind of Kiss of Death.” See http://www.rfa.org/mandarin/yataibaodao/gangtai/ al-09192014093504.html; also http://note.youdao.com/share/?id=c1db78a2f538bf002b777 c2cf16695e9&type=note&from=groupmessage&isappinstalled=0, both accessed April 20, 2015. 56  Peter Berger, “An East Asian Development Model?” in In Search of An East Asian Development Model, eds. Peter Berger and M. H. H. Hisao (New Brunswick: Transaction Publisher, 1988), 7–8. 57  A good example of this spontaneity is seen in the rebuilding of an ancestral hall. Ancestor worship was criticized and banned during the Cultural Revolution, and many ancestral halls were destroyed or used for other purposes. Over the last twenty years, against all the government regulations, rebuilding of ancestral halls has become a trend in many places especially in southeast China. In Cangnan County, Zhejiang Province, where we did our fieldwork, the Chen family alone had rebuilt 123 Ancestral halls and temples by the year of 2006. Cf. Fan Lizhu, Chen Na and Richard Madsen, “The Loss and Renewal of Cultural Heritage: Ethnographical Study on Lineage Traditions in Southern Zhejiang,” in Religion and Social Life in Greater Jiangnan, eds. Robert Weller and Fan Lizhu (Shanghai: Shanghai People’s Press, 2015), 47–85. See also Chen Bisheng’s contribution to this volume.

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communist ideology should be established. But the fact is while the communist ideology provides a historical perspective and a scheme of social development, it does not provide a cultural base on which people can live their everyday life. All the efforts, including the Cultural Revolution, failed to create such a sustainable revolutionary culture among the general population while traditional culture suffered severe damages in the process. As a result, if a Chinese person wants to be considered a “normal” member of society, he or she must identify with communism ideologically and politically, and, at the same time, must follow many of the traditional cultural elements in everyday life—drawing on its basic values, ways of thinking, and principles to handle social relations. As the authorities have set these two aspects in opposition, and reinforced this tension through institutionalized rules and political pressure, a strong tension between their political and their cultural identities has been created among the people. This unhealthy situation prevailed during the Maoist era, though ordinary Chinese people were not necessarily conscious of it. While the reduced ideological and political control that has accompanied the reform has contributed to relaxing this tension, much remains to be done. In the case of the Confucian Congregation, many retired government officials were enthusiastically involved in its development. At the same time, some state and local officials were more or less hesitant to become involved in Congregation activities.58 In recent years, President Xi Jinping has personally promoted the revival of Confucianism,59 thus reflecting a changing attitude toward traditional Chinese at the top of the Party-State. At the same time, the spontaneous emergence of the Confucian Congregation and other grassroots movements also implies that there is support for such a change at the bottom

58  In our field observation of the Confucian Congregation activities, we could still see from the face expressions of some in-office cadres the uncertainty and tension caused by political factors. Some are very subtle political issues. At different occasions, Zhu Weiqun 朱維群, a top-level official in charge of the United Front and religion affairs nationwide, made the statement that “Communist member should not believe in religion.” This kind of remarks—although they simply reflect the official ideological line—will surely increase the tension. Cf. http://cpc.people.com.cn/n/2013/0617/c64387-21857277.html, http:// opinion.huanqiu.com/opinion_china/2014-11/5201895.html, both accessed December 23, 2014. 59  Frequently Xi Jinping quoted from Confucius and other Confucian classics in his speeches and writings. On September 24, 2014, President Xi Jinping personally delivered a speech at the Ceremony in Celebration of the 2565th Birthday of Confucius and International Academic Conference. For the first time, the top leader of the communist party-state attended such an event. See http://news.xinhuanet.com/2014-09/24/c_1112612018.htm accessed on January 23, 2015.

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of society. Although many details in the social and legal institutions are yet to be reformed and revised, a general trend for further revival and development of Confucian tradition in China is now visible. With a history of over ten years, the Confucian Congregation represents an emerging religious establishment that is itself going through a series of changes. When Master Li first started to advocate the Teaching of Heart and Morality, he was simply a self-employed person making a living by providing special services. But now he is the head of a Congregation with seven branches and hundreds of members, preaching the Dao of Confucianism with the mission to save or enlighten people. Moreover, his initially illegal business has turned into an officially registered civil organization. Now the ambition of the triumvirate has gone beyond the Congregation and entered the public arena. In 2013, they applied to build a Confucius Culture Park in the county seat. They have received permission from the county government to build a large Confucian temple on a square in an old public park. While they have received this piece of land for construction, they have yet to raise the necessary fund of ten million Yuan (about US$1,600,000) to cover the other cost. Based on the information from our field interviews, it seems that the Congregation’s economic situation is still at risk, because of debts generated from building Houses of Dao. Ever since our initial research trip, we have been asking ourselves: “What would be the future of the Confucian Congregation?” Having witnessed the unexpected happenings that occurred one after the other over the last few years, we are very cautious in making any predictions. As researchers we will continue our observation with an open mind, filled with enquiring curiosity. The following are some of the questions we will continue to explore. 1. The Confucian Congregation is a religious group based on the initial leader’s personal charisma. If this charismatic person is gone or the triumvirate collapses, will the Congregation survive? And how? 2. The Confucian Congregation is a rural religious group and almost all members are local villagers with a relatively low level of education and limited experience beyond their own community. But the younger generation is much better educated as well as more open to urban life experience. Will they carry on this tradition of Confucian Congregation? As the rural population declines with the rapid urbanization in China, will there be enough members to sustain the Congregation and guide its further development? 3. Though the Confucian Congregation has been successful in developing its ritualization, organization and institutionalization, yet the membership tends to be largely rural. Considering that official discourses seem to open a new space for the development of Confucianism, is it possible for

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the Congregation to expand beyond its base in the countryside, in a move toward urban development? The Confucius Culture Park is not an easy project to sustain. In addition to the funding issue, there are unexpected risks and pitfalls in this more complicated urban environment. Any mismanagement could be negatively and seriously consequential. Will this culture park project prove to be a stillbirth or even a setback in the development of the Congregation, or will it be another success leading the Congregation to a new horizon?

chapter 2

Making a Virtue of Piety: Dizigui and the Discursive Practice of Jingkong’s Network Ji Zhe The interactions between religions constitute one of the essential driving forces of religious innovations and changes, of which the dialogue between Confucianism and Buddhism undoubtedly offers a typical example. It is well known that Neo-Confucianism that emerged during the Song dynasty would not have come into being without Buddhist stimulations. Recent research also suggests that innovations in the realm of 20th Century “New Confucianism” also stemmed from the Confucian-Buddhist dialogue.1 On the other hand, some scholars posit that during the same period of time Buddhist modern reform movements such as “Buddhism for the human realm” (renjian fojiao 人間佛教) also “integrated Confucian elements into Buddhism” (yuan ru ru fo 援儒入佛).2 Finally, numerous new religious movements in modern China such as Sanyijiao 三一教 and Yiguandao 一貫道 have an ecumenical dimension that mobilizes both Confucian and Buddhist resources. It is not surprising that religious interaction also has to be taken into account in order to fully understand the on-going revival of Confucianism in China that started in the early 2000s. This revival is above all a result of the complex reconfiguration of relations between the state, culture and society in the context of globalization. However, such a process leaves room for a number of very significant inter-religious events. For example, Christianity as an incarnation of Western civilization is targeted by some Confucian discourses. The 2010 and 2016 controversies about a Protestant church project in Qufu—the hometown of Confucius—showed how inter-religious issues may generate ideological mobilization and increase people’s sensitivity to the religious revival. In contrast, the tension between Confucianism and Buddhism does not seem to be 1  Xu Jia 徐嘉, Xiandai xinrujia yu foxue 現代新儒家與佛學 (Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe, 2007). 2  Yang Huinan 楊惠南, “‘Renjian fojiao’ de jingdian quanshi: shi ‘yuan ru ru fo’ huo shi huigui Yindu” 人間佛教”的經典詮釋——是”援儒入佛”或是回歸印度?, Zhonghua foxue xuebao 中華佛學學報 13 (2000): 479–504; Li Guangliang 李廣良, “Taixu dashi ruxue sixiang shuyi” 太虛大師儒學思想述義, in Fofa yu ziyou 佛法與自由, Li Guangliang 李廣良 (Beijing: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe, 2008), 166–191.

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very significant. In today’s China, these two traditions seem more cooperative and complementary than ever before. Although some sort of self-proclaimed Confucian intellectual elite hardly mentions Buddhism in order to preserve a supposedly orthodox “Confucian authenticity,” Buddhism nevertheless plays an important role in the Confucian revival in the “space of the people” (minjian 民間), and this cannot be ignored. On the one hand, Buddhist doctrine provides a language for practitioners to better understand and express their transcendent faith and experience concerning Confucianism.3 On the other hand, Buddhism, through its well-developed networks and organizations greatly contributes to the nation-wide success of the “Classics-reading” (dujing 讀經) and “National Studies” (guoxue 國學) movements. In fact, some important promoters of these movements such as Nan Huaijin 南懷瑾 (1918–2012)4 and Jingkong (or Chin Kung) 淨空 are Buddhists.5 This chapter is mainly based on fieldwork carried out in 2011, 2012 and 2013 in three Buddhist temples affiliated to Jingkong’s network and located in Liaoning and Gansu provinces. I examine below how a short text of popular Confucianism, the Dizigui (弟子規, Rules for Disciples), regained its vitality in the PRC thanks to the efforts of Jingkong and his followers to the point where it happened to be sanctified by them as a “classic” of the whole “Chinese culture.” I argue that this “canonization” of Dizigui is not a simple matter of thought but a discursive practice that impacts the reconfiguration of the religious field. Thus, such a practice not only provides popular Confucianism—the counterpole to elite/official Confucianism—with an applicable ethical impetus, but it also impacts the relationships between different Buddhist groups, between Buddhism and Confucianism, and, even beyond, between religion and society in contemporary China. 1

Rediscovering a Text: Dizigui as Confucian Rules for Disciples and Beyond

Since the start of the new century, a tiny booklet edited about 300 hundred years ago has become again very fashionable in China. Its title is Dizigui, and it 3  Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval, Le Sage et le peuple, le renouveau confucéen en Chine (Paris: CNRS Editions, 2014), 141–160. 4  For a critical biography of Nan, see Catherine Despeux, “The ‘New Clothes’ of Sainthood in China: The Case of Nan Huaijin,” in Making Saints in Modern China, eds. David Ownby, Vincent Goossaert and Ji Zhe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 349–393. 5  See also Ishii Tsuyoshi’s chapter for the case of the Taiwanese Buddhist monk Konghai’s engagement in “National Studies” in the PRC.

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has been used for childhood education since the middle of the Qing dynasty. Some people in the PRC might still remember that during the 1970s it was criticized as embodying “dregs” of feudalism before falling into oblivion during the ensuing three decades. However, Dizigui reappeared afterwards quickly as a “classic” in every corner of China. Originally used as teaching material by most of the non-official educational organizations (such as “private schools” [sishu 私塾] and “classes of Chinese National Studies” [guoxueban 國學班]), it has even begun to make its way back into many official primary and middle schools. Moreover, Dizigui has been considered by different social forces as a multiple-function instrument in the realm of morals. It has been used by enterprises for training and selecting employees, by local governments as a text included in “socialist spiritual civilization” propaganda,6 and massively within the prison system as a tool for correcting criminals’ attitudes.7 In sum, numerous groups and individuals are engaged in the reproduction and circulation of this text that has actually gained a status somewhat similar to traditional religious “morality books” (shanshu 善書), up to the point that even printing and giving it as a present seems to help accumulating “merit.” It is impossible to count how many Dizigui copies have been printed in the last decade, but it is not rare to have individuals or enterprises sponsoring the printing of this text and disseminating thousands of copies. According to the estimates of some of its popularizers, people who have been exposed to this text now amount to tens of millions, or even a hundred millions. The goal set by some activists is that everyone or, at least, every family in China owns a copy of the book. What kind of miraculous dimension is ascribed to the Dizigui by its promoters? In fact, its content is neither mystical nor complicated. It is first and foremost an interpretation of a sentence of the first Chapter “Xuer 學而” of the Analects of Confucius:

6  For example, between 2008 and 2009, the Office of Spiritual Civilization of Beijing’s Huairou District distributed 160,000 Dizigui copies to its residents (the total population of this district is 300,000). In November 2011, the Educational Council of Huairen County of Shanxi Province presented 50,000 copies of Dizigui to local schools and claimed that its short-term objective was to ensure that every one of the 300,000 residents in the county had one. 7  Between 2006 and 2007, the prison of Haikou in Hainan Province was the earliest to use Dizigui as a fundamental teaching material to reform prisoners. In recent years, the Prison of Chaling of Hunan Province, the Prison of Hefei of Anhui Province, the Prison of Female Criminals of Henan Province, the Prison of Female Criminals in Nanjing of Jingsu Province, the Prison of Baiyin of Gansu Province, the Prison of Hanzhong of Shanxi Province, the Prison of Huaiji of Gangdong Province, all required prisoners to study Dizigui. In 2012, the Party committee of the First Prison of Taiyuan of Shanxi Province required that all the public security personnel read and recite Dizigui.

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Ji 弟子入則孝 出則弟 謹而信 泛愛眾 而親仁 行有餘力 則以學文

A youth, when at home, should be filial, and, abroad, respectful to his elders. He should be earnest and truthful. His sympathy should extend to all men, while going especially to those who practise ren 仁 [benevolence]. If he still has time and opportunity, after the performance of these things, he should employ them in polite studies.8 Building on this sentence, the Dizigui is divided into seven sections, each corresponding to part of this sentence. These sections list the norms that need to be strictly observed regarding how to conduct oneself inside and outside the family, towards the others and in the process of learning. It also explains in detail how to practice these norms in the course of daily life. For example, the Dizigui uses 168 characters to expound the three characters “入則孝” (ru ze xiao, being filial at home). The comment starts as follows: 父母呼 應勿緩 父母命 行勿懶 父母教 須敬聽 父母責 須順承 冬則溫 夏則凊 晨則省 昏則定 出必告 反必面 居有常 業無變

Father and mother call [you] / Answer without delay / Father and mother order [you] / Act without laziness / Father and mother teach [you] / Listen with respect / Father and mother scold [you] / Say nothing and accept. Keep [parents] warm in winter / and cool in summer / Visit parents every morning / Greet parents every evening / Inform parents when going out / Report your return when coming back / Following a regular order in daily life / Be consistent in what one is doing. The Dizigui, with its trisyllablic and rhymed form, echoes the Three-character Classic (Sanzijing 三字經), another popular text used for the instruction of young children in traditional China. This form makes it easier for children to read and recite. Slightly shorter than the Sanzijing, the Dizigui has a total of 1,080 Chinese characters. It is said that the original author of the Dizigui was Li Yuxiu 李毓秀 (1647– 1729)9 but it was later revised and adapted by Jia Cunren 賈存仁 (1724–1784). 8  This translation is based on James Legge’s translation: http://ctext.org/analects/xue-er/ zh?en=on. 9  There are different versions of the dates of the birth and death of Li. Here we follow the study of Wang Junhong 王俊閎, Dizigui mima 弟子規密碼 (Beijing: Zhongguo wenlian chubanshe, 2010).

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Besides the Analects, the text draws its inspiration partly from the Liji and the Mengzi, as well as from neo-Confucian texts of the Song and Ming Dynasties, in particular Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) and Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 (1610–1695). However, due to the simplicity of the text and the low status of its authors (both Li and Jia were petty representatives of the local gentry with low scholarly titles), it hardly caught the attention of the Confucian elite. In fact, even today we know very little concerning its two authors and the original context of its redaction and diffusion. However, it is well-known that this booklet became one of the fundamental primers in the late imperial period and had quite a substantial influence at the local level.10 In this sense, the rediscovery of Dizigui in China today can be seen as a sign of the revival of the “popular Confucianism.” However, the promotion of the Dizigui is not a narrowly Confucian matter. Noteworthy is in fact the participation of many Buddhists in this movement. It could even be posited that Master Jingkong, a Buddhist monk from Taiwan, was instrumental in initiating the “Dizigui fever.” It is Jingkong who first created a set of discourses about the Dizigui, thus endowing it with a new layer of meaning. Thanks to his Buddhist network, he disseminated the Dizigui in an organized way both in China and in some overseas Chinese societies. 2

Jingkong and His Discourse on Dizigui: A New Layer of Meaning

Master Jingkong,11 whose original name was Xu Yehong 徐業鴻, was born in Anhui Province in 1927. He was exiled to Taiwan along with the Nationalist Government in 1949. He mentions that he had the chance to study Buddhism and Chinese philosophy with Fang Dongmei 方東美 (1899–1977), one of the major figures of the so-called “contemporary new Confucianism,” but also with Zhang Jia Hu Tu Ke Tu 章嘉呼圖克圖 (in Tibetan: Icqng Skya Ho Thog Thu, 1891–1978), the seventh generation Living Buddha of Tibetan Buddhism in Mongolia and with Li Bingnan 李炳南 (1890–1986), an erudite lay Buddhist recognized by both Buddhist and Confucian scholars. In 1959, he was tonsured at Linji Temple in Taipei at the age of 32 and became Master Jingkong. During the 1960s and 70s, he created in Taiwan a number of “Buddhist education” and “Pure Land School” institutions. He became increasingly famous, thanks not 10  Xu Zi 徐梓, Mengxue duwu de lishi toushi 蒙學讀物的歷史透視 (Wuhan: Hubei jiaoyu chubanshe, 1995), 110. 11  For a more detailed study on Jingkong’s life, organization and teachings, see Sun Yanfei, “Jingkong: From Universal Saint to Sectarian Saint,” in Making Saints in Modern China, ed. David Ownby, Vincent Goossaert and Ji Zhe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 394–418.

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figure 2.1 Master Jingkong © Ji Zhe, 2013

only to his extraordinary capacities and enthusiasm for preaching, but also to the skilful and massive dissemination of his ideas. In recent decades, he has continuously printed and distributed books and icons as well as electronic and audio-visual recordings of his lectures. In fact, he was one of the pioneers in Buddhist circles regarding the utilization of the most advanced communication technologies, from satellite TV to the Internet. Nevertheless, his relationship with Taiwan’s mainstream Buddhism is full of tensions. For some unclear reasons, Jingkong lost the support of the Buddhist clergy in Taiwan only several years after becoming a monk. In 1967, he moved into the house of a female lay Buddhist named Han Ying 韓鍈 (1922–1997) who

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had previously attended his lectures and he stayed there for 17 years. Han Ying was born in Dalian, Liaoning Province. She moved to Taiwan from Hong Kong with her family in 1951, met Jingkong in 1966 and for the following thirty years she and her family all assisted Jingkong in his religious enterprises. Thanks to her help, Jingkong could continue his teaching in Taiwan and attract a massive following. However, the fact that he did not live in a monastery and that he operated his activities on his own cut him completely off from the major Buddhist organizations in Taiwan. In 1977, Jingkong began to expand his influence in overseas Chinese communities and in 1985 he established a Buddhist Association in Dallas, U.S.A. Since 1988, he has spread his teaching in Singapore and Malaysia. In 1998, his activities reached Australia and he established in 2001 a Pure Land Learning College in Queensland. In recent years he has spent the most part of his time in Hong Kong. In 2016, more than a hundred temples, centers or groups in different countries refer to Jingkong as their master and spread his doctrines and rituals. These entities are independent from each other and form a loose transnational network. By the end of 1980s, Jingkong entered Mainland China at a time when Buddhism just started its revival. At first, he mainly continued giving away books (mainly Buddhist classics) and preaching the doctrines of the Pure Land School. In the mid 1990s, his followers started sponsoring Buddhist institutions in the PRC. Texts of his lectures and audio-visual material (tapes, videotapes, DVDs) were distributed at many Buddhist sites and attracted millions of Chinese. Before the Beijing government decided to contain Jingkong’s action in 2008 (probably by fear of its capacity to mobilize people), the material popularizing his teachings was the most popular in PRC temples12 to the extent that he became one of the most important Buddhist figures outside of the official Buddhism, thus impacting the whole Buddhist ecology in the PRC.13 His experiences of preaching Buddhism abroad made Jingkong become keenly aware of the significance of cultural identification for overseas Chinese. Therefore, he began to incorporate elements associated with “traditional culture,” especially those ethical discourses concerning respect for the master and filial piety, into his preaching. This gradually transformed his image and from

12  Gareth Fisher, “Morality Texts and the Re-Growth of Lay Buddhism in China,” in Religion in Contemporary China: Tradition and Innovation, ed. Adam Yuet Chau (London: Routledge Press, 2011), 53–80. 13  Sun Yanfei, “The Chinese Buddhist Ecology in Post-Mao China: Contours, Types and Dynamics” Social Compass 58 (4) (2011): 498–510.

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a pure Buddhist monk he turned into a spokesman for Chinese traditional culture. In this context, Dizigui was endowed with a new layer of meaning. Jingkong’s strategy was to re-assess and redefine texts that could qualify as core “classics” of traditional Chinese culture. For this purpose, he highlighted the unity of Chinese culture even though it is composed of three core elements, namely Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism; then, he identified within each of these three traditions a text deemed “fundamental classic.” The Dizigui, that focuses on filial piety and respect for the elders and teachers was the chosen candidate to represent Confucianism whereas the Taishang ganying pian (太上 感應篇, Treatise of the Exalted One on Action and Response) embodied Daoism and the Shi shanyedao jing (十善業道經, Discourse on the Ten Wholesome Ways of Action), preaching the ten virtues such as “not kill living beings,” Buddhism.14 The reason why these three texts are considered “classics” is not their intellectual depth but the centrality of the values they express and their elementary status in the whole traditional Chinese moral education. In other words they are supposed to constitute the “roots” (gen 根) of Chinese culture. Even though the scholarly world would certainly not give the same credit to these short and simple texts—primers such as the Dizigui were indeed never considered classics in the past—Jingkong firmly believes in the primacy of the “root”: […] Confucianism, Buddhism, Daoism are three in one and complementary to each other, they constitute Chinese traditional culture. Since ancient times, these three teachings are just outside forms, they are by nature identical in their contents. Everyone should study the three, and a “rooted” (zhagen 紮根) education should be composed of these three classics, that is, Dizigui, Taishang ganying pian, and Shi shanyedao jing. They should be studied at the same time so that the root be deep and solid. This is the root for becoming a saint or a sage (the goal for Buddhists is to become bodhisattva and buddha). Without this root, no matter how hard you study or make progress, you will never succeed.15 Among the three fundamental classics, Dizigui is the “ultimate foundation” since, the prerequisite for becoming a saint or a sage, a buddha or a bodhisattva is first to be a man of virtue knowing how to conduct himself. According 14  Sometimes Jingkong would add to this list Liaofan’s Four Lessons (Liaofan sixun 了凡四 訓) that is a collection of moral exhortations given by Yuan Liaofan 袁了凡 (1533–1606), a Ming-dynasty scholar and Buddhist, to his descendents. 15  Jingkong 淨空, “Wuliangshou jing jinghua” 無量壽經菁華, 8. 2009, accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.amtb.org.tw/baen/jiangtang.asp?web_choice=2&web_rel_index=2152.

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to Jingkong, this education starts within the family and Dizigui represents the essence of the Chinese family education. During China’s five thousand years of history, what did contribute to those long periods of order and stability? It was the family. Every family educated its children properly so that they became well-mannered! Dizigui is about family rules. One must study it starting at a young age and never give it up. […] In ancient times, the achievements of the practitioners in Buddhist sites were exceptional. How come? Honestly speaking, those who followed the Buddha were very well trained and knew a lot about family principles and rules, so they had sound roots, [… in the end] every generation produced respectable people.16 More importantly, Dizigui provides not only basic concepts but also concrete behavioral rules for different situations. This is precisely where the incomparable importance of Dizigui lies for Jingkong. He argued that “learning from Confucianism” (xueru 學儒), that is, taking Dizigui as the guide for action and “applying” (luoshi 落實) it in daily life, was different from the type of “Confucian learning” (ruxue 儒學) favored by secular scholars. For him, practicing was as important as, or even more important than mastering theory: Even some famous professors did not believe it and came to ask me why I advocated Dizigui. There are Four Books and Five Classics or Thirteen Classics in Confucianism, why not choose others but this one? My explanation is simple: let’s weigh them on a balance: On this side we have a 1,080 characters-long copy of the Dizigui; on the other side is this big pile composed of the Four Books and Five Classics, the Thirteen Classics, the Complete Library in Four Divisions (Siku quanshu 四庫全書) … but the two sides are of the same weight! They were dumbfounded—how could they be of the same weight? I told them that this point had been well expounded by our ancestors. The purpose of the Four Books and Five Classics, the Thirteen Classics, the Complete Library in Four Divisions is erudition, prudent questioning and thinking, knowledge about right and wrong. But the Dizigui serves the aim of practicing persistently (duxing

16  Jingkong 淨空, “Xiu huayan aozhi wangjin huanyuan guan” 修華嚴奧旨妄盡還源 觀, 100. 2009, accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.amtb.tw/baen/dwfile.asp?web_ file=http://www.amtb.tw/12/12-047-0100.xml.

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Ji 篤行).

If you have studied this big pile of texts but have not practiced them, this means nothing. And they are not as good as Dizigui!17

Jingkong used the same practice-centered argument to criticize the “movement for the reading of the classics by children” (ertong dujing yundong 兒童讀經運動) that is also very influential in Chinese societies and initiated by the Taiwanese scholar Wang Caigui 王財貴.18 In his opinion, this movement primarily focused on the Four Books and Five Classics and also included other Classics from other schools of thoughts, but ignored Dizigui. The result is that young children are capable of rote memorization of large quantities of texts but become arrogant and look down upon their parents and teachers. This kind of learning neglects the two core values of Confucianism: filial piety (xiao 孝) towards parents and respect (jing 敬) for teachers. Hence Jingkong believed that the intention of this movement was good, but that it was wrong in procedure since it did not start from the “root.”19 Establishing Dizigui as the fundamental classic of Confucianism and Chinese culture, Jingkong also connected Dizigui and Buddhism, and especially the Pure Land School through the link of filial piety. All good dharma come from filial piety, all good dharma. Buddhist dharma is also based on the way of filial piety.20 What Buddha teaches shares the same root with our traditional culture. What is it? It is filial piety. […] Filial piety comes first among all goods. It is the starting point for an ordinary person who wants to become a buddha. Why? The first virtue for becoming a buddha is filial piety. The principles that our Pure Land School practices to attain the expected state are “three kinds of goodness of pure achievements” (jingye sanfu 淨業三福) taught by Shakyamuni 17  Jingkong 淨空, “Jingtu dajingjie yanyi” 淨土大經解演義, 300. 2011, accessed December 10, 2017. https://edu.hwadzan.com/play/02/39/1/239263. 18  On Wang Caigui and his educative projects, see Guillaume Dutournier, “Les écoles familiales en Chine continentale et à Taiwan,” Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident 33 (2011): 172–210; Billioud and Thoraval, Le Sage et le peuple, 65–66; as well as Dutournier’s contribution to this volume. 19  Jingkong 淨空, “Chuantong jiaoyu de zhongyaoxing (Jingzong xueyuan zhi er)” 傳統教 育的重要性 (淨宗學院之二), 2004, accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.amtb.tw/ baen/jiangtang.asp?web_choice=67&web_rel_index=859. 20  Jingkong 淨空, “Wuliangshou jing jinghua.”

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Buddha in Amitayurdhyana Sutra (Guan wuliangshoufo jing 觀無量壽 These three items and eleven sentences are our highest guiding principles. The first sentence is “To love and take care of parents, respect teachers, be pitiful and do not kill, practice ten virtues.” You see, the first sentence means that filial piety is the first of all virtues. If one practices filial piety to perfection, one will become a buddha. […] Can someone not respecting his parents learn Buddhism? No, there is no such case.21

佛經).

One needs to underscore here that what filial piety maintains is by nature the hierarchical order and the patrilineal continuity of a family or a clan. Buddhism, by contrast, rejects fundamentally any attachment to worldly social relationship and treats all beings as equal. In order to re-conciliate these two different ethic principles, Jingkong transforms the concept of parents (father and mother) in the Dizuigui into a metaphor: every living creature is a “parent” for a Buddhist. In this way, Confucian filial piety is translated into Buddhist compassion. Students should practice well the Dizigui. […] The first sentence of Dizigui is “when parents call us, act without delay.” If it is other people who call me, can I be slow and indifferent? No. This is an example showing that we should treat all living creatures as our parents. We should respect all living creatures as we respect our parents. This can be found in the teaching of Mahayana Buddhism. In the Brahmajala Sutra ([Fanwang] pusajie jing, [梵網]菩薩戒經), Buddha explains very clearly that “all men are my fathers, all women are my mothers.” It is only when we treat all men and women as our parents that we can practice filial piety. Filial piety is the basis of all dharma, the ultimate foundation. […] The highest state of filial piety is in the Buddhist teaching. […] When we see a fly or an ant or a mosquito, it is the same as when we see our parents.22 Furthermore, Jingkong regarded Dizigui and Shi shanyedao jing as the two sides of a same coin. According to him, Dizigui is even superior since Shi shanyedao jing does not tell how to act while Dizigui can be concretely applied. It helps to “practice” (xiuxing 修行) in the Buddhist sense of the term.

21  Jingkong 淨空, “Xiu huayan aozhi wangjin huanyuan guan.” 22  Jingkong 淨空, “Xuefo dawen (da Xianggang canxue tongxiu zhi jiushier)” 學佛答問 (答香港參學同修之九十二), 2008, accessed December 10, 2017. https://www.youtube .com/watch?v=QFg4tCbjSJM.

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How to practice filial piety and the respect of teachers? Just practice Dizigui and ten virtues. However, Shi shanyedao jing is too simple in explication and does not go into detail. But Dizigui does. What Dizigui discusses are the ten virtues, explaining them in detail. We can say that Shi shanyedao jing is the outline while Dizigui is about its concretization. If we learn Dizigui really well, we can easily attain the ten virtues, Dizigui and Shi shanyedao jing are one, not two things.23 The basis of Buddhist teaching is in Shi shanyedao jing. It says that one should not kill living creatures. Not to kill is “universal love” ( fan ai zong 泛愛眾). […] If one still has the killing intensions or acts, then one has not achieved universal love. So Dizigui is the application of Shi shanyedao [ jing]. Shi shanyedao [jing] is the guiding principle of Dizigui. If we compare the two, they are exactly the same thing. 24 After finishing reading the sutras in the morning or evening ritual, read Dizigui once. It does not take long. In the morning remind yourself, in the evening examine yourself, you must do it seriously, try to implement it, then it is good. Young people should learn by heart. Once incorrect thoughts arise, Dizigui would jump out to correct your thoughts and actions. This is how to practice Buddhism! […] Every word of Dizigui corresponds to the Buddhist sutras and is not in contradiction with them. […] For example, how to apply Shi shanyedao [jing] is all in Dizigui, without which, Shi shanyedao [jing] is empty. You just don’t know how to practice.25 Hence, Jingkong repeatedly emphasizes that one should regard Dizigui as the commandments (jielü 戒律) of Buddhism or even as the fundamental commandments to follow.26 If one does not start from Dizigui, whatever Buddhist sutra one studies and no matter how long one studies, one will not achieve anything because one “does not have that basis”: “you will fail even if you study 23  Jingkong 淨空, “Wuliangshou jing jinghua.” 24  Jingkong 淨空, “Dafangguangfo huayanjing (di 1358 juan)” 大方廣佛華嚴經 (第1358卷), 2005, accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.amtb.tw/baen/dwfile.asp?web_file=http:// www.amtb.tw/12/12-017-1358.xml. 25  Jingkong 淨空, “Huajie yiqie zainan de genben xiuxing dafa” 化解一切災難的根本 修行大法, in Qiantan qingnian yingyou de meide: xiao yu jieyin 淺談青年應有的美 德——孝與戒淫, ed. Zhong Maosen 鐘茂森, 2005, 84–95. Accessed December 10, 2017. www.amtb.org.tw/pdf/2005_01.pdf‎. 26  Jingkong 淨空, “Da Xianggang canxue tongxiu zhi wushisan” 答香港參學同修之五十 三, 2006, accessed December 10, 2017. http://edu.hwadzan.com/play/21/348.

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for three hundred years.”27 “Without Dizigui, all your lifelong efforts would amount to nothing.”28 3

Building Platforms: Cultural Center, Forum, and Temple

3.1 Lujiang Center of Cultural Education Through a collection of concepts such as “taking root,” “applying,” “learning from Confucianism,” “practicing Buddhism,” etc., Jingkong brings forth an anti-intellectual and practice-oriented moral discourse, and establishes a link between filial piety and Buddhist salvation. This discourse does not limit itself to religious teaching and individual self-cultivation. It also refers to a project of transformation, that is, to solve the problems of social crisis and natural disasters through forming saints and sages and enabling a moral renewal. Jingkong divides education into four types: family, school, social and religious.29 According to him, religion—as what is meant in its Chinese term zongjiao 宗教—is itself a “major education.” It attaches more importance to ethics, morality and karma. Religion must return to education that is more important than prayers and rituals, as education can solve fundamentally the crisis faced by humanity. Based on Buddhist conceptions, he argues that the root of all political upheavals, natural disasters, and human misfortunes lies in the problem of the human heart, in other words, “the human heart has turned bad” and lost “love” (ai 愛). The purpose of all religions is to cultivate “love” (it can be expressed with different terms according to different traditions). Where does love come from then? Jingkong states that the prototype of all forms of love is the love between parents and children: Love has to find its origin and develop itself from there. Our ancestors possessed wisdom. They tell us […] the origin is “the affection between father and son” (fuzi youqin 父子有親) in the five ethic principles (wulun 27  Jingkong 淨空, “Chuantong jiaoyu de zhongyaoxing (Jingzong xueyuan zhi er)” 傳統教 育的重要性 (淨宗學院之二), 2004, accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.amtb.tw/ baen/jiangtang.asp?web_choice=67&web_rel_index=859. 28  Jingkong 淨空, “Xuefo dawen (Aozhou Jingzong xueyuan zhi san)” 學佛答問 (澳洲淨 宗學院之三), 2004, accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.amtb.tw/baen/jiangtang. asp?web_choice=38&web_rel_index=851. 29  Jingkong 淨空, “Zongjiao jiaoyu wei jinshi suo bixu” 宗教教育為今世所必須, 2010, accessed December 10, 2017. http: //www.amtb.tw/pdf/EB21-19-01.pdf; Jingkong 淨空, “Zongjiao jiaoyu jiejiu weiji: jianli shijie zongjiao shengcheng de gouxiang” 宗教教育 解救危機: 建立世界宗教聖城的構想, 2012, accessed December 10, 2017. ftp://tw2 .hwadzan.com/fabo/pdf/CH48-21-01.pdf.

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Ji 五倫). “Father and son” means “parents and children.” This love is natural.

[…] Until one year old, a child can neither speak nor walk. […] His parents love him and he loves his parents. Love can be observed here. It flows from his nature and no one teaches him. So the ancient people discovered and perceived how to keep this love eternally. This is the expression of natural virtue. How can this love change and degenerate with age? It is because it receives bad influences and temptations from the outside and this changes its nature. Therefore, the function of education is nothing but to preserve the love between father and son forever.30

Then, Dizigui, which is about filial piety, became naturally the key element in all the four types of education, from family education to religious education: Where to start? From Dizigui. It is to rescue the root, to rediscover the origin of “love,” “the affection between father and son.” To find life here, “the affection between father and son” is the beginning of life. […] Dizigui is not long, […] 1,080 characters in total. You apply every word and then your root will be revived. Then you can learn worldly or other-worldly dharma and you will find its miraculous effect. Especially in this great era of disasters, men or women, whatever their age, by fully applying Dizigui can avoid worldly misfortunes, get of rid of bad karma, cultivate happiness and wisdom, improve themselves and others. Hope everyone will never ignore this! 31 With these considerations, Jingkong started in the middle of the 1990s to promote the teaching of Dizigui firstly in Taiwan and in the South East Asian Chinese diaspora. At that time, Yang Shufen 楊淑芬 and Cai Lixu 蔡禮旭 were two main lay disciples in charge. The DVDs of their lectures and their lecture notes still remain the fundamental teaching material in the PRC.32 In 2003, they transplanted their enterprise to mainland China, establishing the “Xiaolian (孝廉, filial piety and uprightness) Enlightenment Center of Chinese National Studies” (xiaolian guoxue qimeng zhongxin 孝廉國學啟蒙中心) in Haikou, the success of which greatly heartened Jingkong. Between 2004 and 30  Jingkong 淨空, “Huajie yiqie zainan de genben xiuxing dafa,” 90–91. 31  Ibid, 94–95. 32  For example, Dizigui jiangjie (弟子規講解) that Yang taught at Pure land Learning College in Australia in 2002; 65 episodes of Dizigui jiangjie of Yang recorded at the Educational TV station of Liaoning Province in 2009; Xingfu rensheng jiangzuo: xijiang Dizigui 幸福 人生講座——細講弟子規 that Cai taught in Taiwan and Dizigui yu fojiao de xiuxue 弟 子規與佛教的修學 that Cai taught at Pure Land Learning College in Australia in 2005.

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2005, Jingkong set up a “Center of Cultural Education” (wenhua jiaoyu zhongxin 文化教育中心) in his hometown of Tangchi in Lujiang county, Anhui Province and this operation was directed by Cai and Yang. Dizigui constituted the core of their teaching and practice, even though they also mingled many elements of Buddhism. By creating the Center they had two major objectives: firstly, to recruit members nationwide and train them to become the “seed teachers” (zhongzi jiaoshi 種子教師) of traditional culture, or even “saints and sages” or “bodhisattvas;” secondly, to use Dizigui to transform the minds and life habits of local people and to transform Tangchi into an ideal society based on the “traditional cultural” order. The efforts of Jingkong seemed to have achieved an enormous success. Only within two or three years, Tangchi had become the model of the “Confucian society” known across the country. Every year, thousands of admirers of Chinese traditional culture went there for pilgrimage. 33 Today we may say that the Center epitomized Jingkong’s success in the PRC. During this period, he was not only recognized by many Buddhists, but also regarded as an emblematic figure of the revival of Confucian culture, a role he did enjoy playing. At the World Conference on Sinology in Beijing and then at the International Confucian Association in Shanghai in 2007, he emphasized repeatedly the actual significance of traditional culture represented by Dizigui and the distinction between “learning from Confucianism” and “Confucian learning.” However, in the middle of 2008, the Beijing government unexpectedly ordered to shutdown Jingkong’s Lujiang Center34 and subsequently Jingkong was even forbidden to enter the PRC. Certainly, from a general point of view, 33  For a detailed study on Jingkong and his center in Lujiang, see Guillaume Dutournier and Ji Zhe, “Social Experimentation and ‘Popular Confucianism’: The Case of the Lujiang Cultural Education Center,” China Perspectives 4 (2009): 67–80. 34  More precisely, this Center has been transferred into the hands of the local government and still maintains some small-scale teaching activities. However, it can no longer recruit teachers nationwide or appear in media. The reason for this shutdown is not clear. In the course of fieldwork, some people active in the network of Jingkong told me that a disciple had a conflict with Jingkong and denounced him to the Chinese central government saying that he was hostile to the communist regime. This cannot be proved. But some elements deserve our attention such as the Nationalist Party background of Jingkong and his family, the mobilization capability of his doctrines and his organization in mainland China, Jingkong’s strong interest in politics and his comments (he often claims that traditional culture is the key to resolve political and social problems of China), some amount of opposition to Jingkong’s doctrines within the PRC Buddhist circle, especially from religious leaders of Pure Land School. Taking all these elements into account, it is not surprising that Jingkong’s activities raised the suspicion of the Chinese central government. This being said, I nevertheless think that the government is aware that Jingkong is completely conservative and collaborative in politics.

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this repression was rather prudent and low-key. The advertising materials of Jingkong were tacitly allowed to circulate in the PRC and the specific Pure Land practice promoted by Jingkong was not forbidden.35 More importantly, Dizigui was not denounced by the government following Jingkong’s departure. The discourse of using Dizigui to reform human mind and society created by Jingkong was widely accepted and continued to stimulate new practices. On the one hand, as we mentioned above, many individuals and social organisms that have no direct relationship with Jingkong—and this even includes some governmental institutions—have begun to borrow the discourse of Jingkong to popularize Dizigui out of different motivations (moral, economic and political). On the other hand, the followers of Jingkong in the PRC have begun to build new “platforms” (pingtai 平臺) of action after the dissolution of the Lujiang Center. 3.2 Forums of Traditional Culture The first platform was materialized by the creation of a “forum” (luntan 論壇). After the shutdown of the Lujiang Center, a group of entrepreneurs and teachers who have studied there decided to get together and establish in December 2008 an “Entrepreneurs’ Exchange Conference” (qiyejia jialiuhui 企業家交流 會) in Qingdao (Shandong Province). At this conference, the supporters or followers of Jingkong, such as Hu Xiaolin 胡小林, Liu Yuli 劉余莉 and Zhou Yongbin 周永彬 delivered speeches, whose topics remained centered on Dizigui and traditional culture. This activity that did not attract much attention at that time created later on a decentralized model for promoting Dizigui. It was approved by most entrepreneurs present at the Qingdao conference, among whom some from Tangshan (Hebei Province) who then held a similar one. Several months later, in July 2009, Chen Jingyu 陳靜瑜, a female entrepreneur from Dalian, who had close contact with Jingkong’s network, invited Chen Dahui 陳大慧 to set up a similar forum in Dalian, named “Public Welfare Lecture of Traditional Culture” (chuantong wenhua gongyi jiangzuo 傳統文化 公益講座). Chen had played a part in the activities organized in Qingdao and Tangshan but was not the main organizer. With the Dalian forum, he was provided a stage to launch a series of “forums of traditional culture” (chuantong wenhua luntan 傳統文化論壇). Later on, “forum” became the official title of this type of activities. It was also in this forum that Chen brought forth the slogan “Uphold Chinese traditional culture and be a Chinese with morality” 35  See, for instance, Xie Yanqing 謝燕清, “Sanshi xinian yu Jingkong pai jushi daochang: yi Linjiang Jingkong pai mou jushi daochang weili” 三時繫念與淨空派居士道場——以 臨江淨空派某居士道場為例, Zongjiao renleixue 宗教人類學 4 (2013): 182–216.

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(hongyang Zhonghua chuangtong wenhua, zuo you daode de Zhongguoren 弘揚 中華傳統文化, 做有道德的中國人). Since then, this slogan has been appropriated widely in the context of similar activities in China. The 2009 Dalian forum held three conferences, one in a hotel, one in the ancient Dabei Temple (Dabei gusi 大悲古寺) located in Haicheng (Liaoning Province), and one in Dalian’s Anshan Temple (Anshan si 安山寺). Soon after, this type of forum began to flourish across the country, especially in the north of China. According to an informant who participated to the organization of the Dalian forum, more than one hundred similar forums were held between 2009 and 2013. They usually lasted two to four days, and the number of its participants was sometimes several thousands and even reached ten thousand. Some of these forums were broadcasted online. A “forum” is a place where one may express one’s views, listen to others’ and more generally exchange ideas and connect with people sharing similar interests. The prominent speakers are particularly important as they devise new discussion topics, attract wide audiences and guide exchanges. Among the “teachers” attending the forum of traditional culture, Chen Dahui and his team are certainly the most famous. Chen was a former presenter at CCTV before working as an independent TV producer. Around 2005, he got into contact with Buddhists and started to make documentaries in order to promote Buddhism and traditional culture. In 2006, he interviewed Jingkong. It resulted in a 570-minute long documentary entitled “Harmony will Overcome Crisis” (Hexie zhengjiu weiji 和諧拯救危機) that was composed of seven parts. This film propagated the ideals of Jingkong and his social experiments in Tangchi and was distributed free of charge at many Buddhist sites. It was officially released in the PRC in 2008 and attracted a lot of attention.36 Since 2009 and after a successful experience in Dalian, Chen started to manage the “Public Welfare Forum of Chinese Traditional Culture” (Zhonghua chuantong wenhua gongyi luntan 中華傳統文化公益論壇). He possesses exceptional skills in speaking and organizing. His forum has gone beyond the simple model of “lecture” and stages speeches from and exchanges with people whose lives have been changed by the Dizigui and traditional culture. Among the teachers in his “reporting team” (baogao tuan 報告團), many were those who had felt “called” to teach after attending prior sessions of the forum. They include a girl born in the 1990s who used to suffer from severe depression, the rakehell son of a rich family who was expelled from thirteen different schools, but also former mafia bosses, billionaires, bribed doctors and peasants whose unscrupulous use of 36  Afterwards, Chen filmed the second and third series of “Harmony will Overcomes Crisis” in 2008 and 2011.

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chemicals had put the lives of urbanites in danger. They all explained publicly how Dizigui and traditional culture had helped them to understand the truth about life, thus transforming their fates. Sometimes, the forum made it possible for those who wanted to do so to introduce themselves to the public, along with their families, and explain how their worldview had changed thanks to the influence of Chen and the other teachers. They would for instance confess that they had not been good sons, wives, husbands before and would publicly take the pledge to change. During this process, people within the audience actually exchanged roles with the speakers and the miraculous effect of Dizigui could become striking to everyone. Often, both the speakers and the audience were so emotionally touched that they wept loudly together. The most moving scene was probably staged family reconciliations with couples mutually apologizing for their misdoings to each other, and children kowtowing and repenting in front of their parents. Public witness and repentance constitute major practices during the forums organized by Chen.37 Other forums focus on alternative topics. For example, some emphasize “female virtue” (nüde 女德), that is, the moral rules associated with the social role of women. But all traditional culture forums share common patterns: they are defined as activities promoting public welfare; they are sponsored by entrepreneurs and the attendance is free of charge (with sometimes lunch even provided). In fact, they somewhat resemble Buddhist dharma assemblies ( fahui 法會). However, considering the sensitive nature of Jingkong’s activities in the PRC since 2008, the organizers of the forums more often than not avoid manifesting their link to Jingkong or Buddhism. Usually, they apply for and obtain the authorization of local governments and invite one or several local institutions to act in the capacity of main host. These hosts can be officially recognized social associations (such as “Research Institutes of Traditional Culture”), or official institutions, such as local government’s “offices of spiritual civilization,” women’s associations, public schools and even the Department of Propaganda or the United Front work department of local party committees. In other words, even though there is a core of well-organized teachers and activists structured in several teams within some sort of latent network, the forum has no fixed principal organizers or hosts. It is rather an open space, a discourse platform composed of several loosely connected sites, 37  In 2011, Chen produced a TV series (including six seasons and 48 episodes) titled “Shenxian jiaoyu gaibian mingyun” 聖賢教育改變命運 [The Education of Saint and Sage Changes Destiny], in order to record all these testimonies. See also He Xiongfei 何雄飛, “Yi chanhui de fangshi tui Dizigui: Chen Dahui he ta de ‘eren’ xunjiangtuan 以懺悔的方式 推《弟子規》: 陳大惠和他的‘惡人’巡講團,” Xinzhoukan 新週刊, 320 (2010), accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.neweekly.com.cn/newsview.php?id=2315.

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characterized by the mobility of its personnel and the provisional nature of its activities. 3.3 Ancient Dabei Temple and Anshan Temple Another type of discourse platform is the temple. It enjoys a much clearer status and does not need to avoid the public display of its connection with Jingkong or Buddhism. On the contrary, its legitimacy comes from the spiritual authority of Jingkong and its legal registration as a “religious activity site” (zongjiao huodong changsuo 宗教活動場所). Jingkong does not tonsure monastics as his disciples38 and has never invested in temple construction for his organization in the PRC. Nevertheless, some temples—often new ones set up by lay Buddhists—regard him as their advisor. Major ones include the four temples built by Qi Suping 齊素平 in Zhejiang, Shandong and Gansu provinces, as well as the Ancient Dabei Temple and Anshan Temple in Liaoning Province. Even though they have no formal affiliation to Jingkong’s Pure Land Learning College (such an affiliation would in fact not be authorized by the PRC government), their leaders keep close contact with the group of Jingkong to the point where there are sometimes exchanges of personnel and circulation of capital between the two sides. These temples can be considered parts of the transnational network of Jingkong. In terms of rituals, they all follow the method of “Three times service” (sanshi xinian 三時繫念)39 advocated by Jingkong and emphasize the superiority of Pure Land School over other schools of Buddhism. Besides, they all adopt the discourse strategies of Jingkong, using the rhetoric of “traditional culture,” “morality” and “karma” to combine Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian and other Chinese religious notions and practices. Following Jingkong’s conception, they set up in their temples “memorial halls for worshiping the ancestors bearing all family names 38  That is to say, those who are willing to become monastics and followers of Jingkong must find another ordained Buddhist monk or nun who could act as a nominal master of tonsure. 39  Literally “Apprehending the thought (of Amithaba Buddha) within the Three Divisions of the Day,” this liturgical service integrates sutra recitation, the chanting of Amitabha’s name with repentance ritual. It should, in theory, be carried out at the beginning, in the middle, and at the end of the daytime, with a spirit concentrated on the content of Amithaba Sutra (Amituo jing 阿彌陀經) and the image of Pure Land. Before being reintroduced by Jingkong in Mainland China, this practice was quite popular in some Buddhist circles in Taiwan. Its foundation is often attributed to the monk Zhongfeng Mingben 中峰明本 (1263–1323) in the Yuan Dynasty. However, both the origin and the institutional legitimacy of this service were and are still contested among Buddhists, in the first half of the 20th century and in today’s China. For a case study of this practice in contemporary China, see Xie Yanqing, “Sanshi xinian.”

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of the Chinese nation” (Zhonghua minzu wanxing xianzu jiniantang 中華民族 萬姓先祖紀念堂), and, of course, organize teaching activities based on Dizigui. Comparatively, Qi Suping’s temples mainly carry out Pure Land School rituals, traditional culture classes remain a secondary issue. In contrast, the Ancient Dabei Temple and the Anshan Temple are major strongholds for promoting the teaching of Dizigui publicly. The Ancient Dabei Temple was built in 2001 and is still in expansion. It is a lay Buddhist, Tan Fengtao 譚鳳濤, who organized its construction and is still in charge. In 2016, the temple has around twenty to thirty monks and nuns and 200 to 300 lay Buddhist volunteers work in the temple on a daily basis. Since 2008, it holds a Dizigui class, also called “Qiande (謙德, meaning modesty and virtue) Dizigui School” for children and teenagers. There are two classes in this boarding school, one for girls and the other for boys, each enrolling 30 to 50 students. Curricula are highly flexible and students may attend short sessions (one week or more) or stay for much longer periods of time, up to a few years in special cases. Teachers explain that many of the students are children encountering difficulties at school or family problems. Their parents have lost faith in the compulsory education system and send them here to experience alternative pedagogical approaches. As for the teachers, their activities are not limited to the temple but they also take part in traditional culture activities organized in various places. When I visited the temple in 2011, I noticed that at least two of them came from the aforementioned Lujiang Center. The life in the school is rather intense: from Monday to Saturday, students study Dizigui for two hours in the morning under the instructions of their teachers. In the afternoon, except for a few classes of music and Chinese painting, they mainly focus on reading and reciting classics. Everyday after dinner, they watch DVDs on traditional culture for an hour and a half. In 2012, the Ancient Dabei Temple expanded its Dizigui school and set up a “Qiande Institute (xueyuan 學院) of Traditional Culture.” It is composed of two divisions, one for four to six years old, and the other for children above six. This school is permanently open and enrollment is possible at anytime. During summer vacations, the temple also holds Dizigui summer classes (shuqiban 暑期班) or summer camps (xialingying 夏令營) that usually last five to seven days and primarily focus on the Dizigui and the Taishang ganying pian. Parents often accompany their children and the total number of participants can easily reach 200 to 300 people. All sorts of rituals, study sessions and activities are organized during these camps: military-inspired drills and other bodily exercises, collective recitations, bowing rituals, action songs. But the apex of the summer camp is probably the closing ceremony when children kneel down on

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figure 2.2 Children in front of the Ancient Dabei Temple who have enrolled in a summer class dedicated to the study of the Dizigui. © Ji Zhe, 2011

figure 2.3 A class of girls studying the Dizigui, Ancient Dabei Temple. The portrait of Confucius and big characters—ai 愛 (love), xiao 孝 (filial piety), ti 悌 (fraternity) and zhong 忠 (loyalty)—are posted on the classroom wall. © Ji Zhe, 2011

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the floor in front of their parents and wash their feet. This activity is collective and well ritualized and parents and children are often moved to tears and cry in each other’s arms. During this symbolic and climactic moment they become emotionally reconciled thanks to this display of filial piety. In order to both overcome the problem of lack of teachers and continue the expansion of its teaching activities, the Ancient Dabei Temple runs every year since 2010 “Training Classes for Teachers” recruiting 40 to 100 people each time. The originally three months long training period was expanded to six months in 2012. Like the Lujiang Center, this type of program provides free accommodation and gives priority to young people with teaching experiences. In addition, the temple also has classes for women, advocating “female virtues.” In 2013, the Ancient Dabei Temple opened a weekly session called “Learning Class for the Education of Civil Morality” (gongmin daode jiaoyu xuexiban 公民道德教育學習班) designed for adults. Of course, in spite of the presence of the word “civil” in its name, this class has nothing to do with civil rights, but focuses on teaching filial piety, good manners, vegetarianism, etc. Its teaching materials include Dizigui, Taishang ganying pian, and interpretations of the Dizigui by Cai Lixu and Zhong Maosen 鐘茂森, both of them being disciples of Jingkong. For the time being, the Ancient Dabei Temple is the largest site teaching and promoting Jingkong’s version of the Dizigui in the PRC. With its training classes for teachers, the Ancient Dabei Temple to some extent perpetuates the model of the Lujiang Center. The difference is that the activities of the Ancient Dabei Temple are limited within a legal “religious activities site” without ambition of transforming the local community into a model society. In comparison with the Ancient Dabei Temple, the Anshan temple is smaller. Its Dizigui class for young people recruits at most about 40 students. Its activities usually take place during weekends and last two to three days. Due to the lack of stable teaching staff and because the two major lay Buddhist leaders have their own secular careers, Anshan Temple does not propose a range of regular educational and training programs. But it can sometimes adopt innovative methods, for example inviting some well-known teachers to give lectures or organize activities focusing on practical issues such as the use of Dizigui in one’s professional life. There are exchanges and collaborations between Ancient Dabei Temple and Anshan Temple. Since leaders and teachers are all lay Buddhists, they also participate in various forums of traditional culture held in Northeast China. Similarly, some of their students and families who participated in classes and camps also volunteer for the forums. All in all, even though forums and temples constitute two types of platforms, all the people involved share a same reference to an authoritative figure (Jingkong), similar public objectives (upholding

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figure 2.4 The portrait of Confucius in the Dizigui classroom of the Anshan Temple, behind several covered Buddhist statues. © Ji Zhe, 2013

traditional culture and training moral citizens), similar discursive strategies (Dizigui is the root and must be applied seriously) as well as textual resources (Dizigui and relevant materials), a number of ritual techniques (recitation, kowtow and feet-washing, etc.), behavioral norms (vegetarianism, rituals, disciplines regarding the relationship between teachers and students, men and women, young people and the elderly), and a symbolic system (the portrait of Master Jingkong and his calligraphy, the statue of Confucius, Confuciansounding slogans, etc.). Together they form a discourse community. 4

Appropriating Virtue: Why Dizigui Matters for Buddhists

Michel Foucault has pointed out the productive dimension of discourse.40 Norman Fairclough has also underscored how discourses can concurrently construct social identities, social relations and systems of knowledge and 40  Michel Foucault, Histoire de la sexualité, vol. I (Paris: Gallimard, 1976); “Entretien avec M. Fontana,” in Dits et écrits, vol. III, Michel Foucault (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 140–160;

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belief.41 Such a view can be supported by the case discussed above. Thanks to the discourse created by Jingkong on Dizigui, the social actors involved reconstruct both their self-identification narratives when carrying out practices (such as self-reflection, confession, repentance) and their understanding of social norms and cosmological orders (considered to be based on filial piety, respect and karma). They also re-establish social relations, especially within the family. At the same time, discourses translate into a subsequent power distribution. In fact, the revival of Dizigui is a continuous process of production of “masters (teachers)” and “disciples (students).” However, the productive force of discourse is not limited to this aspect. The analysis above has not tackled an important question for our case: why has Dizigui—a Confucian primer—been valued and worshipped as a fundamental classic by Buddhists? If we start from a functionalist approach or from the religious market model based on individual psychology, we first notice that people’s enthusiasm about the Dizigui has something to do with the moral crisis of contemporary China. In a society where people are haunted by the corruption of public power, the commercialization of human relations, the tensions between generations and the loss of trust, the Dizigui provides principles for thinking and behaving that are sanctified by “tradition” and that can be easily applied in daily life. Therefore by providing these spiritual goods the Jingkong group satisfies the “demands” of the religious market. This explanation, by locating the phenomenon of Dizigui in the context of social and psychological evolution, unveils one dimension of the problem. Moreover, it matches the self-understanding of certain actors advocating Dizigui. However, this explanation pays little attention to the structural dynamic that blurs the assumed boundary between Confucianism and Buddhism. In order to understand the particular logic of such a discourse construction, it seems to me that one should not limit oneself to psychological and moral factors but also take into account the relationships between various Buddhist groups as well as their respective positioning, the relationship between Buddhism and society, and the specific effects produced by the Dizigui discourse on these relationships. First, the teaching of Dizigui ascribes to lay Buddhists the qualification of “teachers” and the power to supervise temples. This subverts the absolute authority of the Buddhist clergy (sangha) over lay Buddhists. In a former study, I point out that the authority of the clergy over lay Buddhists is based upon the monopoly of both intellectual and moral virtues. On the one hand, “Non au sexe roi,” in Dits et écrits, vol. III, Michel Foucault (Paris: Gallimard, 1994), 256–269. 41  Norman Fairclough, Discourse and Social Change (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992).

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Buddhism as the “Buddha’s teaching” is a body of knowledge about cosmology and human life. To become a monastic not only means to become a student, a master and a preacher of such a knowledge but also to worship it as the sacred truth. The consequence of this lifelong commitment to Buddhism is that the clergy has the utmost authority in interpreting Buddhist wisdom. On the other hand, becoming a monastic also means renouncing family life and secular desires in order to live an individual or collective ascetic life. Renouncement, asceticism, and secluded life constitute the backbone of the clergy’s moral superiority over lay people. Even though a lay person can study Buddhism and act in accordance with its precepts outside of the monastery, his or her religious achievements in the secular world remain “incomplete” and incomparable with the situation of people who “left the family” (chujia 出家). In fact, once a person is tonsured, especially after being ordained as a full monk or nun, he or she will be respected as a “master” and obtain once and for all a religious status superior to the one of lay believers and this as long as he or she can maintain, at least in appearance, the practice of celibacy and vegetarianism. In this context, the teaching of Dizigui opens a new power arena within Buddhism and breaks the rule of the superiority of the clergy over lay Buddhists. In a discursive space focusing on filial piety and family relations, Buddhist clerics have no specific advantage and are hardly in a position to speak. It is logical that the teachings of Dizigui are organized and performed by lay Buddhists. These teachings can easily win the trust of the followers and provide a certain authority in knowledge and morality. This authority and the associated power of mobilization, may even undermine the authority of the clergy. In the Ancient Dabei Temple, monastics attend a number of collective activities in the Dizigui school, but they play a secondary role or are just part of the audience without any authority to speak. Tan, the Director of the school, is only a lay Buddhist and the temple has a nominal monastic master. But in reality, it is Tan who has absolute authority over the clergy and is the highest leader of the whole temple. In Anshan temple, the clergy and the lay Buddhists officially belong to the same temple and cooperate for their activities. Nevertheless, the lay Buddhist organization is in fact completely independent and the clergy does not monitor its training programs on traditional culture. In these two places, we do not have the scenario usually encountered in large monasteries where the clergy leads lay people.42 The role of lay Buddhists is no longer limited to “dharma protectors” (hufa 護法), that is, to be the assistants of the clergy or intermediaries between the clergy and non-Buddhists or less 42  Zhang Hengyan 張恒豔, “Beijing Guanghuasi de hufa zuzhi he jushi shenghuo” 北京廣 化寺的護法組織和居士生活, Zongjiao shehuixue 宗教社會學 3 (2014): 90–104.

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committed Buddhists. Instead they become teachers and their leader is the leader of the whole temple including the clergy. Therefore, it is not surprising that this prevailing position of lay Buddhists does not develop in large traditional monasteries, but only in new sites where the intervention of traditional clergy is weak. Nevertheless, for lay Buddhists, a certain initial “capital” is needed to develop a new power arena and new discourse topics. In Ancient Dabei Temple and Anshan Temple, such a capital is the endorsement of the Dizigui by Jingkong, a renowned Buddhist leader. In this sense, Jingkong opens interstices within the Buddhist field for the development of a new lay Buddhist movement independent from the clergy.43 At the same time, it is noticeable that Jingkong himself is also empowered by the Dizigui discourses that provide him and this network with an advantageous position in relation to other Buddhist forces. We know that Jingkong was originally marginalized in the Buddhist field of Taiwan. He first began to create some room for his activities thanks to “Buddhist education” and Pure Land Teaching. Then, the use of the Dizigui enabled him to expand “Buddhist education” to the “education of saints and sages,” the “education based on traditional culture,” and, in the end, a kind of universalistic “moral education.” In this way he bypassed the usual games of the distribution of resources and power within Buddhism. These games consist mostly in the competition between lineages to uphold their reputation, in the quantity of temples constructed, the worldly recognition gained through participation in charity, academic and political activities, etc. Whereas the Jingkong group remains challenged by other Buddhist forces regarding its appropriation of Pure Land doctrines and methods, it has obtained some superior discursive authority in the realm of education. Through education, Jingkong integrates his teaching within the grand narratives about the West and the East, tradition and modernity, crisis and salvation. On the one hand, he reinterprets filial piety in the context of Buddhism and turns it into a universal ethic; on the other hand, he uses the metaphor of “taking root” and the rhetoric of applying or “carrying out things with efforts” (lixing 力行) in order to reduce the Buddhist practice to a kind of behavioral mode that can be applied to both clergy and lay people. Strictly speaking, Jingkong does not provide any new value. Nevertheless he has created a new grammar and a new genre to express 43  It must be pointed out that, the means of empowerment by the lay Buddhists of these temples are not limited to the use of Dizigui and the reference to the authority of Jingkong. Xie Yanqing, in his “Sanshi xinian,” notices that the “Three times service” advocated by Jingkong also made it possible for lay Buddhists to obtain the right to preside and supervise rituals.

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classical Buddhist values, which enhance their intelligibility and operability and make it easier to practice them as virtues. This has brought Jingkong a large group of followers. Even suffering from the Chinese government’s dis­ favor since 2008, he keeps his influence strong in the PRC. Lastly, Jingkong blurs the assumed boundaries between different religions, especially between Buddhism and Confucianism, through concepts such as “education,” “ethics” and “karma.” To some extent, this contributes to mitigate the tension between Buddhism and society. In Chinese tradition, the communication and exchange between Buddhism and society are usually limited to regular public rituals (the first and the fifteenth day of each month of the Chinese lunar calendar and during various Buddhist festivals) and religious services (funerals and removal of ill fortune, etc.). Otherwise monastic Buddhism is not very much concerned with the daily life of lay people. In fact, it does not provide any necessary and legitimate means to do so. Because of its doctrine about other-worldly asceticism and the suppression of desires, it tends to present negative perceptions of family, love and marriage. Hence, even though Buddhism has developed complex rules applicable within clergy, it lacks a positive discourse about the organization and the order of the worldly life. Dizigui fills this blank and enables Buddhists to interpret clearly relationships between parents and children, old and young, men and women. Such a discourse about the regulation of family neutralizes the other-worldly orientation of Buddhism: the family becomes the hotbed for nourishing virtue and no longer the negative or forbidden sphere. Due to the universality of family relationships, and especially the relationship between parents and children, Dizigui-inspired moral guidelines are relevant to almost everyone. This enlarges the social base of Buddhism. In those new temples lacking traditional religious resources it is noticeable that the teaching of Dizigui has attracted a large number of parents concerned by the education of their children but who are not necessarily themselves Buddhist believers. Such a phenomenon provides these temples with more “human energy” (renqi 人氣), that is to say, with a larger mobilizational capacity. For the time being, many temples, including some well-known large temples that do not acknowledge the authoritative status of Jingkong, also start to pay attention to the potential of Dizigui for connecting Buddhism and local society. They begin to print and distribute Dizigui and organize Dizigui classes during weekends.44 Comparing with Christianity, C. K. Yang points out that Chinese institutionalized religions, including Buddhism, have limited influence in modern 44  The Guangxiao Temple 光孝寺 in Guanzhou (Billioud and Thoraval 2014, 67–68) is one case among many others.

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Chinese society. Yang mentions the “limitations on the social functions of the priesthood and monastic orders,” the “lack of participation in community charity,” the “lack of participation in secular education,” and the “lack of organized authority over morality.”45 The recycling of Dizigui by Jingkong’s Buddhist activities has, to some extent, overcome these limitations and it is now clear why Dizigui plays such an irreplaceable role in Jingkong’s network. Even though Buddhist and Daoist scriptures such as the Shi shanyedao jing and the Taishang ganying pian have also been listed by Jingkong as fundamental texts of Chinese traditional culture, they do not have the same functions as the Dizigui and they are still far from becoming axes of religious innovation. 5

Concluding Remarks: After Dizigui

In this chapter, I have considered discourse as a key parameter of the religious revival and I have analyzed how discourse innovation generates changes in the religious field. This includes the relationship of believers to themselves and their families, the relationship between teachers and students, between lay Buddhists and the clergy, between Jingkong’s group and other Buddhist forces, between Buddhism and Confucianism, and between Buddhism and society. The result of discursive practices promoted by the Jingkong group is impressive: we witness the emergence of a new form of popular Confucianism or a new form of lay Buddhism and all this simply began with the reinterpretation of a short text of only about one thousand characters. However, the discursive experimentation of Jingkong does not stop there. Since 2010, he has encouraged the promotion of two collections of Chinese ancient texts: Guoxue zhiyao (國學治要, Key Texts of Chinese National Studies,46 7 volumes) and Qunshu zhiyao (群書治要 Key Books on Governance,47 65 volumes) and particularly the latter (Jingkong 2011b). Guoxue zhiyao was compiled by the modern scholar Zhang Wenzhi 張文治 (1898–1956) and originally published in 1930. It is a selection of ancient Chinese masterpieces of philosophy, history and literature. Qunshu zhiyao is composed of excerpts from 65 ancient books of political significance. Ordered by the second emperor of Tang 45  C. K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society: A Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of Their Historical Factors (Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1967), 329–339. 46  The title is translated by Jingkong’s network as Compilation of Chinese Literature on Cultivation. 47  The title is translated by Jingkong’s network as Imperial Compilation of Books on the Principles of Governing.

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Dynasty Li Shimin 李世民 (598–649, reign 626–649), this work was accomplished in 631 by Wei Zheng 魏征 (580–643) and other famous ministers of the time. In recent years, while continuing to promote Dizigui, Jingkong asked his disciples to learn, teach and translate (into Chinese vernacular language and English) Qunshu zhiyao. He repeatedly pointed out that these texts are keys to solve all social and political problems in China and around the world. In 2011, he ordered ten thousand copies of Qunshu zhiyao and distributed them around the world, especially to politicians of the PRC and Taiwan. In order to train enough teachers for transmitting the wisdom of Qunshu zhiyao, he launched a project for founding the Malaysian Academy of Han Studies (Malaixiya hanxueyuan 馬來西亞漢學院) that covers 13 acres in Malaka. Huge buildings have been erected at the end of 2015. According to the plan, this Academy will be capable of enrolling 800 students to learn the “Three teachings of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism” without tuition fees. In a speech delivered in 2012, Jingkong even proposed to build a satellite TV station so as to broadcast uninterruptedly to the world and 24 hours a day the teachings of the Qunshu zhiyao.48 Compared with Dizigui, Guoxue zhiyao and Qunshu zhiyao are obviously targeting cultural and political elites. These texts promote a same Confucian logic of continuity between self-cultivation, family-regulation, state-government and world peace. However, if the mobilizing power of Dizigui consists in its simplicity for learning and its immediate efficiency for application in individual daily life, the two big collections of ancient texts provide challenges in terms of intelligibility and operability of their ideas at an institutional level. But no matter how Jingkong and his followers deal with these problems in the future, a new discursive space is now already emerging.

48  Jingkong 淨空, “Xuexi Qunshu zhiyao, chengdan jiushi shiming” 學習《群書治要》 承擔救世使命, 2012b, accessed December 10, 2017. http://www.amtb.org.tw/jklfs/jklfs. asp?web_amtb_index=43&web_choice=7.

chapter 3

Popular Groups Promoting “The Religion of Confucius” in the Chinese Southwest and Their Activities since the Nineteenth Century (1840–2013): An Observation Centered on Yunnan’s Eryuan County and Environs Wang Chien-Chuan Scholars have held that since the late Qing era, a succession of popular1 Confucian groups have emerged and been preserved in China, for example, Chen Huanzhang’s Confucian Church (kongjiaohui 孔教會) and Zong Shedang’s Confucius Society (Kongshe 孔社). In fact, before these groups existed, there were quite a few other Confucianist groups of this kind in many parts of China, dedicated to passing down Confucian teachings and enlightening the masses. Examples include Sacred Edict halls (Shengyu tang 聖諭堂), focused on the preaching of sacred edicts; and phoenix halls (luan tang 鸞堂), which sought to enlighten the masses through planchette writing (spirit writing). This Confucian (rujia) culture with Confucius at its center penetrated most deeply into China’s rural civil society. However, such groups have been neglected by scholars researching Chinese culture, and even explorers of Rujia culture have turned a blind eye to them. The present study has two objectives: The first is to provide a brief outline of Confucian groups and their activities in Sichuan, Yunnan and other portions of China’s southwest from the late Qing period until 1949, revealing this hidden period in the history of Confucianism, and presenting the infiltration of Rujia culture among the lower-strata masses and the multi-variant

*  Editor’s note (EN): Some discussions in this chapter echo another chapter of the same author translated by Vincent Goossaert elsewhere. The present chapter occasionally borrows Goossaert’s translations of certain expressions, references or short quoted excerpts. See Wang Chien-chuan, “Spirit Writing Groups in Modern China (1840–1937): Textual Production, Public Teachings and Charity,” in Modern Chinese Religion II, eds. Vincent Goossaert, Jan Kiely and John Lagerwey (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015), 651–668. 1  Translator’s note (TN): The Chinese term here, minjian, is in the sense of “folk,” established by private individuals and communities rather than by formal institutions.

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aspects of its dissemination in the frontier regions. The second is to describe Confucian activities under Chinese Communist rule, in particular the revival of Confucianism from the Reform and Opening period until the present, in order to highlight the continuity of Confucian activities over the past century. The data employed include internal documents of these Confucian groups along with field observation data from Yunnan Province’s Eryuan (洱源) County. 2 1

Phoenix Halls and Confucian Religious Groups in Sichuan and other Parts of China’s Southwest in the Late Qing Era

Many people regard Sichuan as the strategic gateway to the Chinese southwest. Sichuan is closely associated with the political and economic activities of southwestern China, and much of the popular culture and religion of the southwest is related to Sichuan. Therefore, in order to clearly understand the phoenix halls and Confucian groups in Xichang 西昌,3 Guizhou, Yunnan and other such localities, it is necessary to begin with the situation in Sichuan. Phoenix halls (luantang 鸞堂 or luantan 鸞壇) are places where groups devoted to spirit writing (fuji 扶乩 or fuluan 扶鸞)—a technique allowing direct communication between humans and deities—congregate and carry out their activities. The basic idea is that a spirit-medium, holding a stick with the shape of a luan-bird (鸞) beak, writes messages in the sand inspired by deities. This method is usually described as “planchette-writing.” By the end of the Empire, spirit-writing activities involved a large number of literati and within the mass of texts produced in that way, many promoted a Confucian ethos. The phoenix halls (luantang 鸞堂), which were established in the midQing period, came in many varieties, but the Tesmple of the Dragon Maiden (Longnü Si 龍女寺) and the Da County Mount Wuling Phoenix Hall (達縣五靈 山鸞堂) were the most influential in the southwest region. The Planchette-Writing Tradition at the Temple of the Dragon Maiden and Its Influence on the Phoenix Halls of China’s Southwest The Temple of the Dragon Maiden (Longnü Si 龍女寺) is located within the borders of Sichuan’s Wusheng County (Wusheng xian 武勝縣, known during 1.1

2  The author carried out two field search studies in the Dali and Eryuan region, the second study gathering the largest amount of material. The general situation of this research was described in a previous paper by the author. See Wang Chien-chuan 王見川, “Yunnan Dali, Eryuan yidai minjian Rujiao kaocha jilüe” 雲南大理、洱源一帶民間儒教考察紀略, Mazu yu minjian xinyang: Yanjiu tongxun 媽祖與民間信仰:研究通訊 6 (forthcoming). 3  T N: The seat of the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture in southern Sichuan Province.

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the Qing dynasty as Dingyuan 定遠 or Dingyi 定邑). As far as we know at present, the Longnü Si began its producing books through planchette-writing at least as far back as the 20th year of the Daoguang period (1840). In a series of increasingly eschatological revelations, Guandi 關帝 attempted to prevent an apocalypses by exhorting people to repent and reform themselves morally.4 According to the Wusheng County New Gazetteer published during the Republican era: In the 37th year of the Sexagenary Cycle in the Daoguang period (1840), the temple carried out efficacious spirit-writing sessions, that resulted in the production of several dozen self-cultivation scriptures, including poetry and prose that could be recited. The temple had couplets on the walls from Guandi’s phoenix book, each of more than ten characters, by one pen. The bold and dancing calligraphy remains. At that time, rebels [Taipings] caused chaos to spread, and Guandi’s oracles instructed to dedicate mighty efforts to reject their devilish ways and self-cultivation as a way to enlighten the people …5 At that time, the Longnü Si was not a Buddhist temple, as explained in a portion of its Mingsheng jing (明聖經 Scripture Illuminating Sageliness), which states, “I don’t abstain permanently from meat.”6 Viewed affirmatively, the Longnü Si was a privately-established planchette-writing association that did not engage in vegetarianism, and may have been a phoenix shrine comprised of Confucians (rujia renshi 儒家人士), that is, of literati. 4  For more detailed explanations on this topic, see Wang Chien-chuan, “Spirit Writing Groups in Modern China (1840–1937),” 651–668. 5  The Republican era Wusheng County New Gazetteer’s entry on the Longnü Si in its Geography Volume; see Wang Chien-chuan 王見川, “Taiwan Guandi dang Yuhuan chuanshuo de youlai” 台灣「關帝當玉皇」傳說的由來, in Hanren zongjiao, minjian xinyang yu yuyan shu de tansuo: Wang Chien-chuan zixuan ji 漢人宗教、民間信仰與預言書的探索：王見川 自選集, ed. Wang Chien-chuan (Taipei: Taiwan Boyang wenhua gongsi, 2008), 416. Some expressions of this translated excerpt are inspired by Vincent Goossaert’s translation of a similar excerpt. See Wang Chien-ch’uan, “Spirit Writing Groups in Modern China (1840– 1937),” 661. 6  The Guansheng dijun mingsheng jing zhujie 關聖帝君明聖經註解 (Annotated Guandi Scripture Illuminating Sageliness) in that paragraph (Gao Tianjun 高天君) states: “Revenging murder can be exempted through vegetarianism. Military officers at war on the battlefield who kill multitudes in performing their duty are still guilty. Through vegetarianism they absolve their wrongs, according to the laughable claims of mediocre persons.” This passage was included in Wang Chien-chuan 王見川 et al., eds. Mingqing minjian zongjiao jingjuan wanxian 明清民間宗教經卷文獻 (Taipei, Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi, 1999), vol. 10.

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This point can also be inferred from phoenix hall (luantang or luantan

鸞壇) works such as Boat of Salvation (Jiusheng chuan 救生船), Roadmap for Returning to One’s Nature (Fanxing tu 返性圖) and Collection on Clarity (Liaoran ji 了然集). Boat of Salvation was written by the Sichuan Shrine of Heroes (Qunying tan 群英壇) in 1860; Roadmap for Returning to One’s Nature was writ-

ten by the Dianxi (Western Yunnan) Hall of Public Goodness (Gongshan tang

公善堂) in 1855; and Collection on Clarity was created by Yunnan’s Diannan (Southern Yunnan) Palace of Assisting Fate (Zanyun gong 贊運宮) in 1866.7

These three phoenix halls (altars) all originated from the Longnü Si; in particular, the Shrine of Heroes, at the time it created the Boat of Salvation, was assisted by planchette-writing personnel from the Longnü Si.8 According to records relating to Boat of Salvation, the Sichuan Shrine of Heroes was comprised of scholars (shiren 士人), as were the Dianxi Hall of Public Goodness and the Diannan Palace of Assisting Fate.9 It can therefore be inferred that the Longnü Si’s planchette-writing cult was also definitely comprised of scholars. It promoted a Confucian ethos and that is why its stated purpose was “setting up public lectures, fostering morality, and educating and transforming ( jiaohua 教化) the ignorant.”10

7  The Boat of Salvation quoted in this chapter is an 1876 reprint by the Beijing Yangyu zhai, with thanks to Professor Xia Danian for providing it, while the Collection on Clarity is collected in the Academica Sinica Institute of History and Philology. The Roadmap for Returning to One’s Nature is a block-printed edition reprinted in 1878 by the Xijin Siguo zhai. The Collection on Clarity is included in Wang Chien-chuan 王見川, Hou Chong 侯沖 et al., eds., Zhongguo minjian xinyang, minjian wenhua jiliao huibian 中國民間信 仰、民間文化資料彙編 (Taipei: Boyang wenhua chuban gongsi, 2013), Vols. 10–11. 8  Vol. 1 of Boat of Salvation records: “In the 37th year of the Sexagenery Cycle [1840], a book divine teachings issuing from eastern Sichuan were admired by all and despised by none, and everyone desired to obtain it. In winter of the 57th year of the Sexagenary Cycle [1860], a certain Wuyuan who had long revered the divine teachings came east, and the disciples sincerely requested his instruction. Fortunately the Divine Lord of Reliable Succor sent down signs, and accordingly an altar was built in that place. Also ordered was the production of a book called the Boat of Salvation” (p. 1). Boat of Salvation is included in Wang Chien-chuan 王見川 et al., eds., Mingqing minjian zongjiao jingjuan wenxian xubian 明清民間宗教經卷文獻續編 (Taipei: Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi, 2006), Vol. 9. 9  Jiusheng Chuan (Boat of Salvation), Vol. 2, Preface by the Divine Lord and Martial Sage (Wusheng Dujun). The Palace of Assisting Fate was comprised of scholars, as inferred from Liaoran ji (Collection on Clarity) mentioning that they did not practice vegetarianism, and that they conducted public lectures and referred to themselves as followers of the “holy religion” (shengjiao, Confucianism). Members of the Hall of Public Goodness were also scholars; see Fanxingtu (Roadmap for Returning to One’s Nature), Vol. 1, 36. 10   Zhilu Baofa 指路寶筏, Vol. 3, Bravery section, “Yuanjue xu yinguo yu” 圓覺敘因果 諭 [Perfect Illumination’s narration on karma],” 605. This book is collected in Wang

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The creators of both Collection on Clarity and Boat of Salvation held that the 1840 planchette-writing rescue activities involved spirit-written revelations being preached in hopes of saving the world by teaching common people about the Five cardinal relationships 五倫 and Eight words 八字, later to become the Eight virtues 八德 (filial piety 孝, brotherliness 弟, faithfulness to one’s lord 忠, trustworthiness 信, ritual propriety 禮, sense of justice 義, honesty 廉, and sense of shame 恥). As its prestige and influence spread far and wide, an important number of other planchette altars appeared that either imitated or wrongly claimed that they were related to the Longnü Si. Besides, hundreds of altars really originating from the Longnü Si also developed in Sichuan, Yunnan and other places. Even the planchette-writing groups popular in the late Qing (such as the various congregations of the Way of Anterior Heaven “Primordial Way”—Xiantiandao 先天道 which was the matrix of sectarian movements such as the Yiguandao) stated in their own phoenix books, such as Precious Raft Showing the Way (Zhilu Baofa 指路寶伐) and Golden Basin of Jade Dew (Yulu Jinpan 玉露金盤), that their altars stemmed from this tradition.11 The Planchette-Writing Activities of Mount Wuling 五靈山 in Da County: The Tradition of the “Ten Completions Society” According to currently available data, after the Guandi planchette-writing world salvation movement in the year 1840 during the Daoguang era (1821–1851), the most noteworthy trend in planchette-writing halls was the establishment of the Mount Wuling Ten Completions Society (Shiquan hui 十全會) in Da County (達縣), Sichuan Province. Some scholars hold that the Ten Completions Society was Sichuan’s leading charity relief organization in the late Qing era. Its activities originally included ten items: establishing schools, setting up public lectures, taking care of widows and orphans, helping all people to get married, delivering people from suffering and hardship, providing disaster relief, supporting the poor, giving generously, being compassionate to the dead (by giving coffins and arranging proper burial) and treasuring all forms of life, which is how it came to be known as the Ten Completions Society.12 Based on the Republican-era Nanchuan County Gazetteer, Japanese scholar Yamada 1.2

Chien-chuan 王見川 et al., eds. Mingqing minjian zongjiao jingjuan wanxian 明清民間 宗教經卷文獻 (Taipei: Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi, 2006), vol.11. 11   Zhilu Baofa 指路寶筏, Vol. 2, 570. Yulu Jinpan 玉露金盤 (Taipei: Wanyou shanshu chubanshe, 1983, reprint), 30. Yulu Jinpan is collected in Wang Chien-chuan 王見川 et al., eds., Mingqing minjian zongjiao jingjuan wanxian 明清民間宗教經卷文獻 (Taipei: Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi, 2006), vol. 5. 12  The Ten Completions Society is a topic of study first noticed by Yamada Masaru; see Yamada Masaru 山田賢著, Yimin de zhixu: Qingdai Sichuan diyu shehuishi yanjiu 移民

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Masaru states that the Ten Completions Society dates back to the fifth year of the Tongzhi era (1866), when Guandi descended through spirit-writing mediums in Mount Wuling.13 According to the Book of the Ten Completions Society (Shiquan hui shu 十全會書), the Ten Completions Society formally established its articles of association in 1867, which supports Yamada Masaru’s statement, but it is still not entirely accurate. According to Volume 4 of Boat of Salvation, engraved in the second year of the Xianfeng era (1852),14 the Ten Completions Society in fact originated in Sichuan at the end of the Ming dynasty, and its founder was Zhang Tianwen 張天文. During the chaos created by the revolt of Zhang Xianzhong (1606–1647) 張献忠15 in Sichuan in the late Ming period, the members of this association all became refugees and survived, and as a result, local residents regarded them as paragons of righteous behavior and disaster avoidance. In 1852, Chen Sheng 陳生 and others reactivated this tradition and joined in organizing again the Ten Completions Society. This was the association’s second founding, for the purpose of providing disaster relief.16 The Ten Completions Society initially founded by Zhang Tianwen, according to what is recorded in the Compendium of Sermons for Public Lecturing (Xuanjiang daquan 宣講大全),17 had two points of emphasis: 1) It came into being for the purpose of saving people from the coming apocalypse; 2) It promoted ten items: strengthening moral family bonds, advising people to remove themselves from debauchery, feeding infants and releasing living creatures, promoting fairness in business dealings, repairing tombs, supporting orphans, giving relief to the poor, cherishing written characters, refraining from litigation and worshipping the gods.

的秩序:清代四川地域社會史研究, trans. Qu Jianwen 曲建文 (Beijing. Beijing zhongyang bianyi chubanshe, 2011), 263–64, 291–92. 13  Yamada Masaru, ibid., 264, 292. Jiusheng chuan, Vol. 4, 12. 14   15  TN: Nicknamed Yellow Tiger, Zhang Xianzhong (1606–1647) led a peasant revolt in Yan’an, Shaanxi Province, and conquered Sichuan in the seventeenth century before being killed by the invading Manchu army. 16  Wang Chien-chuan 王見川, “Qingchao zhongwanqi Guandi xinyang de tansuo: Cong wumiao tanqi” 清朝中晚期關帝信仰的探索:從「武廟」談起, in Jindai de Guandi xinyang yu jingdian: Jian tan qi zai Xin, Ma de fazhan 近代的關帝信仰與經典:兼談其 在新、馬的發展, Wang Chien-chuan et al., eds. (Taipei: Boyang wenhua gongsi, 2010), 100–105. 17   Xuanjiang Daquan 宣講大全 [Compendium of Sermons for Public Lecturing], Vol. 4, “Shiquan hui” [Ten Completions Society]. See also Wang Chien-chuan 王見川 and Qingcheng Pi 皮慶生, Zhongguo jinshi minjian xinyang: Song Yuan Ming Qing 中國近世 民間信仰:宋元明清 (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2010), 301–304.

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Comparing this content with the purposes listed in the Nanchuan County Gazetteer,18 we see that the Ten Completions Society established in Da County in 1866 differed from the Ten Completions Society established by Zhang Tianwen at the end of the Ming dynasty. It is clear that they shared a name, but that each formulated its content in its own way, and each selected its own priorities. That is to say, Chen Sheng and others borrowed the model of the Ten Completions Society no later than 1852 in order to frame their own practice of religious charity. The Guandi planchette-writing group established in Da County in 1866 declared itself even more firmly in this regard by drawing up a constitution stating its engagement in charitable work and Confucian activities. By 1920, there were again Guandi phoenix halls borrowing the name of the Ten Completions Society for their spirit-writing edicts (shenyu 神諭), and “it became fashionable for them in northeast Sichuan to have their rules and bylaws revealed by Guandi.” The Nanchuan County Gazetteer states that: The people of Sichuan have ten cardinal sins and should therefore meet ten disasters. But ten great gods and saints grieved for and pitied the people and revealed the ten good works [of the Ten Completions Society], so that those following them be blessed with ten auspicious rewards and realize the ten major beauties of human life. The ten specific items listed can be generally summarized as new and old charitable projects, and all must be prepared. The Nanchuan County Gazetteer adds: “When joining the association and making donations, one had to make a solemn vow facing the gods, show penitence, be inspired, and then they would receive a writ from the gods requesting to engage in charitable work.”19 The activities of the Ten Completions Society at that time where the same as the ones that had been defined in the middle of the 19th Century.20 Soon after that, in Nanchuan “the city’s philanthropists assembled [in their turn] into a Ten Completions Society, which could be found everywhere inside and outside the city (…).”21 The objective was to enlist as many people as possible to donate funds for disaster relief. At the end of the Qing dynasty, 18  1926 Nanchuan Xianzhi 南川縣志, Vol. 10, “Shiquan hui” 十全會 (Taipei: Chengwen chubanshe, 1976 photocopy), 753. 19   Ibid., 753. 20   Ibid., 753–54. 21   Ibid., 753.

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some planchette-writing groups influenced by the ideas of the Sichuan Ten Completions Society had introduced these ideas to southern Sichuan and Xikang. The Republican era Chronicle of Key Events in Xikang states in its fourth section on “Confucianism” (rujiao): The so-called Confucianism here refers to the Flying Phoenix (Feiluan teaching that combines Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism. This teaching was established in 1840, opening altars, preaching and proselytizing, spreading into all provinces, and it was especially popular in Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou. Around 1902 or 1903, one Gao Yunhe 高雲和 (named Weisong 維崧, called Old Master Gao 高老夫子 by followers) created a “Confucian spirit-writing altar” (rutan 儒壇) at Tianquan 天全縣 County’s Sijinqian River, and built a temple to start to preach. This immediately spread among literati of the whole southern Sichuan. In Kangding 康定 and Luding 瀘定 counties, enthusiasts also gathered and repeatedly invited Gao to come and teach. He eventually agreed, and local scholars collected funds to build temples and establish altars … Since the Republic of China was established, they have flourished even more. Apart from Kangding City, where three altars were established one after another, this influence spread as far as the outer region of Dawu [Daofu 道孚]…22 飛鸞)

The Confucian altars in the Kangding region were mostly focused on planchette writing, producing the volumes Annotated Scriptures of the Emperor (Zhujie Huangjing 註解皇經), Predestined Transcending of the Worldly Life Scriptures of the Emperor (Tianyuan Dushi Huangjing 天緣度世皇經) and other works, and the main deities channeled by the spirit mediums were Guandi and other such. According to a survey in Chronicle of Key Events in Xikang, Kangding County had four altars, Luding County had nine altars and Daofu County had one altar, and the devotees, apart from those in the Dawu border area, were not limited to ethnic Han, but included other ethnicities for a total of 13,000 people.23 They engaged in charitable undertakings, with ten main projects: 1) Operating hospices; 2) building and repairing bridges and roadways; 3) provision of coffins; 4) burying abandoned corpses and bones; 22  Yang Zhonghua 楊仲華, Xikang Jiyao 西康紀要, Ch. 4, “Rujiao,” 474–475; Miao Wenyuan 繆文遠, ed., Zhongguo xinan wenxian congshu 中國西南文獻叢書, 3rd edition, Xinan shidi wenxian 西南史地文獻, Vol.21 (Lanzhou: Lanzhou Daxue chubanshe, 2003). 23  Yang Zhonghua 楊仲華, Xikang Jiyao 西康紀要, 477–79.

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5) operating charitable granaries (balancing the price of grains to prevent price swings and shortages); 6) provision of winter clothing; 7) provision of medical supplies; 8) year-end relief aid; 9) respect for printed paper;24 10) provision of free schooling.25 The compilers of the Chronicle of Key Events in Xikang stated under the item “provision of free schooling”: “This is also an item that should be carried out in the ten Completions charitable works.” Due to inadequate funding, this was not carried out.26 From this we can see that the Confucian teachings passed down by Gao Weisong in the late Qing were influenced by both the Guandi eschatological revelations of the year 1840 [Guandi planchette-writing world salvation movement] and by the traditions of the Ten Completions Society. These two originally distinct traditions (eschatological revelations on the one hand, and charitable activism on the other hand) somehow converged and differed from the mainly philanthropic work of the [original] Sichuan Ten Completions Society. 2

Phoenix Halls and Confucian Organizations in Yunnan in the Late Qing and Early Republican Period

From what we currently know, Yunnan in the late Qing and early Republican period had at least four kinds of groups practicing Confucian religion (孔教) and principles. They were: 1) An important redemptive society: The Fellowship of Goodness (tongshanshe 同善社); 2) phoenix halls; 3) dongjing 洞經 (grotto scripture) assemblies; and 4) shengyu 聖諭 (Imperial Edict) halls. Apart from dongjing assemblies, the Fellowship of Goodness, phoenix halls and shengyu halls were all related to Sichuan to a greater or lesser extent. 2.1 Yunnan’s Fellowship of Goodness and Phoenix Halls People have long held that in Yunnan the leader of the Fellowship of Goodness, one of the main redemptive societies of the Republican era, was a prominent local person named Chen Rongchang 陳榮昌. Based on related research and data, it happens that Chen Rongchang in fact joined the Tongshanshe 24  TN: A traditional concept influenced by Confucianism in which paper with writing on it was treasured and treated with special respect, closely associated with worship of the God of Literature. It involved both the preservation and appropriate disposal of such paper. 25   Ibid., 476–77. 26   Ibid., 477.

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and held a very elevated position in the group, serving as director of Yunnan’s “National Studies Institute (guoxue zhuanxiuguan 國學專修館),” but establishment of the Yunnan branch of the Tongshanshe was in fact closely related to Yang Jindong 楊覲東.27 Yang Jindong joined the Tongshan Society on June 8, 1918, after being “enlightened” (wendao 聞道) by the Hunanese Peng Tingheng 彭廷衡 and Tian Songxi 田松溪, and soon after that prepared to establish a Yunnan branch, as mentioned in the portion of the Yi Yizi Waipian 毅一子外篇 entitled “Record of the Tongshan Society Moving to Yunnan”: The Yunnan Tongshanshe was founded in 1918 [in Kunming] by Peng Fengchi 彭鳳池 and Tian Songxi. It was established in June and chose the Jiangnan Guild Hall 江南會館, then moved to the Chuxiong Guild Hall 楚雄會館 [both located in Kunming]. The Yunnan Tongshanshe was later banned by the local government. In 1920, it was resurrected, with some effort obtained the approval of the government, and began legally carrying out missionary work from another address in Kunming: Yuanzhong Lane. In winter 1921, the local authorities gave the Tongshan Society use of a number of places behind the Yuantong Temple.28 Due to the cramped conditions at its original address, the Yunnan Tongshanshe moved to the backcourt of the Yuantong Temple on February 18, 1923. Soon after that, it was reported that because of “evil power” was so great, it had to close down its proselytizing efforts, and its followers, overwhelmed by the “slanderous” criticism of outsiders, withdrew. It is possible that what Yang Jindong’s called “evil power” was not an official prohibition but rather the clamorous opposition of his contemporaries. In the 11th year of the Republic, Yang Jindong collected related doctrinal essays into a book entitled Yiyi Zi, which was formally published. This book, to a considerable extent, reflected the religious thought and standpoints of the Tongshan Society. According to its user’s guide, this book was mainly “for thoroughly understanding the tenets of the Three Religions to compromise with Confucius, and expounding on learning that is sound regarding both ‘inner sageliness’ (neisheng) and outside kingship (waiwang).” That is, the Tongshanshe honored Confucius and was primarily Confucian. This might seem odd considering its 27  Wang Chien-chuan 王見川, “Tongshanshe zhaoqi de tedian ji zai Yunnan de fazhan (1912–1937): jian tan qi yu ‘luan tan,’ ‘Rujiao’ de guanxi” 同善社早期的特點及在雲南的 發展（1912–1937）：兼談其與〝鸞壇〞、〝儒教〞的關係, Minsu Quyi 民俗曲藝 172 (2011): 141–42. 28  Those places were: the Tianjun Temple, Zhoulong Platform, Guanyin Pavilion and the Zushi Pavilion.

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syncretistic background (unity of the three teachings or religions). But, like many other sectarian movements of the time, the Tongshanshe embraced a millenarian eschatology according to which the history of the world is divided in three periods. In the current and third period, Confucianism is considered to play an instrumental role and abiding by Confucian ethics may be a path of salvation for common people.29 This is the reason why it is often mentionned that “in the current Third Period,30 the Way is with the common people. Among the common people, Confucians are in the majority, and Confucianism leads the four classes of people.”31 It can be seen that the Tongshanshe, based on dual considerations of the mandate of heaven and formidable influence of Confucianism, decisively venerated Confucius and took Confucianism as its main orientation. Therefore, the “national studies institutes” it set up everywhere at that time also stipulated that on “the first and 15th day of every month, line up before noon for a worship ceremony paying respects to the Greatest of All Sages,” and “mark the birthday of the Sage Confucius as a holiday.”32 However, being primarily Confucian did not mean that the schools only held that the content of the Confucian Four Books and Five Classics had value, but they referred more broadly to the eight virtues: filial piety; brotherliness, faithfulness to one’s lord, trustworthiness, ritual propriety, sense of justice, humility and sense of shame, with the five cardinal Confucian relationships as the core value. Anything that transmitted these five cardinal relationships and eight virtues was acceptable. For that reason, the most important classics recited in the Tongshanshe, apart from the Four Books and Five Classics, included morality books (shanshu) such as the Classic of the Three Sages (San Sheng Jing 三聖經), The Essential Elements of the Golden Code (Jinke Jiyao 金科輯要) and other books of moral instruction.33 This is also how the Tongshanshe differed from other Confucian groups. 29  Explanations included in the text by the volume editor. 30  TN: This is according to the doctrine of such sects that the history of the world is divided into three eons (kalpas). The Black Sun and Red Sun periods had already occurred, and the White Sun period began with the Republican era. See Lu Zhongwei, “Huidaomen in the Republican Period,” Chinese Studies in History 44 (1–2) (Fall 2010/Winter 2010/2011): 10–37, specifically 23. 31  Yang Jindong 楊覲東, Yi Yi Zi 毅一子 (Taipei: Zhongguo zixue mingzhu jicheng bianyin jijinhui, 1978), 436, 441. TN: The “four classes” referred to scholars, peasants, artisans and merchants. 32  Tongshan zongshe 同善總社, Tongshan zongshe chuandan huibian 同善總社傳單 彙編, leaflet no. 4, 1922, 5. Beitianhua yinshuguan, 1922 no publication date, but its content indicates that it was published around the end of 1923. 33   Tongshan zongshe chuandan huibian 同善總社傳單彙編, leaflet No. 2, 1920, 2; leaflet no. 4, 1922, 5, op. cit.

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However, the leader of the Yunnan Tongshan Society branch, Yang Jindong, seemed to reject planchette-written morality books.34 That being the case, can the famous planchette-written work Dongming Ji 洞冥記 (Record of Penetrating the Netherworld), which propagated the Tongshan Society, actually be considered a product of this group? Dongming Ji and the Phoenix Altars of the Eryuan Region of Western Yunnan Records indicate that composition of the book Dongming Ji (Record of Penetrating the Underworld) began in 1920 and was completed the following year. Because there were so many incorrect characters in the initial draft, it was proofread and corrected by “Wei Yizi” (惟一子), and printing began in 1922. It was finally published in autumn 1925.35 This phoenix book is enormous, consisting of ten volumes with 38 chapters totaling more than 300,000 characters. In Vol. 10, Ch. 38, the Dongming Ji states, “Fortunately, in recent years these five wise men have helped us to establish goodwill altars and also to organize a Tongshan Society to save many souls. In the future, it will be entirely due to this altar society that the Venerable Mother [the supreme divinity of many redemptive societies such as the Tongshanshe] will be able to regain her 92 [myriad] original children.”36 The user’s guide for this book states that the Dongming Record was “promulgated by the Lord Sage Guandi for the disaster ending the Third Period [this mention is a classical eschatological description encountered in many millenarian movements], when human hearts are wicked and ignorant,” and 2.2

34  Yang Jindong 楊覲東, Yi Yi Zi 毅一子, “Zhimiu de shiyi” 指謬第十二 (Correction no. 12), “… Most planchette-written phoenix books mix the genuine and bogus together …” 35  Longfeng Shan Shugu Laoren Shu, 1929 printing, Dongming Baoji 洞冥寶記, “Postcript,” 7; cited here is a 1980 photocopy by the Taipei Qingzheng Tang. This book was combined with the Pantao Yan Ji 蟠桃宴記. Regarding the earlier edition of the Dongming Baoji called Dongmin Ji, see Wang Chien-chuan 王見川, Hou Chong 侯沖 et al., eds., Zhongguo minjian xinyang, minjian wenhua jiliao huibian 中國民間信仰、民間文化資料彙編, op. cit., Vols. 28–31, 2011. 36  TN: According to the teachings of such sects, 9.6 billion spirits were originally sent on earth by a supreme Deity, the Venerable Mother (or the Unborn Mother: Wusheng Laomu 無生老母). Later on, they indulged in all sorts of sins. 0.4 billion spirits have already been saved in previous periods. The remaining 9.2 billion now need to be saved and to return to where they actually belong (that is, the Mother and her paradise). The so-called Third Period (“White Sun”) both announces a coming apocalypse (e.g. due to the multiplication of disasters) and constitutes the ultimate phase of salvation for spirits who have not been saved so far. EN: The Venerable or Unborn Mother (wusheng Laomu) is the supreme divinity of many religious organizations such as the Tongshanshe or the Yiguandao (Way of Pervading Unity).

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this record, “while detailing the true situation of Heaven and Hell, wants to truthfully expound on the principles of the Three Religions. Among the Three Religions, the emphasis is on Confucianism. Why? In ruling the country and pacifying the universe, only Confucianism will be effective. We know that in the future Confucianism (rumen 儒門) will prevail and will unify all nations because they will all share a same religion of Confucius (kongjiao 孔教).”37 This central theme of venerating Confucius and emphasizing Confucianism is found throughout the book. For example, in Vol. 8: … This is a good omen. What kind of place is this to have shown such auspiciousness? The Immortal Zhenjun answered: This is Qufu, Shandong Province, hometown of the Sage. The good omen shows that a sage must have been born here. Confucianism will flourish, and an era of peace and prosperity will commence …38 In Volume 10, the Venerable Mother of the Great Void [another name for the supreme deity of many millenarian religious organizations such as the Tongshanshe] avers: … The spiritual leaders of all countries mourn the people’s suffering, and the Mother will guide the people in the rules of proper conduct, will develop culture and shrink the military, stop the manufacturing guns and cannons, teach the value of humanity, follow Confucius as teacher, unite the religions, cease warfare and hostilities, and pursue peace with all and reconciliation with enemies …39 Apart from venerating Confucius, the Dongming Ji mainly targets the European influence that China came under in the late Qing and early Republican eras, in response to a situation that was steadily worsening.40 It is worth noting that 37   Dongming Baoji 洞冥寶記, “Fanli” 凡例, 8–9. 38   Dongming Baoji 洞冥寶記, Vol. 8, Ch. 28, 5. 39   Dongming Baoji 洞冥寶記, Vol. 10, Ch. 37, 37. 40   Dongming Baoji 洞冥寶記, Vol. 6, Ch. 22, 12, states: “… Officials, gentry, literati and scholars during this Republican period have changed even more. Officials and gentry have acquired the bad habit of European mannerisms, failing to show respect to Heaven, Earth, the gods and spirits. They destroy images of the Buddha and ridicule worshipers. For example, the spring and summer sacrifices to Confucius have always been grand ceremonies, but they treat them like children’s games. They don’t prepare sacrifices or dress respectfully … All they do is doff their caps and bow … If they are like that toward the Sage, it is obvious how they are toward others. As to their refusal to treasure and respect printed papers, they say this is not done in Europe, and why should China be so superstitious …” Also, Dongming Baoji 洞冥寶記, Vol. 6, Ch. 23, 21 states: “Over the past few

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this hostile attitude toward the Republic was different from the situation of Manchu loyalty to their defunct dynasty and their regarding of the “Republic as a hostile state.”41 Phoenix hall adherents were unhappy with the maladies brought about by the Republican government, but they did not endorse a return to autocratic empire or “restoration of the old order.” They were convinced that contemporary China or humanity would meet with disaster, not because of the form of government but rather as a result of the evil in men’s hearts and the degeneracy of morals (that is, the collapse of the Five Cardinal Relationships and Eight Virtues). Only planchette-writing could pull humanity back from sinking into vice. Vol. 1 of the Dongming Ji states clearly: … The Five Lord Sages [main deities of the phoenix shrines: see below] guided their actions according to the circumstances: they expounded the teaching, they opened altars everywhere, they relied on the ways of the gods to implement the teaching and on the planchette to persuade people … but while there were numerous altars to virtue in all provinces, this was especially the case in western Yunnan. Therefore, the Five Sages chose two villages in southeastern Eryuan and instructed the Xing altar’s Mr. Li Fucheng and the Yu altar’s Mr. Yang Baoyi to carry out a special spirit-writing ceremony in order to produce 42 the middle and last volumes of Eight Treasure Golden Needle (Babao Jinzhen 八寶金鍼). Likewise the Shao Altar’s Mr. Zhao Ducheng, Yang Dingyi, Shouyi and Duan Zhiyi were instructed to serve during spirit-writing sessions where the volume Precious Proverbs Exhorting Virtue (Quanshan Baozhen 勸善寶箴) was revealed. The Wan Altar’s Mr. Zhang Miaohui was then commanded to gather together the leaders of the altars, and the complete Confucian Golden Elixir to Save the World (Rumen Jiushi Jindan 儒門救世金丹) came down. Then the various Altar mediums were commanded to cooperate and assist the descending of the volumes Precious Proverbs for Instructing Women (Xunnü Baozhen 訓女寶箴) and Edict of the Five Sages (Wusheng Jinggao 五聖經誥). Mr. Lü Weiyi was then given the responsibility to unify, decades, families send their children overseas for study. Instead of learning their good points, they bring back their bad things, and all they talk about is equal rights, freedom, national revolution and family revolution, so that the five cardinal relationships are dying out and the eight virtues are lost …” 41  Lin Chih-hung 林志宏, Minguo nai diguo ye: Zhengzhi wenhua zhuanxing xia de Qing yimin 民國乃敵國也：政治文化轉型下的清遺民 (Taipei: Lianjing chuban gongsi, 2009). 42  EN: Literally 入冥鈔案. This was some sort of spirit-writing ceremony popular at the end of the Qing dynasty in Western Yunnan. It required for phoenix disciples performing the rite to be guided by the gods into the underworld (冥界) in order to collect and copy records about those convicted and suffering hardship. The objective was afterwards to admonish the living.

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edit and correct them, adding together these several morality books, in virtue, for extolling Confucianism while also additionally referring to the precepts of Buddhism and Taoism. Not less than expounding on the Five Cardinal Relationships and Eight Virtues in order to cure the maladies of these times, correct people’s hearts and safeguard customs depended on these books. Unfortunately some old pedantic scholars only understood them as a set of platitudes and, unconvinced, went as far as to slander. Even more are the obstinately simple and ignorant people who don’t believe in karma, heaven and hell, or in the rise of the virtuous and the fall of the wicked. Although there are, as in the past, many morality books and public lectures, evildoers likewise exist as in the past. Therefore the Five Sages were dispirited, regretful and in low spirits. One day, Lord Guandi, sitting in his temple and sighing as he pondered all this, suddenly came up with an idea and could not keep from thumping on the table and shouting, “Bravo! This book must be narrated …”43 The “Five Sages” in the Dongming Ji refers to Guandi (Guansheng Dijun 關聖帝 君), Wenchang (Wenchang Dijun 文昌帝君 God of Literature), Fuyou (Fuyou Dijun 孚佑帝君), Guanyin (Guanyin dashi 觀音大士) and Fuyan (Fusheng Yandi 復聖顏帝). These were the main deities of the phoenix altars in western Yunnan at that time. According to the above narrative, before the Five Lord Sages wrote the Dongming Ji, the planchette writers of western Yunnan, Eryuan and such places wrote the following phoenix books: table 3.1

List of the phoenix books produced by planchette writers of western Yunnan, Eryuan and such places

No.

Altar

1

Xingshan, Yushan Eight Treasure Golden Needle Shaoshan Precious Proverbs Exhorting Virtue Wanshan etc. Confucian Golden Elixir to Save the World Various altars Precious Proverbs for Instructing Women Various altars Edict of the Five Sages

2 3 4 5

Book title

43   Dongming Baoji 洞冥寶記, Vol. 1, Ch. 2, 3–4.

Mediums

Volumes

Li Fucheng, Yang Baoyi

2

Zhao Ducheng, Yang Dingyi, Shouyi, Zhiyi Zhang Miaohui etc.

1

Zhang Miaohui etc.

1

Zhang Miaohui etc.

1

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Most of these phoenix books are still extant. Apart from the Eight Treasure Golden Needle and Confucian Golden Elixir to Save the World, which have been put into storage and cannot be perused, the other three have woodblock editions. The four-volume Precious Proverbs Exhorting Virtue “descended” on the Shaoshan Altar south of Eryuan City in 1898, in the Guangxu Period. It began descending in spring 1918 and was completed in autumn 1920, and after going through three reviews in winter and summer it was published in the ninth year of the Republic (1920). Its content was “The Five Sages hand down to the world songs of the eight great virtues: filial piety, brotherliness, faithfulness to one’s lord, trustworthiness, ritual propriety, sense of justice, honesty and sense of shame; the Eight Immortals at the end make laws, great disciples give praise, and immortals and buddhas are ordered to compose songs in the ancient style.”44 The Precious Proverbs for Instructing Women was created by the Puqing Virtuous Women’s Altar in the village of Yingshan in eastern Eryuan in 1921. Various female immortals descended one-by-one and through the planchette texts narrated the Three Compliances (san cong 三從), Four Virtues (si de 四德) and such texts, which warned women against coming under the influences of the times and urged them to hold fast to traditional morality. The heads of the altar at the time were Lü Xianxi 呂咸熙 (the Lü Weiyi 呂惟一 mentioned in the Dongming Ji) and his wife, Yang Baoyi 楊抱一, among others.45 As to the Edict of the Five Sages, a volume of this name has not been seen, but one with a similar name has been handed down: Five Sages Magical Spirit Scriptures (Wusheng Fumo Lingjing 五聖伏魔靈經).46 44  Preface to the ancient master’s Precious Proverbs Exhorting Virtue (p.189). Precious Proverbs Exhorting Virtue [勸善寶箴] are included in Wang Chien-chuan et al., eds., Mingqing minjian zongjiao jingjuan wenxian 明清民間宗教經卷文獻 (Taipei: Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi, 2006), Vol. 9. 45   Precious Proverbs for Instructing Women 婦女寶箴 are included in Wang Chien-chuan 王 見川 and Chunwu Fan 范純武, eds., Jindai Zhongguo minjian zongjiao jingjuan wenxian 近代中國民間宗教經卷文獻 (Taipei: Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi, forthcoming). 46  Judging by the cover and the content, the Five Sages Magical Spirit Scriptures is also referred to as Five Sages Spirit Scriptures (Wusheng Lingjing) and The True Scriptures of Duren (Duren Zhenjing), while the volume’s first page calls it Ancestor Lü Duren’s True Scriptures (Lü Zu Duren Zhenjing). In the middle it is called Magical Blossoming Salvation Raft Duren’s Spirit Scriptures for Ordering the World (Fumo Kaihua Cihang Duren Zhishi Lingjing), and at the end it is again called Ancestor Lü Duren’s True Scriptures. This scripture exists in two versions. One is a lithograph from 1932 in the Republican period. The other Five Sages Spirit Scriptures does not state the year of publication, but its first page reveals the date and location by stating that the “Preface” by “altar brother Wen Xianzhang” was written in “spring, the second month of the first year of the sexagenary cycle” at the “Eryuan County Yuhe Village Zhoushan Altar.” From the Wudi text’s criticism of a “period of decline,” “infatuation with Europeanization, advocacy of freedom and materialistic culture,” we know that the specific year of publication must be 1924 in

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Remote as Eryuan is, it holds an important place in the history of planchette writing in the Republican era. The famous Dongming Ji was written here by the Yu, Shao and Wan Shan altars. Regardless of whether it’s the Five Sages Spirit Scriptures, the Precious Proverbs for Instructing Women, the Precious Proverbs for Exhorting Virtue or the Dongming Ji, the notion in the books of the Five Sages rescuing the world from disaster is closely related to the 1840 planchette-writing salvation movement.47 This is reflected in Volume 1 of the Dongming Ji.48 Such a tradition also influenced the Tongshan Literary Society (Tongshan wenshe) established by Peng Tingheng and the Hunan Tongshan Society. The “Tongshan Literary Society sponsoring preface” in the Zhonghe Wenji (Collected Works on Centrality and Harmony) states that “Those of noble character use literature to make friends and use friends to achieve the goal of benevolence. However, most sufficient in awakening the ignorant and confused are the sacred instructions (shenxun) provided by the gods [by the means of spirit writing] and their teaching could be found in the Dragon Maiden temple in Sichuan”; The same could be said about the Eryuan Phoenix Altar in western Yunnan. However, apart from this, the western Yunnan phoenix halls had other inheritances and creations.49 They put considerable emphasis on Confucian the Republican era. Comparing the relevant record in the latter part of the volume, the Five Sages Spirit Scriptures was “respectfully engraved by the Eryuan Dongxiang Wanshan Altar.” This “Eryuan,” based on the scripture’s mentioning of the Dongming Ji, is “Dianxi Eryuan,” i.e., the Eryuan in western Yunnan. Furthermore, the text mentions “Ancestor Wen’s Narration of The Golden Needle Exhorting Virtue (Quanshan jinzhen), the disciple’s handing down of Lessons Admonishing Women (Xunnü Zhen), Emperor Lü’s descending of the Eight Precious Needle (Babao Zhen) and Yanzi’s requested descent of the Confucian Elixir of Immortality (Rumen Jindan).” From this we know that the Five Sages Spirit Scriptures is not the same as the aforementioned Five Sages Edict (Wusheng Jinggao), and is also a product of the aforementioned western Yunnan Eryuan Phoenix Hall. About the Five Sages Magical Spirit Scripture (Wusheng Fumo Lingjing) [五聖伏魔靈經], see Wang Chien-chuan 王見川, Hou Chong 侯沖 et al., eds., Zhongguo minjian xinyang, minjian wenhua jiliao huibian 中國民間信仰、民間文化資料彙編 (Taipei: Boyang wenhua chuban gongsi, 2013), second edition, Vol. 17. 47  Regarding the planchette-writing salvation movement of 1900 in the Daoguang era, see Wang Chien-chuan 王見川, “Taiwan ‘Guandi dang Yuhuang’ chuanshuo de youlai” 台灣「關帝當玉皇」傳說的由來, in Wang Chien-chuan, Hanren zongjiao, minjian xinyang yu yuyan shu de tansuo: Wang Chien-chuan zixuan ji 漢人宗教、民間信仰與 預言書的探索：王見川自選集, op. cit., 412–430. 48   Dongming Baoji 洞冥寶記, Vol. 1, Ch. 1, 1–2. 49  So-called “inheritances” (jicheng) refers to the “descending of the phoenix to the netherworld” at the Erhuan Phoenix Hall. This method of descending into the planchette (jiangji) varied greatly from the phoenix halls of other localities, but was well known in the phoenix halls of Yunnan. The Yaoan County Gazetteer states: “In the Qing Xianfeng

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thought, promoting universal brotherhood and influencing the “Confucian literati” (rumen renshi 儒門人士) around them to establish phoenix altars, and on planchette-written books promoting the Five Cardinal Relationships and Eight Virtues and other Confucian values and spirit. Among them was the Record of the Peach of Immortality Banquet (Pantao Yan Ji 蟠桃宴記) produced by the Pumen Songshan Temple’s Congshan Altar. 2.3 Yunnan’s dongjing 洞經 Assemblies and Sacred Edict Halls during the Late Qing and Early Republican Eras The Dongjing assemblies constitute another segment of this popular Confucianism that can be encountered in Yunnan. Past research and investigations have all mentioned that they had a Confucian side,50 but not as their mainstream. This view is correct; based on current evidence, the dongjing assemblies only advocated Confucianism (rujiao) concurrently. Yang Lüqian’s Draft Zhaotong County Gazetteer (Zhaotong Xianzhi Gao), vol. 6, states: The dongjing assembly’s teachings have spread from the provincial capital and mainly speak of performances in which the recital of scripture passages is accompanied by music. Familiar activities include praying for clear weather or rain, celebrating the birthday of Confucius and celebrating the release of souls from purgatory. Its scriptures are a mixture of Buddhism and Daoism intermingled with Confucianism, and the participants are all male, with none of the weaker sex.51 It is typically held that the choice of the name Dongjing Assembly is related to the congregants’ reciting with music the “God of Literature (Emperor Wenchang)’s Grotto Scripture.” There are various versions of this scripture’s origins. Some hold that it was brought by migrants and soldiers from the Jiangnan region at the end of the Yuan or early Ming dynasties. Some say it was era, the trend of descending into the planchette and traveling through the netherworld was at its greatest flourishing.” From records relating to Dongming Ji, we know that the missionary work (chuanjiao 傳教) evoked by western Yunnan phoenix altars in the 37th year of the sexagenary cycle refers to the 26th year of the Guangxu period (1900) and not the 20th year of the Daoguang period (1840). Dongming Baoji 洞冥寶記, “Huowen” 或問, 10. 50  Zhang Xingrong 張興榮, Yunnan Dongjing wenhua: Ru Dao Shi sanjiao de fuhexing wenhua 雲南洞經文化：儒道釋三教的複合性文化 (Kunming: Yunnan jiaoyu chubanshe, 1998). 51  Yunnan sheng bianji zu 雲南省編輯組, ed., Yunnan difangzhi Daojiao he minzu minjian zongjiao ziliao suobian 雲南地方志道教和民族民間宗教資料瑣編 (Kunming: Yunnan renmin chubanshe, 1986), 39.

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introduced between the Hongwu (1368–1398) and Yongle (1402–1424) eras of the Ming dynasty from Nanjing, Sichuan and other places and was established in Dali, Yunnan Province, in 1530, after which the Sanyuan Society (三元社) and Yeyu (葉榆社) Society spread throughout Yunnan. There are also those who maintain that the Dongjing Assembly actually originated in Dali.52 Relatively to these claims, local Yunnan publications in the early Guangxu period (1875– 1908) provide different origins. For example, the Yao’an County Gazetteer states: In the prefectural territory since the Ming, scholars established the Wenchang [God of Literature] Society (also called Scripture Society, Jingshe 經社) for chanting the Wenchang da dongjing and various Buddhist and Daoist scriptures accompanied by the music of flutes, zither, bells and drums, with melodies high and low, long and short.53 A survey of the middle Republican era says that around a dozen scripture societies ( jingshe) still existed within Yao’an 姚安 Prefecture’s borders:54 Every county in Yunnan Province has scripture assemblies ( jinghui). Since the late Ming dynasty, Yao City has established societies worshiping Wenchang and singing Dongjing, Huangjing etc., to pray for peace and prosperity, and sometimes they also built altars to preach the Sacred Edicts [shengyu] … The adherents are mostly scholars, so whenever they hold assemblies, they are full of dignified rites and music, and in this way the ancient rituals and music have been preserved and not lost. 55 52  Zeng Li 曾黎, Yishi de jiangou yu biaoda: Diannan Jianshui jikong yishi de wenhua yu jiyi 儀式的建構與表達:滇南建水祭孔儀式的文化與記憶 (Chengdu: Chengdu Bashu shushe, 2012), 119. However, Hou Chong has verified that the Ming dynasty Sanyuan Society and like bodies were fabrications by people at that time and had no basis in reality. 53  Quoted in Yao’an County Gazetteer 姚安縣志, Vol. 49, “Etiquette and custom,” Associations, 198, Zhongguo Xinan wenxian congshu 中國西南文獻叢書, 1st ed., Xinan xijian fangzhi wenxian 西南稀見方志文獻 (Lanzhou: Lanzhou daxue chubanshe, 2003), Vol. 37. 54  Quoted in Yao’an County Gazetteer 姚安縣志, ibid., 198. 55   Ibid., 283–84. It is also mentioned in the survey that: “The Yao City Jinghui was established by the Dongshan Laohui 東山老會 (originally in the Baihe Si [White Crane] Temple). At the end of the Ming dynasty, Mr. Xi Shangzhen 席上珍, a successful candidate in the imperial provincial examination, began establishing the Guixiangshe 桂香社 in the city. In the early Qing, a person named Geng Yuqi 耿裕祈 traveled between Jiangxi and Zhejiang. Because of his fine skills and knowledge of music, he taught and guided many people. At the beginning of the Guangxu period, Mr. Ma Siliang 馬駟良 returned from eastern Zhejiang. He was very proficient in musical scores and came to Guanglu

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Whether the Yunnan dongjing assemblies had already emerged at the end of the Ming remains to be verified. However, the dongjing assemblies had appeared by the mid-Qianlong period at the latest. During the 49th year of the Qianlong period (1784), Zhang Longfei 張龍飛 said that he “since childhood was engaged with Confucianism and the Four Books and Five Classics, having gained some knowledge of all of them,” but later because of the death of his mother, at home he “joined the Wenchang Society to talk and perform the Dadong Xianjing [Immortal Scripture of the Great Grotto].”56 The Dongjing Assembly of Jianshui 建水 County in southern Yunnan, according to the accounts of aged persons from that locality, was brought back during the Qing dynasty by a Jianshui native who was retiring there after serving as an official in Beijing. Before 1949, Jianshui City had four celebrated dongjing assemblies:57 1. Chaoyuanxue 朝元學—Yuhuang Pavilion 玉皇閣 2. Mingshengxue 明聖學—God of War Temple 武廟 3. Chongwenxue 崇文學—Wenchang Temple 文昌宮 4. Linwenxue 林文學—Randeng Temple 燃燈寺 Members of the dongjing assemblies called themselves Masters of the Scriptures ( jingsheng 經生). Most of them were Confucian scholars who had passed the county or provincial-level imperial examinations and who loved and were accomplished in music. At the early stage, membership was limited to Confucian scholars, but by the Republican period, merchants and ordinary people were gradually allowed to join.58 The classics whose recitation was accompanied with instruments included the Guandi Mingshenjing 關帝明 聖經 and the Hongrujing 弘儒經 among others. At that time, when the Jianshui Confucian Temple made sacrifices to Confucius, it was mainly members of the

to correct the music and meters. The Guixiangshe followed and learned from him also. Since that time, the music of the Yao’an Jinghui became elegant and correct. The music instruments include zither, lute, flute, pipes, bells, drums, cymbals and the like. The funding and materials are different for the different groups, and all are held in the custody of officers called jiuyi 糾儀, who rotate their service each year. The first to join the society were called scripture master (jingchang), and the aged were called elders. People visiting the group find it well organized; the people there respect order and have a love of refined things, and the group appears dignified and harmonious.” 56  Wang, Guiping 汪桂平, “Dongjing tanyan zhi jidu yishi” 洞經談演之祭渡儀式, in Shuiqiong Yunqi: Daojiao wenxian yanjiu de jiuxue xinzhi 水窮雲起:道教文獻研究的舊 學新知, ed. Zheng Kai 鄭開 (Beijing: Beijing shehuixue wenxian chubanshe, 2009), 276. 57  Zeng Li 曾黎, Yishi de jiangou yu biaoda: Diannan Jianshui jikong yishi de wenhua yu jiyi 儀式的建構與表達:滇南建水祭孔儀式的文化與記憶, op. cit., 121. 58   Ibid.

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dongjing assemblies who took on the performance of the relevant ceremonies and music.59 The dongjing assemblies in Yunnan built altars and preached the sacred edicts to transform the ignorant through education.60 For example, “The Dayanjing Society (大岩經社) had attached sacred edict altars, which on the first and 15th days of the lunar month and on fixed days preached the Sacred Edicts, aphorisms and karma, with as many as one altar for each hundred households, and only at a later stage had planchette writing.”61 Their character was similar to that of the Shengyu Tang 聖諭堂 (Sacred Edict Halls). The Sacred Edict Halls originated with the early Qing “preaching of the Sacred Edict” movement, hence their name. Around the mid-Qing period, the “preaching of the Sacred Edict” movement was either reduced to mere formality or carried out in only the most perfunctory manner, and it had great difficulty attracting the interest and participation of the general public. The crux of the matter lay in the content of the preaching being outmoded and uninteresting to the general public, as a result of which some places tried seasoning the preaching with matters of karma and retributive justice, or incorporated stories from phoenix books and morality books. This not only rescued the “preaching of the Sacred Edict,” but also provided an opportunity for local Confucian scholars and practitioners of folk religion to exert their influence and become involved in society. From The Autobiography of Guo Moruo, we know that in Sichuan in the late Qing period, preachers of the Sacred Edict regularly went to the countryside preaching from morality books and received a warm welcome,62 and that in the 26th year of the Guangxu period (1900), some of the Phoenix Halls that moved from Sichuan to Xikang were also called Sacred Edict Temples (miao),63 which shows that some Sacred Edict Altars (tan) incorporated planchette writing. From what we know to date, Sacred Edict altars had appeared in Yunnan by at least the eighth year of the Xianfeng period (1858). According to documentary records from 1863, by that time Anyi 安邑 in southern Yunnan had a Guandi phoenix hall called the Yansu Altar 嚴肅壇 for preaching Sacred Edicts and other salvation efforts. Because it had decent success, Anyi soon had seven Sacred Edict altars engaged in preaching. In 1860, the Yansu Altar moved to the Chahua suburban area. In 1861, people from the Yansu Altar invited an assem59   Ibid. 60   Yao’an County Gazetteer 姚安縣志, ibid., 283. 61   Ibid., 199. 62  Guo Moruo 郭沫若, Moruo zizhuan diyi juan: Shaonian shidai 沫若自傳第一卷:少年 時代, 35–36, Guo Muruo quanji 郭沫若全集 (Beijing: Beijing renmin chubanshe, 1992), Vol. 11. 63  Yang Zhonghua 楊仲華, Xikang Jiyao 西康紀要, op. cit., 478.

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bly of seven altar leaders to the Lianran 連然 region’s Qinglong Temple for the joint establishment of a new Sacred Edict altar, the Huichun Altar 回春壇, for the purpose of writing books, preaching and salvation work.64 According to documentary records, the phoenix book produced by the Huichun Altar was entitled Engravings to Benefit the World (銘箴濟世圖 Mingzhen jishi tu), the purpose of which was clearly laid out in its preface: … Showed explicit instructions … I heard that Confucius … edited and corrected the ancient poems and classics and established rites and music, building an eternal heritage for our culture. He opened schools and taught people in Qufu, Shandong Province, and created an orthodoxy to be passed on through all ages. He also reestablished cultural rules as a model for all emperors, leading to the revitalization of Rujiao … Our ambition is to follow Confucius … All wealthy families acknowledge and advocate the way of Confucianism.65 It is clear that the purpose of the Huichun Sacred Edict Altar was to carry on the Way of Confucius and expound on the doctrines of the Sage. Specifically, it required ordinary people to practice the “Four emergent shoots (duan 端)” [of the four cardinal virtues recognized by Mencius: benevolence, right, ceremony, wisdom], the eight practices (ba xing 八行) the Three Cardinal Guides and Five Constant Virtues (san gang wu chang 三綱五常).66 Based on extant documents, Sacred Edict altars during the Republican era in Yunnan included at least the Sacred Edict Hall (Tang) in the southwest region’s Zhenkang County, the Sacred Edict Altar (Tan) in Menghua, western Yunnan, the Xunshan Altar in Heqing County, the Sacred Edict Hall in Fengyu, Eryuan County, the Boshan Altar in the southern Jianchuan region, etc.67 The hand-copied book Shengyu Hall (Shengyu Tang) from the late 1930s of the Republican era declared the effectiveness of the preaching of Sacred Edicts in conditions of war:

64  Second year of the Tongzhi period (1863) Mingzhen jishu tu 銘箴濟世圖], “Shiji” 視集, “Mingzhen jishi tu xiaoyin” 銘箴濟世圖小引; thanks to Professor Hou Chong 侯沖 for providing this material. 65   Mingzhen jishu tu 銘箴濟世圖, “Shiji” 視集, the portion on Ma Ling Guang’s Instructions. 66   Mingzhen jishu tu 銘箴濟世圖, “Shiji” 視集, “16 Introductory remarks 銘箴濟世圖例言 十六則.” 67  “Shengyu tan gui” 聖諭壇規, Regulations of the Sacred Edict altars, 1914 reprint 民國甲 寅年重刊, “woodblock kept in the Boshan Altar of southern Jianchuan district 板存劍 川南區渤善壇.”

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Tengchong City … 31st year of the Republican era … 26th day of the Third month, by chance state affairs changed and the Japanese army invaded Tengchong. The area fell into enemy hands … The area established the preaching of Sacred Edicts, and soon afterwards the Central government dispatched Nationalist forces and wiped out the Japanese forces …68 From this it would appear that at that time Yunnan’s Tengchong City also had a Sacred Edict hall. 3

Sacred Edict Halls and other Confucian Groups in Eryuan under the People’s Republic of China (1950 to the Present)

The People’s Republic of China was established on October 1, 1949, and the various folk religions, dongjing assemblies, phoenix altars and other Confucian groups that had been active during the Republican era came under heavy attack. Tongshan societies, phoenix altars and other such groups were all banned as superstitious sects and secret societies, as a result of which some were banished and others could only continue their activities in secret. The Sacred Edict halls and other Confucian groups in Eryuan were no exception. In his Ph.D. dissertation, Li Donghong summarizes the fate of Eryuan’s Sacred Edict halls and other Confucian groups in the Fengyu region under the New China thus: From the 1950s until the beginning of Reform and Opening … Fengyu’s temples generally fell under the following three circumstances: 1. They fell into disuse: The Buddhist and Daoist temples, spiritwriting temples, full-time Buddhist monks and Daoist priests were disbanded, and there was no one looking after the temples. The statues of deities inside the temples were destroyed. 2. They were converted to different uses. For example, the Zhiguang Temple was changed into a grain management office, the Three Doctrines Temple (Sanjiao Gong 三教宮) was changed into a school, the Temple of the God of War was changed into the auditorium of a “cultural center,” the main hall of the Confucian temple was changed into a classroom.

68  Hand-copied Sacred Edict hall booklet without the author’s name noted; Thanks to Professor Hou Chong 侯沖 for providing this material.

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They were destroyed: The Taihechong God of Literature Temple, the Yuanshichong God of Literature Temple … were razed … But even so, some faith activities were still carried on; for example, “lotus pond societies” (lianchi hui 蓮池會) and “universal charity halls” (pushan tang 溥善堂) still maintained group activities venerating the Buddha. 69

Given that the author of these lines, Li Donghong, was the descendent of a prominent local family, and also at that time was carrying out fieldwork in the Fengyu region, her viewpoints, drawn from oral interviews and field research, are worth taking seriously. The Sanjiao Gong mentioned in the text is mentioned in the new edition of Gazetteer of Eryuan County Folk Religions as a temple that was established in Zhonghechong, Fengyu Township, in 1925.70 Li Donghong’s survey states: “During the Republican era, the Sanjiao Gong worshiped the images of the sages of the three religions [Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism]” and was “the place where the Sacred Edict hall carried out its rites in Fengyu Street.” The preachers of the Sacred Edict hall were “profoundly learned local scholars of Fengyu.” Local elderly people recalled that Fengyu’s Sanjiao Gong worshiped Confucius, Buddha and Laozi and maintained that the three religions emanated from the same source.71 According to a stone tablet in the temple, “Record of the Rebuilding of the Sanjiao Gong,” the Sanjiao Gong had an inscription board by Ma Jingxi, a successful imperial examination candidate in the early Qing dynasty, as well as another inscription board stating “Fengming Yuan 鳳鳴院 (Institute of the singing phoenix)” by the prominent local calligrapher Chen Rongchang 陳榮昌.72 Chen Rongchang was a famous official and member of the gentry in Yunnan in the late Qing and early Republican era. In the second decade of the Republican era he took part in Tongshan Society and planchette-writing activities, and offered the inscribed board to the Sanjiao Gong, not out of considerations of calligraphy, but out of recognition of shared aspirations and interests. From the 1950s onward, the Sanjiao Gong served as the Fengyu Secondary School and Educational Society 69  Li Donghong 李東紅, Yunnan Fengyu Baizu cun lishi renleixue yanjiu 雲南鳳羽白族村 歷史人類學研究, Yunnan University College of Humanities Ph.D. thesis, February 2009, 184. Thanks to Professor Hou Chong 侯沖 for providing this material. 70  Eryuan xian minzu zongjiao shiwuju 洱源縣民族宗教事務局, ed., Eryuan xian minzu zongjiao zhi 洱源縣民族宗教志 (Kunming: Yunnan minzu chubanshe, 2006), 269. 71  Li Donghong 李東紅, Yunnan Fengyu Baizu cun lishi renleixue yanjiu 雲南鳳羽白族村 歷史人類學研究, op. cit., 184. 72  Field research carried out on August 20–21, 2011. The name Institute of singing phoenix points to the existence of spirit-writing activities.

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until the school was relocated in 2001. The temple was then rebuilt by a lay Buddhist, Zhang Longguang, and completed in 2002. At present the temple’s basic upkeep is handled by a single elderly person who lives there but it keeps close relations with the Pushan altar discussed below.73 As for the God of Literature Temple in Taihechong 太和充, after the Third Plenum of the Eighth CCP Central Committee passed its resolution to implement the Reform and Opening policies, the temple was gradually restored by the local populace. The most important promoters of this project were members of the Pushan Altar 蒲善壇. According to Li Donghong’s description, the Pushan Altar was one of three Buddhist altars in the Fengyu region, and “from the 1970s until 2004, the Pushan Altar’s central altar was in the home of [someone called] Li Guisheng.” In the 1970s, some female believers frequented the Li family compound. They timed their comings and goings early in the morning and late at night in order to avoid being noticed, but never discontinued their activities. At that time, it is also mentioned in Li Donghong’s work that the believers were shepherded by an “Elder Runyang” and an “Auntie Runyang” [Runyang 潤陽—literally nourishing the yang—is a religious name and not a family name] coming from the Shi family compound. Elder Runyang was the head of the organization, the leader of the Pushan Altar and Li Guisheng’s teacher. Apart from worship and religious services, the Pushan Altar also engaged in public welfare activities. Every year it observed the Dragon Flower Assembly (Longhua Hui 龍華會) festival on the 15th days of the third and ninth lunar months, and a so-called “Patriarch Assembly” (Shizun Hui 師尊會 [see below]) on the 10th day of the fourth month. 74 Li Donghong’s description of the Pushan Altar has great reference value, but it also has quite a few problems and misses a point of special interest for understanding the reemergence of ancient redemptive societies and the revival of certain forms of Confucian piety in today’s China. It is noteworthy that the Pushan Altar had moved its activities to the Taihechong God of Literature Temple by 2003 at the latest. This temple has a stone tablet recording the history and reestablishment of the Pushan Altar: This altar originally belonged to the Buddhist association of the Pure Land Sutra, and its leader was Shi Zengfan 施增返 … It was titled Pushan Altar in 1966 by the Golden Mother ( Jinmu) of the Jasper Lake Palace (Yaochi Gong), with Disciple Li Guisheng as supervisor. Because Disciple’s 73  Field research carried out on August 20–21, 2011. 74  Li Donghong 李東紅, Yunnan Fengyu Baizu cun lishi renleixue yanjiu 雲南鳳羽白族村 歷史人類學研究, op. cit., 180–181.

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education in Buddhist teachings was superficial … he sought out teachers and friends, and obtained the careful and thorough guidance of three tutors … Buddha rules (fogui)75 were introduced but the lack of qualified people affected the teaching of courses and other activities of the altar, and there were flawed training classes (peixunban) four times in succession … 92 myriad spiritual remnants76 had been scattered throughout the land … Due to cosmic changes and the deterioration of morals the 92 myriad spiritual remnants violated the teachings of the Buddha and the Sage [Confucius]. People from all over the world, especially virtuous believers, strove to help the young scholar Li Guisheng. Therefore, Mr. Xu Rong could be invited to Kunming and Xiaguan, and Li Guisheng, Shi Liren and Yang Shouyang to Eryuan, Shi Fuyu, Zhao Wufu and Zhao Wenfu to Xiaguan, Zhao Fuxun … to District Four, Zhao Xiangxun to … Camp Three, Zhao Zhonggui to Binchuan and other places. They carried out charitable deeds and with the quiet assistance of Buddha and heaven all proceeded without impediment. Now the holy temples (shengdian) destroyed in former days have all been thoroughly renovated … in 2003 … the Pushan Altar was erected.77 Clearly the Pushan Altar’s early leader was Shi Zengfan, formerly a member of the Buddhist association of the Pure Land sutra. He separated from this association in 1966 and established the Pushan Altar, with Li Guisheng in charge. It should be explained here that even though the Pushan Altar’s religious affiliation seems to be Buddhism, the tablet inscription’s mention of the “92 myriad spiritual remnants” shows that it has in fact links with a popular or sectarian religion. If we further refer to allusions to the Yaochi (Jasper Lake) Gong’s Golden Mother and to the aforementioned “Patriarch Assembly” (Shizun hui)78—which in fact directly points to the commemoration of the birthday of Tongshanshe leader Peng Huilong 彭迴龍—the Pushan Altar should in fact be considered part of the Tongshan Association, that is, relating to one of the most important redemptive societies of the Republican era. From this 75  In that context: Sets of regulations, especially about rituals, that adepts of sectarian movements have to respect. 76  See explanations in footnote 36. 77  Field research August 20–21, 2011. Based on the soliciting of contributions to rebuild the Pushan Altar 溥善壇 after the Cultural Revolution, the Pushan Altar 溥善壇’s network of collections had spread beyond the locality to Kunming 昆明, Xiaguan 下關, Eryuan 洱源, Binchuan 賓川 and other places. 78  Li Donghong 李東紅, Yunnan Fengyu Baizu cun lishi renleixue yanjiu 雲南鳳羽白族村 歷史人類學研究, op. cit., 181–182.

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can then be inferred that the Fengyu District Buddhist Association of the Pure Land sutra was an organization under the Tongshan Association. In other words, the Tongshan Association in the Fengyu district entered the Buddhist Association in order to legitimate its existence and its activities. Li Donghong says the Tongshan Association was established in the Qingjing Temple, and the same group of people basically ran both organizations. The Qingjing Temple was established by Zhao Maoxuan in the 1920s. Li Chengchu, a successful provincial imperial examination candidate from the Fengyu Li lineage, sent his daughter, Li Zhongjie, to the Qingjing Temple to serve permanently as a Buddhist nun, and he himself preached at the temple. Another prominent local scholar, Zhang Zhigang, was a professional preacher who went back and forth between Kunming, Dali, Jianchuan, Dengchuan, Eryuan and other places liaising with local Tongshan Association branches and expounding on Buddhist sutras and other such activities.79 In fact, the Chinese characters for the temple should be 清淨寺, but it was incorrectly written as 清靜寺. The temple’s leader was Duan Pujing, a native of Niujielongmen in Eryuan County, who began practicing Buddhism at the Qingjing Temple in 1946. After the CCP came to power, the Qingjing Temple was taken over and turned into a grain management office and then into a production team building. After order was restored [following the Cultural Revolution], Duan Pujing was appointed a delegate to the second, third and fourth sessions of Eryuan County’s People’s Political Consultative Conference, and the Qingjing Temple was rebuilt in its original location, with the first stage completed in 1993. The third floor of the main hall presents a painting of the Ancient Mother of the Great Void (Wuji Laomu) for worship. In 2002, the name Yaochi Gong (Jasper Lake Palace) was carved above the temple door, and in the main temple was placed a tablet memorializing adherents through the ages, with the engraved names of Yang Guangming, Zhao Maoxuan and others.80 Among them, Yang Guangming is still in charge of the rebuilding of the City God Temple (Chenghuang Miao) in Dengchuan. It is interesting to note that the Dongjing Assembly is participating in the rebuilding of the Dengchuan City God Temple. Li Donghong believes that the Fengyu District Tongshan Association and Dongjing Assembly are Daoist institutions,81 but in fact, the Fengyu District Dongjing Assembly is a rare example of joining up with a Daoist 79  Li Donghong 李東紅, Yunnan Fengyu Baizu cun lishi renleixue yanjiu 雲南鳳羽白族村 歷史人類學研究, op. cit., 182. 80  Field research carried out on August 20–21, 2011. 81  Li Donghong 李東紅, Yunnan Fengyu Baizu cun lishi renleixue yanjiu 雲南鳳羽白族村 歷史人類學研究, op. cit., 181.

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group. Dongjing assemblies are typically regarded as musical groups, and in the western Yunnan region, the Dongjing Assembly mainly participates in the Dali Festival of Ancient Music.82 This Festival of Ancient Music is the most important competition for traditional music in western Yunnan since Reform and Opening. Quite a few Eryuan County Dongjing assembly groups attend this ancient music competition, which is the result of the local government designating the Dongjing Assembly a traditional music group after the Cultural Revolution. Due to lack of opportunity, I was unable to interview members of the Fengyu Dongjing Assembly, but I did look into the Niujie Dongjing Assembly in Chengzhen, near Fengyu. The newly revised Eryuan County Gazetteer of Folk Religions mentions the popularity of dongjing assemblies among the Han, Bai and Naxi ethnicities in Erhuan County, and there are dongjing assemblies throughout the area from Niujie to Jiangwei.83 Niujie does in fact have a Dongjing assembly, and according to information provided by prominent local people, the Niujie Dongjing assembly is called the Niujie Ancient Music Group. This is an organization fronted by the propaganda group of the Niujie Committee for the Aging under the leadership of the local government, and it was established with the approval of the Niujie Village government in the home of Zhang Qingyang on August 15, 2000. It staged a public performance at Niujie’s Xiangyun Temple Fair on August 15 the following year, garnering a favorable response. This Niujie Ancient Music Group has at least 33 members, including Yang Zeren, Shi Xingfang, Li Huimin, Zhang Qingyang and Li Yuanchang. Two of them are teachers, three are CCP members, and most of the rest are farmers. Yang Zeren, who was 84 at the time, knew how to set words to music, and was the soul of the organization. The “Tune of the Exam Candidates and Confucian Scholars” (Shizi Rusheng Qiangdiao) performed by the Niujie Ancient Music Group was transcribed by him. Other music scores such as “Moon Tone” (Yue Diao) were passed along from the Dali Zunsheng Assembly, while the “Music Offered to the Sages” (Fengsheng Yue) was passed on from the Xiaguan Sanyuan Assembly.84 In terms of its music, the Niujie Ancient Music Group has three characteristics:

82  Field research, August 20–21, 2011, I found a photo hung on a certain temple wall with the caption “Dali Prefecture 20th Dali Ancient Music Festival “Shenzhou Dazhong Card Cup Ancient Music Competition” [大理州第十屆大理古樂節 “神州大眾卡杯古樂大賽”]. 83  Eryuan xian minzu zongjiao shiwuju 洱源縣民族宗教事務局, ed., Eryuan xian minzu zongjiao zhi 洱源縣民族宗教志, op. cit., 277. 84  Field research August 20–21, 2011; I saw Li Canhui 李燦輝’s name in the “Eryuan County Niujie Ancient Music Group 洱源縣牛街古樂隊古樂隊” in the third edition of Dongjing Guyue 洞經古樂 (April 2001).

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1.

Inherited tradition: Carried on by Yang Zeren, the group has at least practiced the traditions of the Dongjing assemblies up to the Republican period. 2. Songs that emphasize the Confucian religion (rujiao) style. 3. Emulating Dongjing assembly organizations from all over Yunnan. Furthermore, the Niujie Ancient Music Group has his properly religious dimension. This aspect is taught by another spiritual leader of the group. This teacher is a disciple of Li Xingbao who collected many Confucian, Buddhist and Daoist volumes and rites hand-copied by Li Xingbao in the early 1980s. From the wording of one of them, “Great China Yunnan Province Eryuan County Niujie Liandu Village Resident, Devotee Dongjing Assembly Participants,”85 it can be seen that there was a Dongjing assembly in Niujie’s Liandu Village soon after the Cultural Revolution. Given that Li Xingbao is 84 years old, it can be inferred that Li Xingbao’s dongjing assembly is carrying on the dongjing assembly traditions of the early Republican period. It is worth noting that among the books of rites transcribed by Li Xingbao is one on the divinity of Confucius celebrating him as a Celestial worthy promoting a Confucian florishing age (Xing Ru Shengshi Tianzun). This addressing of Confucius as a deity was common in phoenix halls in Yunnan from the late Qing onward, and this shows that Li Xingbao’s Dongjing assembly also paid close attention to the situation in Yunnan’s phoenix halls. 4

Conclusion: The Field and Reflections

When I was carrying out my field survey in Niujie’s Liandu Village, local villagers said that a few years ago a Confucius Temple had been built in the hills for local worshipers, and that the elderly women of the village had raised the funds to build and manage it.86 This called to mind my inspection of the Confucius Temple in Dengchuan County a few days earlier. The Dengchuan County Confucius Temple is in Santian Village, and was built by local residents in 2008. Inside is a memorial table to Confucius inscribed “Memorial Tablet to the Supreme Sage and Ancestral Teacher of Great Accomplishment.” On each side are tablets to Mencius, Yanzi and other lesser sages. A ceremony is performed each year on August 27 (lunar calendar) and during exam periods the temple is full of burning incense. The temple’s affairs are handled by local

85  Field research carried out on August 20–21, 2011. 86  Field research carried out on August 20, 2011.

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elderly women.87 While I was carrying out fieldwork in the Eryuan region on August 22, I visited the city’s temples to the God of War, the God of Literature and the Dragon King, and inspected the Temple to the City God in the old section of the county town. According to the “Introduction to the City God Temple” engraved on that temple’s wall, the temple was originally next to the Bureau of Finance, but after Liberation (1949), when the urban area was redeveloped, it was moved elsewhere and for various reasons ceased functioning. In 1986, after obtaining permission from the local government, the Temple of the City God was moved halfway up the mountain. In 1991, believers began making images of deities such as Judge Wuwu, and the temple was built to its present appearance in 2004. This temple is in the middle of a Hui ethnic enclave that is also a worship center for Han and Bai believers. The right-hand shrine, for worshiping Confucius, was rebuilt in 1991. On the outside of the temple door hang two banners, on one of which is written “Confucius the Great Sage, Smooth Sailing, Grace and Virtue,” and on the other “The Supreme Sage and Ancestral Teacher of Great Accomplishment Confucius, Model Teacher of Myriad Ages.” The time of my visit was near the Festival of Hungry Ghosts, and quite a few women were folding paper money and preparing food for offerings. On the wall was inscribed a record of contributions from popular Confucian organizations of the dongjing assembly type such as the Fengyu Zhenshan Altar and Fengyu Xueli Village Shan Altar. Guided by the temple’s abbot, I then viewed the lower Guanyan Temple, where there was an extremely valuable tablet recording popular Sacred Edict organizations active in the Eryuan region, including Qifeng Fushan Altar, Shanlongmen Xinshan Hall and Sanchong Dongjing Assembly.88 If it is said that the late Qing religious organizations known as phoenix halls were a surreptitious means of popular propagation of Confucianism, then the Confucian groups of the early Republican era were mainstream groups for openly encouraging the “Confucian movement.” Under the Nationalist government, Confucianism surged. This wave of the Confucian movement consisted mainly of Confucian associations organized by Chen Huanzhang89 and others, which liaised with gentry in various places to form organizations

87  Field research carried out on August 20–21, 2011. 88  Field research carried out on August 22, 2011. 89  EN: Chen Huanzhang 陳煥章 (1881–1933) was a disciple of Kang Youwei who established in October 1912 the Confucian Association (Kongjiao hui 孔教會). The Association opened branches all over the country promoting Confucianism as a religion in a way that was largely influenced by the Christian model. It also ambitioned to institute Confucianism as China’s national religion (guojiao 國教) but the parliament finally voted against such a proposal.

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for venerating Confucius and attempted, through politics and education, to preserve the values and status of Confucian teachings. As the Confucian movement dominated by Chen Huanzhang and traditional gentry gradually declined, other religious groups and phoenix halls began to flourish in large numbers, holding aloft the banner of venerating Confucius and promoting the Five Cardinal Relationships and Eight Virtues, saving souls and providing disaster relief. The Three Cardinal Guides and Five Constant Virtues and moral principles were very important to them, but they were not completely opposed to Westernization. The classics were also very important, but they esteemed not only the Four Books and Five Classics but also classical morality books. This is even more significant for the situation of local Confucianism in the Yunnan region. In the early Republican era, Confucian groups were not seen in Yunnan, and the Confucian temples in various localities had either fallen into neglect or existed in name only without function, like the Confucian temple’s activities in Jianshui in southern Yunnan in the Republican era, which were handled by that county’s dongjing assembly.90 Apart from the dongjing assemblies, it was earlier discussed and shown that in Yunnan, especially in Eryuan County, it was tongshan societies, phoenix halls, Sacred Edict halls and other religious-type Confucian groups that promoted Confucian teachings and activities. The leaders of these groups were Confucian scholars and local gentry with old-style scholarly honors and rankings, but practically no university students participated. When the CCP took power in 1949, religious-type groups for venerating Confucius such as tongshan associations, phoenix halls, dongjing assemblies and Sacred Edict halls were all designated as superstitious sects and secret societies and banned. Phoenix halls disappeared in Yunnan, while tongshan associations joined the Buddhist Association and operated on a low-key level, and dongjing assemblies and Sacred Edict halls operated in secrecy. It is commonly believed that they were destroyed and that religious activities ceased during the Cultural Revolution. But it can be seen from the earlier quoted tablet that the Tongshan Association’s Pushan Altar continued to be active. After Reform and Opening, the CCP government allowed religious freedom, and tongshan associations, dongjing assemblies and Sacred Edict halls all resumed their activities. Among them, local governments’ emphasis on traditional culture led to dongjing assemblies increasing in number and performing in festivals at various temples; some gave public commercial performances, while some performed mainly in Confucian temples. It is worth noting that 90  Zeng Li 曾黎, Yishi de jiangou yu biaoda: Diannan Jianshui jikong yishi de wenhua yu jiyi 儀式的建構與表達:滇南建水祭孔儀式的文化與記憶, op. cit., 119.

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the recent fad for reading Confucian classics and the Confucianism fad among intellectuals seem to have had no effect on Yunnan, and that building of Confucian temples in various places in Yunnan in the 1990s seems unrelated to these phenomena; the building of temples was carried out by elderly people or initiated by either local governments or entrepreneurs, and can be considered interesting examples of a revival of folk Confucianism or rural Confucianism. Translated by Stacy Mosher

chapter 4

Belief and Faith: The Situation and Development of Confucianism in Yunnan Province Chung Yun-ying 1 Introduction Mr. Yu Ying-shih once used the analogy of a “wandering soul” to illustrate that Confucianism in the present age has become a tradition severed from its former institutional context.1 One of the consequences of such a situation is that Confucianism in the 20th Century—and especially after 1949—was primarily visible via intellectual research carried out in the academe. The current Confucian revival provides some clear evidence that this tradition extends again to the general populace holding Confucian values and beliefs.2 These are not necessarily purely Confucian believers or professed Confucians; they have been deeply influenced by the traditions of the three religions (Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism), but in terms of social ethics, they have been particularly influenced by Confucian thought, and regardless of profession or occupation, a dynamic Confucianism has emerged in the present day and newly reinvented institutions make it possible for the wandering soul to return, though in ways that share little with the institutional centrality occupied by Confucianism at the end of the Imperial period. In other words, in

*  The author expresses his gratitude for the partial funding for this research provided by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation. 1  Yu Ying-shih 余英時, Xiandai ruxue lun 現代儒學論 (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1998), 5. 2  Peng Guoxiang 彭國翔, reflecting on the path proposed by Confucians of “settling down and getting on with one’s lifework” and Confucian beliefs allowing “Four classes of people [scholars, farmers, artisans and merchants] to have different work but the same Way,” holds that intellectuals never held the monopoly on Confucianism, and that it can serve as a standard of life for all kinds of people. This is shown with particular clarity when Confucian teachings function as a kind of religious tradition. See Peng Guoxian 彭國翔, “Rujia zongjiaoxing jiqi shijie yishi: cong xifang ruxue yanjiu de xin qushi qianzhan 21 shiji de ruxue” 儒家宗教 性及其世界意識：從西方儒學研究的新趨勢前瞻21世紀的儒學, in Boshidun de rujia 波士頓的儒家, ed. Harvard-Yenching Institute (Nanjing: Jiangsu jiaoyu chubanshe, 2009), 211–213.

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terms of Chinese culture as a whole, the influence of Confucian beliefs is still remarkable after a century of revolutions and ruptures. Religious beliefs in Yunnan still consist largely of Tibetan Buddhism, but beginning in the Nanzhao period3 they also came under the influence of Confucianism and Daoism, and with the examination system, study of the Four Books became essential for advancement in an official career. The academies of classical learning established during the Ming dynasty also mainly taught Confucian thought, as a result of which Confucian culture had a comprehensive influence on Yunnan. Furthermore, the sagely image of Confucius was always deeply imprinted in the hearts of subsequent generations. We can say that the admiration for Confucius among intellectuals of later periods was always aimed at the individual pursuit of ideal moral character; that is to say, the paradigm that Confucius represented was not bound by time or space, but rather, the image later generations had of Confucius as sage was in fact imbued with limitless idealistic projection and imagination, so that Confucius was not only “mythologized”4 but also “deified.” Ordinary people in Yunnan also regarded Confucius in this way. Especially in popular society, Confucius came to represent the civil official, and in Chinese society, in which “all occupations are base; only book-learning is exalted,” Confucius became like Kuixing (魁星): anyone wishing to take examinations would go to the temple to worship Confucius and parents expecting their sons to become scholars would also go to the temple to ask Confucius for his blessing. For that reason, in the Yunnan region, Confucianism (Rujiao 儒教) as symbolized by Confucius is both a belief deeply embedded in traditional culture and a faith that brings peace to the soul. The present field investigation mainly covers the Yunnan cities of Kunming (昆明), Jianshui (建水) and Dali (大理), along with localities such as Fengyu (鳳羽) in Eryuan(洱源) County. The writer selected these localities for the following reasons: Kunming is the capital of Yunnan, and through interviews it was possible to understand the development of Confucianism, and the possibility of its acceptance and practice in an urban sitting; Jianshui is symbolic as home to the second largest Confucian temple in China; Dali was where the Nanzhao kingdom and Dali kingdom were located during the Tang and Song dynasties, and these two kingdoms, although chiefly Buddhist, were profoundly influenced by Confucian thought; and Fengyu, Eryuan County, although a 3  Translator’s note (TN): The Tang dynasty kingdom of Yunnan’s Bai ethnicity. 4  Zhang Songzhi 張頌之, “Kongzi: yige shenhuaxue de ge’an yanjiu—Kongzi shenhua yanjiu zhi yi” 孔子：一個神話學的個案研究—孔子神話研究之一, Qilu Xuekan 齊魯學刊 6 (2000).

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small town, has a temple dedicated to the three main religions, showing that the local Bai ethnicity, although mainly Buddhist, has syncretic belief in all three religions, while the town’s Ming dynasty Fengming (鳳鳴) Academy has even more historical significance in energetically promoting Confucianism. This chapter will carry out its discussion in two main parts. In the first part, it will discuss the image and status of Confucius among ordinary people in Yunnan, and then analyze the specific appearance of Confucius in folk society. In the second part, this chapter will discuss what function Confucian thought serves in an economically resurgent China in which the life of ordinary Yunnan people has improved greatly through tourism, and in an era of pursuing enhanced economic well-being. How do ordinary people in Yunnan regard the current Chinese government’s avid promotion of cultural revitalization? Through this field investigation, this chapter describes what the writer saw and heard regarding these questions. 2

Faith or Belief: One Confucius, Two Shapes

Confucius in the Temple 2.1 Situated in a frontier region, Yunnan has many customs extremely different from Han culture. Rulers always regarded this kind of frontier area as in desperate need of acculturation and education/transformation ( jiaohua 教化) through rites and music. Believing in “the use of Chinese culture to transform foreign tribes” (yong xia bian yi 用夏變夷), in the 22nd year of the Yuan dynasty (1362), Zhang Lidao 張立道, in his official capacity as “appeasement commissioner” (xuanfusi 宣撫司) in Jianshui and Guangxi, built a temple to Confucius in Jianshui. This temple continued to expand throughout the Ming and Qing dynasties, so that it is now the second largest Confucian temple in China, second only to the Confucian temple in Qufu, Shandong Province [the birthplace of Confucius], and its annual ceremony to worship Confucius has become emblematic of official veneration of Confucius in the Jianshui region. From the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties onward, Jianshui’s annual veneration of Confucius accrued political significance not only in symbolizing imperial power but even more in implementing the policy of “using Chinese culture to transform foreign tribes.” That is to say, the rulers not only hoped to make the border regions amenable to central policies, but even more, through Confucian worship rites, to lead people in the non-Han areas of the border region to accept Han culture, in which Confucianism was considered

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the cultural mainstream.5 The rise and decline of Confucian temples, and whether or not importance was placed on worship of Confucius, originally had pronounced political significance.6 Successive emperors all performed rites in Confucian temples and controlled the educated elite in all localities by making them feel valued, with the ultimate objective of achieving peaceful rule throughout the land. Local gentry understood the central imperial power’s attitude toward the literati through the space of the Confucian temple and the solemn rites carried out there. For this reason, worship of Confucius in the Jianshui region was not only the means by which generations of rulers symbolically pronounced their sovereignty over the border regions and over non-Han peoples, but even more demonstrated their concrete implementation of the policy of “ruling the country through Confucianism.” Following the Ming dynasty’s exertions to make the country prosperous, the widespread building of academies of classical learning and teaching of Confucian classics earned Jianshui, in ancient times known as Lin’an 臨安, the laudatory name of “the southern Yunnan homeland of Mencius and Confucius.”7 While during the imperial era, the Jianshui Confucius Temple signified a successful model of successive Chinese emperors “using Chinese culture to transform foreign tribes” and “ruling the country with Confucianism,” in modern times it has provided a pretext for promoting Jianshui as a tourist site in the name of developing cultural heritage, and has created local wealth. In 2004, the Chinese government began carrying out public offerings to Confucius in the sage’s birthplace in Qufu, Shandong Province, signifying that the government, apart from creating an economic miracle, was actively reviving and returning to traditional culture, especially the Confucian culture that had always represented an important dimension of Chinese culture.8 This 5  See Zhang Liming 張黎明, Shengyu youzai – Diannan Jianshui jikong yishi 聖域猶在—滇南 建水祭孔儀式 (Kunming: PhD thesis for Yunnan University College of Humanities, 2008), 7. 6  Huang Chin-shing (Huang Jinxing) 黃進興, You rusheng jing—quanli, xinyang yu zhengdang­ xing 優入聖境----權力、信仰與正當性 (Taipei: Yunchen wenhua, 1994). 7  As per the Ming dynasty official Bao Jianjie 包見捷 (1558–1621) in his “Record of the Newly Built Lin’an Prefectural School” 新修臨安府學記: “By encountering the enlightened sage, using the Way to create harmony, and bringing about the flourishing of the humanities, this place was for a time called the Southern Yunnan homeland of Mencius and Confucius” (遭際聖明，道化翔洽，人文蔚起，一時稱為滇南鄒魯). See Yang Feng 楊豐, Jianshui wenmiao lidai beiwen wenxuan 建水文廟歷代碑文選注 (Jianshui: Jianshui xian wenmiao guanlishu), 26. 8  About the return of Confucius ceremonies in Qufu and for a general overview of the Confucian revival in China, see Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval, The Sage and the People, The Confucian Revival in China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

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action was tantamount to revising the Chinese government’s earlier policy of criticizing Confucius, and the Chinese government was using its political power through its carefully considered Confucian ceremony to strive for a rebuilding of cultural traditions. Through the “Worldwide Chinese Offerings to Confucius” in 2005, the government energetically organized activities honoring Confucius among Chinese all over the world, and Jianshui was channeled into these activities, displaying the region’s distinctive Confucian rites, in particular its Dongjing music (on this topic, see Wang Chien-chuan’s contribution to this volume).9 Apart from serving as venues for ceremonies that express the refining influence of culture and education and promote a return to traditional Confucian culture, Confucian temples, as a part of cultural heritage, have an economic potential that may be the core motivation of the Chinese government’s popularization of cultural heritage sightseeing tours. Since China embarked on its Reform and Opening policy, Jianshui’s historical background as an ancient city, coupled with its being home to China’s second largest Confucian temple, has made it a strategic locality for the Yunnan government’s development of the provincial tourism industry. During the annual ceremonies honoring Confucius, the Jianshui area also presents stage performances that emphasize the enormous lasting influence of Confucius on later generations. These performances emphasize that although Jianshui is a small city, its cultural refinement is in no way inferior to major metropolitan areas. The method of promoting and preserving traditional culture while also creating economic benefit has led to the small town of Jianshui attracting increasing numbers of tourists in recent years. While the Yunnan government carries out a grand ceremony venerating Confucius every year and is energetically promoting the ancient city of Jianshui, does this mean that ordinary people have gained a new appreciation and understanding of Confucianism as a result of these ceremonies? Based on my interviews, the answer is no. Let’s begin with the ticket prices for the Confucius Temple in Jianshui. The price of 60 yuan for one ticket is by no means cheap. Although Jianshui residents enjoy a discount,10 the ticketing system serves as a thick wall that obstructs ordinary people from entering the temple and having an opportunity to look 9  See Zhang Liming 張黎明, Shengyu youzai, 33–34. TN: Dongjing music is a type of ritual music traditionally performed by the Naxi people of Yunnan. 10  According to accounts by local people, in the past, people were allowed to enter the Temple of Confucius whenever they liked, and there was no ticketing system. The ticketing system began only recently, for tourism purposes.

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with reverence upon the Sage. It resembles imperial times, when unauthorized people were not allowed to worship at a Confucian temple. It is no wonder that a taxi driver told me, “The ceremonies to Confucius are carried out by the government and have nothing to do with us.” The Confucius Temple, for local people, has become a tourist attraction that increases local revenues. Ordinary people that I could interview see the ceremonies honoring Confucius as a government matter that has no essential connection to their lives. Entering the Temple of Confucius, one encounters a chilly, forbidding and deserted interior almost impossible to associate with the ostentatious and extravagant official ceremonies. Yet interestingly, placed before the temple’s images of Confucius and his accompanying sages are “merit boxes” inviting donations from tourists. Since the Qing dynasty, Jianshui’s Confucius Temple has represented the government’s rational allegiance to the sages’ spiritual symbolism, yet today, in response to tourism and the mentality of worshiping Confucius to obtain honor and ranking, there has emerged a pattern similar to popular faith, and imitating such faith, temples ask tourists to donate money toward incense and other worship items as they pray for peace and prosperity, transforming the sacredness of the Confucius Temple into faith in a deity who “grants every wish.” The sacredness of Confucian beliefs becomes intermingled with the worldliness of popular faith inside the Jianshui Confucius Temple. When Huang Jinxing carried out research on Confucian temples, he sighed, “This tradition [of worshiping Confucius] has become either an ornamental object preserving ancient ways (Taiwan) or a commercial object for developing markets (mainland China).”11 The two coexist in the Jianshui Confucius Temple: an ornamental object preserving ancient ways in terms of the long history of the temple, and a commercial object for developing markets in terms of its creation of commercial benefit. Huang Jinxing also acutely observed the distance between the temple and ordinary people, mainly due to government factors; if the Confucius Temple’s official and cultural functions could be separated, it could return to its original form and recover its cultural status in today’s society.12 If the Confucius Temple could actually become depoliticized and return to a cultural level, perhaps it could become a site for coalescing a sense of community, and through a “deified” Confucius become a dignified arbiter for participants to acquire more of a sense of divine will and less of 11  Huang Jinxing 黃進興, “Kongmiao de jiegou yu chongzu: zhuanhua chuantong wenhua suo yansheng de kunjing” 孔廟的解構與重組:轉化傳統所衍生的困境, in Entering the Master’s Sanctuary: Power, Belief and Legitimacy in Traditional China 優入聖域—權 利、信仰與正當性, op. cit., 314. 12  Huang Jingxing 黃進興, ibid., 321–324.

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human desire. The venue’s sacredness could reinforce people’s sense of public justice, and it could become a place where ordinary people could discuss topics of concern rather than a place for display official policies. Of course, the Jianshui Confucius Temple at present is highly politicized and commodified; the temple has become a space for reciting government policy, while its portion devoted to Confucian teachings caters to academic research, turning Confucius into a sage cherished in the nostalgic memories of scholars. As far as ordinary residents of Jianshui are concerned, although the Confucius Temple is right there among them, it remains remote from them. The Confucius in the temple dwells deep in a forbidden palace, unaware of the thinking of the common people and the changes occurring outside the palace chambers. 2.2 Confucius in the Temples of Popular Religion Every year, on the birthday of Confucius, the Yunnan government gathers at the Jianshui Confucius Temple to carry out a solemn ceremony honoring Confucius. What is interesting is that Jianshui residents don’t pay any attention to this official ceremony; the Confucius they worship remains in the temples of popular or folk (minjian) religion. Jianshui’s Temple of the Kitchen God (Zhaojun Si 灶君) is a typical folk temple combining the three religions. Every year on the 27th day of the eighth lunar month, the temple performs a “Confucius Assembly” (Kongzi hui 孔子會) to worship Confucius and celebrate the sage’s birthday, and nearby residents all bring offerings to the temple and pray for blessings. The “assembly” in this sense is a gathering together of the people, and therefore, in terms of popular religion, the “assembly” gathers local residents at the local temple for offerings and celebration in joint worship, meaning that local residents gather at the temple on a set day for the performance of rites for a specific deity. Apart from the Confucius Assembly, there’s also a Guanyin Assembly, a Guangong (Guandi) Assembly, a Dragon Assembly, a Kitchen God Assembly, and so on, honoring the birthdays of various folk religion deities, along with regular worship days such as the first and 15th days of the lunar months. The Confucius Assembly at the Temple of the Kitchen God is in fact a folkstyle worship ceremony for Confucius. During the imperial era, ordinary people weren’t allowed to take part in official worship ceremonies for Confucius, but the image of the Sage was deeply embedded in Chinese society, and the mentality of praying to Confucius for scholarly and professional success was likewise deeply embedded in the hearts of ordinary people. As a result, in temples of folk religion syncretizing the three main religions, it was considered perfectly proper to worship the chief deities of all three religions, even more so when

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figure 4.1 A portrait of Confucius in Jianshui’s Temple of the Kitchen God © Chung Yun-ying

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figure 4.2 Prayer cards to Confucius during the “Confucius Assembly” © Chung Yun-ying

figure 4.3 People gathering for the “Confucius Assembly” © Chung Yun-ying

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figure 4.4 Prayers to Confucius during the “Confucius Assembly” © Chung Yun-ying

each temple celebrated major events, and the Confucius Assembly therefore became a regular worship ceremony at the Temple of the Kitchen God. The main feature of the Jianshui Confucius Assembly is the assimilation of local Dongjing music—discussed in Wang Chien-chuan’s chapter to this volume—into official ceremonies worshiping Confucius. Although not as solemn and ostentatious as the official ceremony, the ceremonial text imitates the official ceremony. The rites written down in the Book of ceremonies proceed as follows: Opening Praise (開經讚), reciting the Zhaoping Chapter (昭平之章), reciting the Yiping Chapter (宜平之章), Praise of Confucius (孔子讚), reciting the Zhiping Chapter (秩平之章), Praise of Confucius (孔子讚), reciting the Xuping Chapter (敘平之章), Praise of Confucius (孔子讚), reciting the Deping Chapter (德平之章), Heartfelt Salute (志心敬禮), Praise of Confucius (孔子 讚), Sending off the sages (送聖), and so on (see Appendix 1). In the book of ceremonies for the Confucius Assembly, we can see that the rites for Confucius at the Temple of the Kitchen God are just like the praise chants at the official ceremony for Confucius and from “Model Teacher of Myriad Ages enlightening the people through education” to “the greatest moral model the people have ever had,” praising the holy virtue of Confucius, each section of the ceremony is punctuated with performances of Jianshui’s local Dongjing music. The great influence of tradition is obvious in this ceremonial process.

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The Temple of the Kitchen God does not include a statue of Confucius, but only a wooden spirit tablet, painted red on its edges around a white center with words written in black: “Shrine of the Holy Realm of Jade Clarity Celestial Worthy of the Original Beginning13 [right], Shrine of the Supreme Sage and Ancestral Teacher of Great Accomplishment Confucius [left].” On the day of the ceremony, an image of Confucius is hung in the central chamber, and when the ceremony is concluded, the temple staff pack away the image, and the temple returns to its original appearance. Apart from the Temple of the Kitchen God, another Jianshui temple, the Lüwa (Green Tile 綠瓦) Temple has a similar memorial temple inscribed “Shrine of the Holy Realm of Jade Clarity Celestial Worthy of the original Beginning [right], Shrine of the Supreme Ruler of Heaven14 [center], Shrine of the Supreme Sage and Ancestral Teacher of Great Accomplishment Confucius [left].” The difference is that the Confucius Assembly at the Lüwa Temple performs only a standard ceremony for local residents coming to worship, rather than the grand imitation of official rites carried out at the Temple of the Kitchen God. The display of statues and memorial tablets in Jianshui’s temples of folk religion shows that Confucius is treated no differently from other deities in the hearts of the people, and because the emphasis of the protection each deity offers is different, among the various deities, Confucius represents the God of Literature and offers protection to students and scholars and blesses them with success in examinations and in professional attainment. It is obvious that although the ordinary people of Jianshui retain the image of Confucius as sage, they have “religionized” him so that Confucius is just one of many deities. In particular, students go to worship Confucius before taking the college entrance exam and vow that if they gain admission to a good school, they’ll keep a specific promise to Confucius at the temple. People regard Confucius in this way not only at Jianshui, but also in the city of Dali, inhabited primarily by the Bai ethnicity. In Dali one finds temples to the God of Literature everywhere, and the deity honored here is Confucius. The transformation of Confucius into a god worshiped by scholars is pervasive in the Yunnan countryside. I can cite the Temple of Three Religions (Sanjiao Gong, 三教宮) in the small town of Fengyu (鳳羽) in Eryuan (洱源) County as an example.

13  玉清勝境元始天尊之聖位. Yuan Shi Tian Zun (元始天尊) is one of the Three Worthies or Three Purities at the pinnacle of the Daoist pantheon. 14  昊天至尊上帝之聖位. Zhi Zun Shang Di (至尊上帝) is the one of the highest level deities in Daoism.

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figure 4.5 Spirit tablet of Confucius (on the left) and of one of the highest Daoist deities, the Celestial Worthy of Original Beginning (on the right) in the temple of the Kitchen God © Chung Yun-ying

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Most residents of Fengyu are members of the Bai ethnicity, so their main religion is Tibetan Buddhism and their native Benzhu spiritual tradition. But because Yunnan has a mixture of multiple ethnicities, Daoism also flourishes in Dali. There are still many Daoist shrines in the mountain areas of Dali, so a syncretic mixture of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism is very common here. It is merely that Buddhism is used to interpret Confucianism and Daoism. For example, tourists tend to think that Dali’s revered Guandi Temple (Temple of the God of War) falls under the category of Confucian temples, but the abbot told me that Dali’s Temple to the God of War is a Buddhist temple. Why is this? According to the abbot Miao Qiang 妙強 (Zhao Zhiqiang 趙志 強)’s description, after Guan Yu died, he converted to Buddhism and became the Dharma Protector (hufa pusa 護法菩薩) Fumo Dadi 伏魔大帝 (Demonconquering Bodhisatva). For that reason, the Temple of the God of War is considered a Buddhist rather than a Confucian temple.15 Beliefs dominated by Tibetan Buddhism incorporate Confucianism and Daoism to form a syncretic Buddhism. The Fengyu Temple of Three Religions was built in 1925 and rebuilt in 2001. At the entrance are pillars with the inscription “The temple’s new appearance shines again and carries on the virtue of the Three Teachings to influence all ages; the newly built gateway looks in all directions and channels the Way through all times,” which shows how the temple’s aspirations regarding the three religions are reflected in its refurbishment. Although called the Temple of Three Religions, its structure is mainly Buddhist, as a result of which an image of the Buddha is positioned on the first floor, and on the second floor an image of the Buddha is in the center, with a Daoist deity on the right and Confucius on the left. The temple’s horizontal board beam bears the inscription “Honoring the three religions in common,” “Dignity of the three religions,” “Radiance of the three religions” and “The Supreme Sage’s nurturing,” but the display of tablets for offerings is clearly Buddhist. This naturally is directly related to the mainly Buddhist religion practiced by Dali’s Bai ethnicity.

15  Miao Qiang told me that the holy name of Guandi in Dali is Nanwu Hufazang Pusa Mohesa (南無護法藏菩薩摩呵薩), and the content of the “Devotion to Guandi” is as follows: “Faithful to his sovereign and devoted to his country, he is a brave and mighty man, protector of the Dharma, ridder of external evils allowing the monks to live in peace and worry-free forever. He is the heavenly emperor who tames the devil, and famous statesman of the Han dynasty. He showed his formidable power on Yuquan Mountain and allowed all the world to enjoy peace. He is just, brave, loyal and vital. He supported and protected Yu City. Nanwu Hufazang Pusa Mohesa” (repeat three times). Fieldwork interview, July 2010. On Guandi, see also: Prasenjit Duara, “Superscribing Symbols: The Myth of Guandi, Chinese God of War,” The Journal of Asian Studies 47 (4) (1988): 778–795.

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Abbot Li Longxun told me that the merging of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism was the idea of the people of Fengyu, because it allowed them to enjoy the simultaneous protection of the deities of all three religions. Why worship Confucius? Because Confucius is a sage, and scholars who worship Confucius will be more successful in their studies and do better on their exams. Therefore, any local resident preparing for a major exam has to worship Confucius. According to the abbot of the Temple of Three Religions, Confucius as sage is merely a concept, and the main reason for worshiping Confucius is to do well on exams and in professional life. Why is it that Confucius’s image appears as a deity in a temple and is regarded as a “divinity” who can protect all those taking exams and not as the eternal sage primarily discussed by academic scholars doing research on Confucianism? Why is the Confucius in the Confucius Temple—in other words the Sage—so remote from ordinary people? We can in fact regard the Jianshui “images of Confucius” from both the perspectives of a “local guardian deity” and “political authority.” In order to construct orthodoxy, temples of folk religion typically incorporate officially sanctioned mainstream religions into their worship to show that they’re not worshiping unorthodox gods. In terms of the Buddhist model, what is most commonly seen in Jianshui is Cakyamuni (Siddhartha Gautama), Amitabha and Guanyin (Avalokitesvara). In terms of Daoism, it is the “three Pure Ones of the Dao.” In terms of Confucianism, it goes without saying that it is Confucius. But in order to meet the needs of ordinary people, the images of the deities of the three religions have been changed, and that includes the Confucius of folk religion. The biggest difference between the Confucius worshiped in the Temple of the Kitchen God, the Green Tile Temple and the Temple of Three Religions on the one hand, and the Confucius worshipped in the Confucius Temple on the other, is the protection offered to students or scholars (xuezi 學子). Local residents identify with and have a sense of belonging toward deities who protect them, and especially in folk religion, Confucianism has to be combined with the concept of karma in order for ordinary people to believe in it. In particular, Confucius as the God of scholarly and professional attainment governs whether or not a person will succeed in professional life. Also, ordinary people have the concept of “changing one’s fate through good works,” as a result of which they put into practice the notion of doing good to earn blessings by donating money for the repair of temples to request blessings and cultivate virtue.16 This phenomenon can be understood from the “tablets of merit and 16  Some scholars may believe that there is “benefit exchange” behavior in folk religions and the gods they worship. This argument in fact recognizes only one layer of Chinese

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virtue” in temples all over Yunnan engraved with the names of people who have donated money to build or rebuild temples. Through a combination of the concepts of good deeds being rewarded, merit through charitable deeds and professional accomplishment, Confucius has become an object of common worship for scholars and students. The Confucius of this area can find a place among ordinary people who are pursuing professional success but are filled with uncertainty, serving the purpose of invisible psychiatric treatment. As a result, the Confucius in local temples is closely connected with the fate of local residents; because he protects students, local people identify with and depend on him, building on their feelings toward the local guardian god. On the other hand, the Confucius in the Confucius Temple, represented by officialdom and symbolizing political authority, lacks an umbilical connection with the fates of ordinary people. Small wonder that ordinary people regard this Confucius as the government’s Confucius and not their own. 3

Initiatives by Ordinary People: The Construction of Privatelyestablished Academies and the Revival of Confucian Beliefs

Up to the present, Yunnan has preserved its Ming dynasty-style academies of classical learning, but all of these academies have been converted into local schools that teach modern knowledge, and have become educational venues under China’s state system rather than places devoted purely to instruction in the Confucian classics and Confucian thought. Previously, Confucian classics were still required subjects and therefore the mainstream in official education; but as times have changed and today’s academies have begun to teach modern primary and secondary school subjects rather than Confucian classics, one sees that while the academies look the same from the outside, they’ve become ordinary schools that have nothing to do with propagating Confucianism. Places like Heqing’s Yuping (Jade Screen 鶴慶玉屏) Academy, Dali’s Xinan (Southwest 西南) Academy, Weishan’s beliefs. Viewed from the perspective of the straight line between supplications, attaining one’s wishes, and fulfilling a vow, there is in fact an exchange of benefit, but in terms of the deeper level of beliefs, it’s not so simple. Chinese believe in localized deities mainly because of their deities’ handling and resolving of difficulties in their lives, such as illnesses, giving rise to the concept of a “guardian god.” As a result, believers are grateful to them and express their gratitude by fulfilling a vow. For this reason, when facing the matter of supplication / attaining one’s wishes / fulfilling a promise, we shouldn’t consider it simply from a straight line concept, which severs the emotional umbilical cord between the deity and the believer.

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Wenhua (巍山文華) Academy and the Fengmeng (鳳鳴) Academy in Fengyu, Eryuan County, have all become local primary or secondary schools. Academies have continued to play an educational role from ancient times to the present. It is only that in the Imperial era, the subjects and knowledge taught in academies became springboards for ordinary people to attain official careers and acquire knowledge, and because these courses consisted mainly of Confucian classics, people regarded them as venues for disseminating Confucian thought. Today’s academies in Yunnan, although likewise places where ordinary people acquire knowledge, are not venues for the dissemination of Confucian thought, but rather places where local governments carry out compulsory education. This is not only the case at classical academies but also for the education provided at the Yunnan Buddhist Academy. Education at the Yunnan Buddhist Academy currently consists mainly of coaching students for the government’s college entrance examinations rather than imparting Buddhist classics; that is why the Academy’s Theravada Buddhism and Tibetan (Vajrayana) Buddhism courses continue to attract students, while the Han Buddhism program hasn’t been able to recruit students for years.17 Yet, Confucianism is as inseparable from the beliefs of Chinese as blood and marrow; more precisely, since the Song and Ming dynasties, Chinese culture has thrived, transformed and spread in a climate that fuses the three religions. That is why even though religion in Yunnan is predominated by Tibetan Buddhist, Confucianism and Daoism have been absorbed into it. Especially since China’s economy has taken off, many people have begun reflecting on the question of cultural heritage. We see this reflected in Dali, where construction magnate Li Zhongxiang (李忠祥) and Hongda Automotive CEO Bi Guanghui (畢光輝), one because of cultural inclinations and the other because his daughter’s habits were completely changed by learning the Rules of Disciples (Dizi Gui 弟子規), combined with a mutual nostalgia for their hometown, have

17  The Yunnan Buddhist Academy coaches students to take the state exams and doesn’t charge tuition, so in places where Theravada Buddhism and Vajrayana Buddhism predominate, and where the material living conditions and educational conditions of ethnic minorities are far inferior to the Han, ethnic minority parents send their children to the Yunnan Buddhist Academy for standard education in order to link up with the Han educational system. The Han, on the other hand, find that if they want to take the state exams, they can go straight into the state education system and don’t need the Yunnan Buddhist Academy; not to mention that ordinary privately-established tutorial classes are much better at teaching examination skills than the Yunnan Buddhist Academy. As a result, for some years now the Yunnan Buddhist Academy has been unable to recruit students studying Han Buddhism.

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created the Canglu (蒼麓) Academy of Classic Culture and the Canghai (蒼海) Academy, respectively.18 On entering the Canglu Academy, one first sees on the entrance pillars an antithetical couplet expressing the convictions of the founder: “The Canglu Academy of Classic Culture, nestled deep inside Baiyang, verses and couplets beautifully displaying the Tang and Song style,” and, “The Canglu courtyard promotes cultural activity, the academy of classical learning extols bright prospects.” Because of his family’s poverty, Li Zhongxiang was unable to continue his studies as he desired, but because he loved calligraphy and had a passion for traditional culture, he learned to write beautifully, and the academy includes a room devoted to his personal calligraphy. As a result, Li Zhongxiang aspired to achieve success and fame not only as a businessman, but also as a man of letters, and improving the cultural standards of Dali’s ordinary citizens is one of the ideas behind his creation of the academy. On the birthday of Confucius in 2008, the Canglu Academy performed a grand ceremony worshiping Confucius and declared the honoring of Confucius as the academy’s objective (see Appendix 2). Furthermore, at the main entrance to the garden is carved, “To observe and understand the great changes in the world, and to explore the origin of all things in the universe,” which shows the founder’s expectation towards himself: The way one should conduct oneself in this life demands to be able to preserve in one’s heart/mind a constant state of vigilance or even fear since success and failures are frequently a matter of immediate intention. Only through insight into the source of all things can one understand that nothing lasts forever in this world, and all ups and downs, successes and failures occur in a flash. The term “karma” (yinguo 因果) even better expresses the attitude with which a religious believer views human affairs: “Boddhisatva fears cause, living creatures fear effect.” It appears that Li’s aspiration of gaining clarity over human affairs requires to be clear in one’s heart/mind, to return to the origin of all things when observing the world situation, and not to worry about cause and effect. The Canglu Academy mainly promotes Confucianism and the culture of Dali, but as a businessman, Li Zhongxiang knows he cannot run the academy on his own forever and that he therefore needs to adopt commercial methods 18  The Canglu Academy is located south of the bridge Guanyin tang in the town of Xiaguan, municipality of Dali (雲南大理市下關鎮觀音塘橋南) and the Canghai Academy 蒼海 書院 is located No. 32 Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture of Dali City, Yunnan Province, Yu Bureau Road (雲南省大理白族自治州大理市玉局路32號).

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in order to sustain the academy. Apart from a restaurant where tourists can eat, the academy also provides “workspaces” serving as a platform or some sort of business incubator for those who hope to develop activities linked to the popularization of traditional culture at the Canglu Academy, giving them a sense of secure institutional backing while also providing a commercial income that will support the academy’s operations in perpetuity. The “Dali Canglu Academy Workspace Operational System” introduced in Appendix 3 to this chapter details the terms and conditions (including profit distribution) applicable to users of “workplaces” and helps us understand that there is also a real business model behind the academy. In fact, this operational system shows that Li Zhongxiang has mixed commercial considerations with the development of the Academy; that is to say, the Canglu Academy is not purely promoting culture, and in order to allow the academy to continue running over the long term, it also appeals to those who are interested in popular culture as well as businesses engaged in the popularization of traditional culture. Therefore, of the total income received by the Workspace, 30% goes to the Academy’s development fund, showing that Workspaces inside the Academy can promote cultural industry and at the same time help the Academy cover its future development expenses; although it has commercial behavior, it doesn’t qualify as a profit-making body. This design shows that Li Zhongxiang hopes that the platform provided by the Canglu Academy will allow those with an interest in traditional culture to participate in the operation of the Academy and push forward research in Dali studies along with the reading of traditional classics. Insiders told me that before the Canglu Academy began formally operating as a business, they had already begun a campaign to promote reading the classics and had invited famous scholars such as Ji Xianlin19 to give lectures. They plan to actively establish contacts with the founders of Taiwan academies in hopes of learning from Taiwan’s experience in passing on traditional culture. The establishment and operational model of the Canghai Academy is completely different from that of the Canglu Academy. The founder, Bi Guanghui (畢光輝), is CEO of Dali Hongda Motor Company. His daughter attended school outside of mainland China for a long time, and had little knowledge of traditional culture, not to mention principles of filial devotion, so he took her to Guangzhou to be instructed in the “Rules of Disciples” (Dizi gui 弟子規).20 19  TN: Ji Xianlin (August 6, 1911–July 11, 2009) was an Indologist, linguist, paleographer, historian and writer, and an expert on the migration of Buddhism from India to China. 20  In Taiwan, the Jingzong Learned Society of Master Nai Jingkong (Chin-kung) was the first to promote the “Rules of Disciples.” Although Master Jingkong is an elder in the Buddhist

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After his daughter returned home, she moved her family by washing her grandmother’s feet. That is why Bi decided to establish a privately-run academy where all young students could be educated in the “Rules of Disciples.” Although the “Rules of Disciples” is mainly promoted by the Buddhist Jingzong Association of Master Jing Kong (see Ji Zhe’s contribution to this volume), its religious overtones have been removed, reverting to its cultural noumena. Nothing in the courses promoting the “Rules of Disciples” particularly emphasizes Buddhist doctrines or thinking; rather, their main content is the Confucian order of ethical relations and reciprocity, with Confucian ethics and morality as their pivot, and the principle of filial devotion as the core, putting into practice the Confucian credo, “Filial piety is the foundation of being human.” The aim of the Canghai Academy is to instruct students in the practical application of ethics and morality. The Academy has a statue of the sage Confucius where each student has to pay respects before going to class. Confucian beliefs have begun to thrive under the sustaining effort of such privately-run groups. The operational model of the Canghai Academy echoes that of the program for reading Confucian classics in Taiwan. All teaching materials are provided at no cost by the Academy, and volunteers at the Academy work out of a desire to give back to society, revive traditional culture and energetically promote the “Rules of Disciples” courses. In August 2010, the Academy distributed free copies of the “Rules of Disciples” to residents of Dali. “Rules of Disciples” is the sole course of instruction at the Canghai Academy. Its objective in providing Dali with free instruction in “Rules of Disciples” is to position itself as a tuition-free National studies education venue established through a private-sector initiative, and to become a major promoter of the revival of traditional culture in Dali. The Canglu Academy and Canghai Academy were both established by successful Dali businessmen. Apart from carrying on the traditional Chinese academy system, even more important is that after creating an economic community, he says, “‘Rules of Disciples’ is the Pusa’s foundation,” as a result of which Master Jingkong and his disciples have done their utmost to design a curriculum to promote “Rules of Disciples.” They established an experimental “harmonious model town” in Tangchi Town, Lujiang County, Anhui Province, and within three months, it was said that everyone there became polite and modest, and the place became known as a “modern Taohua Yuan” (Utopia). The Jingzong Learned Society subsequently used this model to promote the “Rules for Pupils” throughout China with excellent results. TN: For more on the Tangchi experiment, see Guillaume Dutournier and Ji Zhe, “Social Experimentation and ‘Popular Confucianism,’” China Perspectives, No. 4, 2007. See also Ji Zhe’s contribution to this volume.

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miracle, these businessmen are no longer focusing solely on economic expansion, but have returned to the relational social ethics of Confucian culture, and on how to use schooling to resurrect the moral conscience that held together the ethical values of the old society. In China, an increasing number of private-sector individuals like these two businessmen in Dali are either running academies or establishing lecture courses in national studies. This phenomenon shows that traditional culture, especially Confucianism, with its emphasis on the order of ethical relations, can exert a calling in some people. This calling is leading many Chinese, after becoming materially prosperous, to contemplate the values of being human, and to take an avid interest in restoring traditional culture. This phenomenon can be seen all over China.21 4

The Influence of Taiwan: The Promotion of Classics-Reading Classes for Children

The greatest accomplishment in the development of Confucianism in Taiwan is the popularization of classics-reading classes for children through likeminded private sector groups. This classics-reading craze has had a profound influenced throughout China. Under the one-child policy, many child-rearing problems have emerged in China, and a large number of people from Taiwan who have bought property and settled in Yunnan have imported the Taiwan model of classics-reading classes for children. In Kunming, Taiwan’s Bliss and Wisdom (Fuzhi 福智) Organization22 has imported its organic agriculture credo, and has joined with Yunnan resident Xin Yanrong in running Kunming Zhongnong Trading Co., Ltd. Apart from selling Taiwan’s Leezen and Tse-Xin (慈心) organic agricultural products,23 the company also runs the “Sunflower Classics-Reading Classes for Children.” Its textbooks are emblematic of Confucian thought, mainly “Rules 21  Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval provide many examples of business people embracing the Confucian cause in all parts of China and analyze their various aspirations. See The Sage and the People, The Confucian Revival in China, 57–59, 70–75, 111–124, 298. The research of Fu Lan, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Paris, provides numerous examples of the Confucian commitments of Chinese entrepreneurs. 22  TN: http://www.blisswisdom.org/. 23  Zhongnong Trading Co. uses a membership system, and apart from selling organic foods, it also runs a cafeteria providing lunch and dinner. Anyone who eats there has to be a member. Li Xiaoying told me that they have more than 1,000 members in the Kunming region. TN: for Leezen Products, see http://www.leezen.com.tw/big5/index.asp. For Tse-Xin products, see http://toaf.org.tw/en/.

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of Disciples,” the “Three Character Classic” (Sanzi jing 三字經), “Zhu Bailu’s Maxims on Household Management” (Zhuzi zhijia geyan, 朱子治家格言)24 and “The Analects,” and are combined with the life education curriculum promoted by Taiwan’s Bliss and Wisdom Organization. The director of the classics-reading classes, Li Xiaoying 李曉英 told me that at present the Sunflower classes are mainly modeled on the ideas of the Bliss and Wisdom Organization, combining the spirit of the classics with moral education on the founding principle of putting them into practice in daily life. This is the second year the classes have been offered, so the students have only been through two grades in a two-year system, with 20 students to a class. In order to maintain course integrity and develop children’s sense of responsibility, late enrollees are not accepted. At present, around 40 children are taking the class; due to the lack of qualified teachers, there are no plans to recruit additional students for the time being. The training of teachers for the classes is carried out by trainers sent to Kunming by the Bliss and Wisdom Organization. The people taking part in the training are highly educated Kunming residents such as teachers, lawyers, doctors and university or graduate students. Since the Taiwan Bliss and Wisdom Organization regularly sends people to Kunming to teach courses to this group of volunteer teachers, the teachers of the children’s classics courses have to regularly take courses offered by the organization in order to advance themselves. The shared ethos is the desire to use the classics-reading model to foster moral concepts in children and return to traditional culture’s daily-life ethics of the loving father and filial son. Taiwan has preserved the best of traditional Chinese culture largely intact, added to which the classics-reading courses for children have been developed to considerable maturity in Taiwan, so the Taiwan model is being used to revive traditional ethical relations and moral excellence. Based on Taiwan’s successful experience, the classes are held every Saturday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. Li Xiaoying is well aware that children cannot possibly have the patience for a full two hours reading the classics, so the classes include a story-telling period and time for learning artistic skills. This makes the classes lively, varied and interesting, with the result that children love to come to class every Saturday. Li told me with no little pride that in the current classes, more than half of the children have pushed their parents to make time to participate in all of the classics-reading activities. In order to avoid children’s classics-reading classes becoming purely utilitarian, or allowing parents to demand that their children read the classics 24  朱柏廬 (1617–1688).

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while they themselves don’t grow, the Sunflower program requires that parents attend the classes every week with their children. To this end, they have also established growth classes for parents, the core contents of which are mainly related to parenting, along with the concepts promoted by the Zhongnong Company regarding organic crops. Another example is Lin Xiaoxin (林曉炘 1949–), also from Taiwan, who opened the Zizhulin (Black Bamboo Grove 紫竹林) Vegetarian Cafe in the Dali Temple in 1992. He was a primary school classmate of Taiwan’s famous neo-Confucian scholars Wang Caigui (王財貴) and Lin An-wu (林安梧), and a sense of calling and charity led him to open a restaurant in Dali and establish classics-reading courses for children. The “Rules of Disciples” and The Analects, likewise serve as the foundational texts for studying the classics. Lin Xiaoxin grew up in an impoverished family, but the teaching and assistance of his primary school teacher led him to resolve that if he achieved success in the future, he must follow his teacher’s example and give back to society. As an adult, he joined the Taichung Lotus Society (Taizhong Lianshe 臺中蓮社) and was deeply influenced by the lay Buddhist Li Ping-nan (李炳南), who moved him with his conviction that one must plant melons regardless of whether they bear fruit; i.e., that society also needs people who aren’t highly intelligent, and one cannot always control the results of one’s efforts. For this reason, when he decided to move to Dali, he became bent on doing something meaningful there. Finding that Dali residents believe in Buddhism, but that vegetarianism is not common, he decided on the basis of his Buddhist convictions of benevolence to open the Zizhulin Vegetarian Cafe. The Zizhulin model of classics-reading classes is mainly Wang Caigui’s model for instructing children in the classics, involving only memorization without explanation, for two hours every night, Monday through Friday.25 Lin Xiaoxin hopes, by requiring his staff to also attend the classes, to breed a classic-reading habit in his staff as well, so he requires his staff to read the classics every day. However, because this classics-reading model is so homogenized, a staff member told me that having to memorize the classics like this every day and then going home and doing their homework just adds to the immense pressure that Chinese children are already under; as a result, children are not very persistent in studying the classics, and many have dropped out of the course. This staff member felt that this classic-reading model was merely what parents wanted, and consisting only of reciting the classics without any 25  For a detailed account of Wang Caigui’s pedagogy, see Billioud and Thoraval, The Sage and the People, 86–88 and, more generally, 35–106. On Confucian education see Dutournier’s contribution to this volume.

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other kinds of classes makes the course too boring and fails to keep children interested enough to continue through to the end. Even so, parents want their children to be able to read the classics, not only because it increases their ability to read classical prose, but also because there is an element of flaunting attached to it, so the Zizhulin Classics-Reading Classes continue to attract new students. Compared with the Sunflower Classic-Reading Classes, this course does not offer adult courses for parents, which results in children studying the classics without their parents maturing in this area, and may be another reason why the Zizhulin Classics-Reading Classes don’t appeal to children. But Taiwan’s concepts and models of classics-reading classes are quietly germinating in Dali. Apart from classics-reading classes for children, every Saturday a professor from Dali University teaches the Book of Changes (Yi Jing 易經). This course is designed especially for adults, with 30 to 40 participants. Enrolling university students, graduate students and other adults, it has been operating very smoothly. The above-mentioned two examples are of Buddhists offering courses for children to read the classics, although the texts are mainly those of Confucian thought.26 Apart from following the example of Taiwan, they mainly hope to use the classics to improve hearts and minds and restore traditional moral virtues. In particular, classics centered on Confucian thought contain the spirit of people being as moral and responsible as possible in this world, and of every role striving to preserve the order of ethical relations. What Confucians speak of is constructing social order through the individual’s everyday ethical practice in society. The “teaching of complete virtue” is therefore by no means empty talk and meditation, but the achievement of one’s ideal character through practicing ethical relations in daily life. Precisely because Confucian thought emphasizes the concrete practice of ethical relations in society, Confucian principles and moral concepts can construct a social order that conforms to the ideals of a vast number of people in a communitarian society. For this reason, whether in Taiwan or China, privatesector groups promoting the reading of the classics all start with textbooks that are emblematic of Confucian thought. This indicates that a profound desire of modern Chinese societies focuses on social principles of ethical relations. This 26  Lee Chien-hung’s research on the modern Taiwan classics-reading movement found that private organizations selected texts according to the principle of “letting a hundred flowers bloom,” but ultimately returned to the Confucian classics. See Lee Chien-Hung (Li Jianhong) 李建弘, Jingdian yu shijian: dangdai Taiwan dujing yundong zhi yanjiu 經典 與實踐-當代臺灣讀經運動之研究 (Taipei: Religion MA dissertation, Taiwan National Chengchi University, 2007).

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deep-seated aspiration is not affected by different religious beliefs; using the reading of Confucian classics to improve the human mindset, and practicing Confucian thought to construct a society with moral and ethical principles, have become the common idea behind classics-reading classes established by private organizations. 5

Conclusion: Culture as Calling and Practice

In 2015, ceremonies honoring Confucius were carried out in more than 40 places in China. Leaving aside how ordinary people regard this, at the very least, the government’s standpoint has evolved from renouncing to reviving traditional culture, and it symbolically proclaims the modern Chinese government’s determination to revive traditional culture (particularly Confucian culture). Especially in the private sector, the number of adherents to beliefs or new groups related to traditional culture is multiplying. This phenomenon demonstrates that even though modern China has undergone the smashing, rejecting and ruination of traditional culture, at the deepest level of consciousness the admiration of traditional culture, while inhibited, has not changed due to official policies. This confirms Mr. Yu Ying-shih’s statement that the development of modern Confucianism doesn’t require the backing of political authority to develop. Despite the vicissitudes of 20th century history and the anti-Confucian movements that affected China, the image of Confucius, whether as sage or as guardian deity, remains imprinted in the hearts of many Chinese people for whom Confucianism is still considered the common faith of Chinese society. In this field survey we found that the vitality, activity and creativity of the Confucian revival in Yunnan are in the private sector. Officialdom’s various slogans proclaiming the revival of traditional culture merely prove that the government is no longer criticizing Confucius or destroying Confucianism, but its essential function doesn’t compare with the power of activity and practice in civil society. Under the government’s encouragement or tolerance, privatesector groups can even more fearlessly respond to the calling of culture deep in their hearts. From the phenomena of privately-built academies and the establishment of classics-reading classes for children, we can profoundly understand that it has been impossible to eliminate Confucian thought from Chinese identity; more precisely, the Chinese sense of cultural belonging is still, to a large extent, rooted in Confucianism. Although the importance of other traditions should not be downplayed, Confucianism is a foundation from which Chinese culture

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germinates, and is an invisible power for settling popular sentiment. Of course, it can be said that Confucianism came to the fore as a political tool; however, after undergoing countless tribulations and transformations it becomes again the common faith and cultural home of part of Chinese society. From this we can understand that it has historically emerged as a collective identity and object of belonging within Chinese society through a dynamic rather than a static process, and this dynamism and fluctuation has caused Confucianism to mold a cultural model of “society reproduction” (shehui zaishengchan 社會再 生產) among the people. Ting Jen-chieh (丁仁傑) explains “society reproduction” in classical Chinese society as follows: “Society reproduction,” in its broadest sense, is part of the display of cultural authority. Through cultural coding, it determines the legitimacy of current social relations and social order, and allows those individuals who are participating in this relationship model to change from a kind of passivity to a kind of activity and from there to be channeled deeply into a model of interactions and roles that society has already defined and that the individual has not voluntarily chosen. The entire process reiterates the “cultural authority” derived from “tradition.”27 From this we know that Confucianism as cultural coding allows Chinese who identify with Confucian culture to share in the participation in and expression and creation of “cultural authority.” This cultural authority is no longer exclusive to political power, all the more so as political power’s current relation to Confucianism remains highly ambiguous and equivocal;28 anyone who identifies with Confucian culture participates in recreating culture in this cultural reproduction, and every person’s role is as an active participant. As a result, the restricted choice of promoting Confucian culture or Confucianism, whether by expounding on Confucian thought or believing in Confucius as a god, causes civil society’s participation in reproduction to far surpass the officially espoused form in terms of its cultural authority, vitality and practicality, and its sense of identity and belonging. In his book Forms of Power, sociologist Gianfranco Poggi points out that human beings have a complex and delicate need for psychical and moral 27  Ting Jen-chieh (Ding Renjie) 丁仁傑, Dangdai Hanren minzhong zongjiao yanjiu: Lunshu, rentong yu shehui zaishengchan 當代漢人民眾宗教研究：論述、認同與社會再 生產 (Taipei: Lianjing chuban shiye, 2009), 74. 28  On this topic see Billioud and Thoraval, The Sage and the People, 222–237, 278–281, 294–301.

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well-being, not just for bodily integrity and for a full belly; that individuals need to feel that the world makes sense, that they make sense to others, and that others make sense to themselves.29 On this point, Ting Jen-chieh goes a step further: It is essential that this sense of meaning has a collective foundation behind it. And in order to make this sense of meaning more vivid, “selfrestriction” is necessary for the people: Thus, they deliberately avoid to pay attention to the fact that any way of comprehending the world is nothing but a set of specific interpretations created by certain people … This web of meaning must be woven and strengthened through social forms such as continuous dissemination and affirmation through the language of authority, sanctification through specific collective rites, etc … “Self-restriction” is essential for this, because it is only by regarding the web of meaning in which one places one’s hope as the only correct one that people can safely settle into an apparently orderly web of meaning.30 In the mentality of pursuing a meaningful existence, we can profoundly understand that whether through official or popular organizations and despite all the twists and turns of 20th Century history “Confucianism” still embodies a collective quest for meaning of many Chinese people. For that reason, official rites to “worship Confucius” emphasize belief in his sacredness, while popular groups consciously re-appropriate Confucianism by establishing academies or classics-reading classes, and folk temples use “Confucius Assemblies” to propagate their belief in Confucius as a guardian god. The reproduction of this cultural authority makes “Confucian culture” a widely shared meaning within Chinese culture. That is why the popularization of Confucian teachings, whether by Buddhist organizations, businessmen or ordinary people, all involves conscious or unconscious self-concealment of their various roles and identities, in the shared belief that Confucianism is the foundation of ethical principles and of order in human relations, society and the universe, and that anyone who identifies with Chinese culture should therefore strive to popularize Confucian beliefs and spread this web of meaning through energetic collective practice. Confucian thought as group identity is both belief and faith, and although the forms are different, the multiple faces of “Confucius” all wield the same powerful call to the heart; whether through worship in popular “Confucius 29  Quoted in Ting Jen-chieh 丁仁傑, ibid., 10. 30  Ting Jen-chieh 丁仁傑, ibid.

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Assemblies,” the enthusiastic establishment of academies by private-sector organizations or the increasing emphasis on reading the classics, in Chinese society, “Confucianism” tends to become again a shared cultural homeland of many Chinese people. The deepest impression this field survey on the development of Confucianism in Yunnan left on me was of the initiative and dynamism of civil society. The initiative of civil society has enabled belief in the Confucian construction of an ethical society to spread everywhere through the reproduction of cultural authority. The dynamism of ordinary people has led to Confucius no longer being just a cold face in Confucian temples, but rather a guardian god who provides for and protects his people. Although Confucius is deified, he is closely bound to the lives of ordinary people, and although the form of belief is worldly, the trust in Confucius at its heart is sacred. Translated by Stacy Mosher

Appendix 1

Funeral Oration of the Confucius Assembly at the Temple of the Kitchen God in Jianshui, Yunnan Province (accompanied by Yunnan’s Dongjing music; this material was provided by Professor Zhang Liming (張黎明) of the Honghe College (紅河學院) in Jianshui, Yunnan Province). Opening Praise First master Confucius, supreme sage with 3,000 disciples, you spread the three rules and five constant virtues of Confucianism to the world instructing with tireless zeal educating all, irrespective of background Confucius, the great scholar of all ages Zhaoping Chapter Great Confucius, having foresight, universal morality, teacher of all ages of auspicious birth, when Qin burned books, books were hidden in the walls of your house. Because of you, sun and moon are bright and the universe is in order. Yiping Chapter Virtue in your bosom, and of sterling reputation no one has been greater than you since the beginning of history.

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We dance and play music to praise Confucius, fill cups with rice wine and pray as the fragrance rises. Praise of Confucius You teach all with the Book of Songs, Book of History, Rites and Music, teachings from ancient times carried on to later generations. Loyalty and forgiveness are truth. You are the greatest sage of all time. Zhiping Chapter The ceremony cannot be endless, so let us praise again. Mix the sound of great brass drums and bells, great earthenware wine jars and vessels. So many excellent people have gathered here for rites and music, all happy, virtuous and kind. Praise of Confucius You teach all with the Book of Songs, Book of History, Rites and Music, teachings from ancient times carried on to later generations. Loyalty and forgiveness are truth. You are the greatest sage of all time. Xuping Chapter It was written ancient times by those before us, you saved your students from wickedness and taught them morality and the joy of music, enlightening and guiding people according to their nature and the regime to rule in harmony. As the universe has its order, the words of Confucius still rule today. Praise of Confucius You teach all with the Book of Songs, Book of History, Rites and Music, teachings from ancient times carried on to later generations. Loyalty and forgiveness are truth. You are the greatest sage of all time. Yue Wei Confucius, more virtuous than a sage and first of all kings, you revealed the truth of the universe as none ever before. You made culture and education flourish and created rites and music for all times and seasons.

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In your school, students play bells and drums and honor the rules and rites, and every school makes the proper offerings to gods and ancestors. Now in the autumn season, I follow the old code and make my humble offering to show my regard, and also to Sage Fu, Yanzi, Sage Zong, Zengzi, Sage Shu, Zisi, and the Second Sage Mencius. Your humble servant. Deping Chapter Lofty as the mountain and surging like a river People pause to honor the mountain of your morality, and the river of you grace brings boundless benefit. I transcribe this memorial service for Confucius. You educated our ordinary people and nurtured our schools. Heartfelt Salute Your magnanimity encompasses the four seasons, morality and enlightenment enough for heaven, earth, sun, moon and all supernatural beings. Your teachings rule all ages and are the core of all orthodoxy, including Yao, Shun, Yu the Great, Tang, King Wen and King Wu. You are of a soundless and odorless perfection, and your great wisdom comprehends the secrets of the universe from ancient times to the present, teaching people with the Book of Songs and the Book of History, Rites and Music, your grace benefiting the multitudes, establishing standards and order. So unique and unmatchable that none alive cannot respect and love you, the most perfect sage, honored master Confucius, enriching intellectualism for a flourishing age, Supreme above all. Praise of Confucius You teach all with the Book of Songs, Book of History, Rites and Music, teachings from ancient times carried on to later generations. Loyalty and forgiveness are truth. You are the greatest sage of all time. Sending Off the Sages 1996 Transcribed by Wang Ke’an

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Appendix 2

Text for Offering Sacrifices to Confucius at the Canglu Academy of Classic Culture in Dali Text for offering sacrifices to Confucius Oh great Confucius, supreme sage and teacher, paragon of virtue. You established the “Eight Virtues” to instruct all people; you held up “The Great Learning” to correct people’s minds and cultivate their moral character. You followed “the Doctrine of the Mean” and used it to light the Way and make peace. Master, you loved people and taught benevolence, righteousness, propriety and trust. You taught everyone, irrespective of background. You lifted up the good and capable. For more than two thousand years, you have enlightened intelligence and passed on benevolence and righteousness. You are the light of our nation and the soul of Chinese people. On the occasion of the 2,559th anniversary of the birth of Confucius, the people of Baizhou express their deep gratitude by offering three types of sacrificial animals as well as fragrant flowers and fruits, offering sacrifices before the great Master to show our aspiration to enrich the people, strengthen the nation and revive China. Bowing, I beg you to partake. Written at the Dali Canglu Academy of Classic Culture 29th day of the Eighth Lunar Month, 2008



Appendix 3

The “Dali Canglu Academy Workspace Operational System” Article 1: Purpose of the Workspace: Reflecting the academy’s principles of joint ownership, joint governance and joint use, the workspace should [contribute to] achieve the academy’s various developmental objectives. Article 2: Definition of the Workspace: The Workspace refers to a work organization established by several or one person in any of a number of forms with the characteristics of a company and operated like a company. Article 3: Establishment of the Workspace: Anyone who endorses the Academy’s Constitution and has the necessary capability, resources, capital and expertise can establish a Workspace and can sign a related agreement with the Academy for establishing this Workspace. It will operate under the unifying name of “Dali Canglu Academy XX Workspace.” The Academy will provide the certification, account, official seal (or workspace seal), operation site, furnishings and all other operational

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items that can be provided. All Workspaces can carry out operations in other locations. Article 4: The nature and operational management of the Workspace: Internally, the Workspace is a subsidiary or branch of the Academy and accepts the leadership and supervision of the Academy; externally, it is an independently run organization that manages itself. Article 5: The benefit distribution structure of the Workspace: In the case of Workspaces that do not require capital investment by the Academy, 30% of total profits accrue to the head(s) of the Workspace, 30% to the team or shareholders behind the Workspace, 30% to the Academy’s development fund and 10% to the Academy’s staff mutual aid fund. In the case of Workspaces that require full or partial capital investment from the Academy, the Academy automatically becomes a shareholder of the Workspace, and in the distribution of profits, 30% is accrued to the Workspace, 30% to the shareholders, 30% to the Academy’s development fund and 10% to the Academy’s staff mutual aid fund. Accounts will be settled once each year. Article 6: Workspace shareholder transfer: All staff of the Workspace can become shareholders of the Academy. The number of subscribing shareholders will first be confirmed, after which Workspace profit will paid in installments. Article 7: Interpreter of the Workspace system: The Dali Canglu Academy. Article 8: Period of operation of the Workspace system: Long-term, commencing on July 1, 2010.31

31  October 7, 2010, http://www.dalicollege.com/UploadFile/2010810124612959.doc.

chapter 5

Civil Spirituality and Confucian Piety Today: The Activities of Confucian Temples in Qufu, Taipei, and Changchun Nakajima Takahiro Introduction A lot has already been written about the limits of the process of modern secularization. For example, Jürgen Habermas has repeatedly discussed the idea of a “post-secular society,” thus emphasizing the paradoxical enduring influence and relevance of religion in contemporary societies marked by the on-going process of secularization stemming from modernity and the logic of institutional differentiation. Charles Taylor highlighted and defended the role of Catholicism within modernity, pointing out that authentic elements of the gospel could also be identified within modern secularist culture.1 In so doing, he also contributed to the debate about a re-definition of secularization. As for the Confucian revival, it provides new elements to reflect upon the limits of secularization in an East Asian context. The original research project from which both this book and this chapter are drawn focused on the forms and meanings of Confucian piety today and provided an opportunity to ponder the links between Confucian piety and civil religiosity or spirituality.2 My specific interest has focused on ceremonies organized in Confucius temples. It is noteworthy that most of the people met in the course of fieldwork do not simply regard Confucian activities as religious. They emphasize that Confucianism is not a religion, but rather a philosophy, 1  James L. Heft, ed., A Catholic Modernity? Charles Taylor’s Marianist Award Lecture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). 2  Here, “Confucian piety” designates a course of action that follows traditional Confucian values such as filial piety, loyalty, faithfulness, fraternity etc., while “civil religiosity or spirituality” is a heuristic concept used to disclose elements of religiosity or spirituality in civil society. As explained later in this chapter, such a concept relates both to the notion of “civil religion” used by Robert N. Bellah and that of “Japanese spirituality” by Daisetz Suzuki but it is nonetheless different from these notions, especially in its relation to the state. Daisetz Suzuki, Japanese Spirituality, trans. Norman Waddell (Tokyo: Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, 1972 [originally 1944]).

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an ethics or an educational project. They also understand ceremonies held in Confucian temples as cultural or ritualistic activities. Such a perspective seems to reflect a process of modern secularization. Indeed, the common understanding shared by many in China today is that Confucianism is primarily a secularized teaching. However, at the same time, it seems to me—and fieldwork often provides evidence about this—that many of the Confucian activities carried out in today’s China still entail a religious dimension even though many activists try to deny this point. Before beginning my discussion, I would like to highlight that my aim is certainly not to argue about whether Confucianism is a religion or not. Suffice it to mention that speaking about Confucianism in terms of religion is a highly controversial issue that has generated many discussions over the past century. However, without delving into these debates and merely basing oneself on empirical surveys, it is at least possible to identify enduring forms of religiosity or spirituality in today’s manifestations of Confucianism even though these forms have often been repressed during the past century. In this chapter, I precisely try to focus on this religiosity or spirituality that hardly squares with the process of modern secularization. Based on fieldwork observations, I propose to coin it “civil spirituality” and I distinguish it from the notion of “civil religion” that is often connected to the state or associated with cultural essentialism.3 I argue that “civil spirituality” that has been for a long time repressed by a state ideology entangled in secularization now starts to manifest itself in emerging expressions of Confucian piety and as a new “public commons” 3   The concept of civil religion originally comes from Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his book The Social Contract or Principles of Political Right where it points to “the moral content of the social contract,” to dogmas imposed on the people and enforced by laws. It was reactivated in the United States in 1967 by Robert N. Bellah who understood it as “the subordination of the nation to ethical principles that transcend it in terms of which it should be judged” and used it as a critical tool in the context of the Vietnam war. However, I believe that there is still some amount of cultural essentialism in Bellah’s understanding of “civil religion in America.” See Robert N. Bellah, “Civil Religion in America,” in Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 96 (1) (Winter 1967): 1–21. In recent years, the concept has triggered some strong interest in China. One of the main protagonists to this debate and advocate of the notion was Confucian revivalist Chen Ming. Chen Ming 陳明, “Confucianism as Civil Religion” 儒教之公民宗教說, in Reconstruction of Confucianism: Arguments and Replies, eds. Zhong Ren 任重 and Ming Liu 劉明 (Beijing: China University of Political Science and Law Press, 2012). On these debates see Philip J. Ivanhoe and Sunmoon Kim, eds., Confucianism, A Habit of the Heart, Bellah, Civil Religion and East Asia (New York: SUNY Press, 2016). Several contributors to the present volume also participated to these debates (Billioud, Nakajima, Sun). This chapter attempts to contribute to the discussion by referring to “civil spirituality or religiosity.”

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between the individual and the state. However, this is not observable everywhere or in the same way. In this chapter, I will successively introduce the situation in Confucius or Wenmiao [文廟] temples located in Qufu, Taipei and Changchun. More specifically, my analysis focuses on ceremonies (Confucius cults) organized in these three temples. 1

Largely Secularized Ceremony in Qufu

In September, 2007, I started my fieldwork with a trip to Qufu, the birthplace of Confucius, with my French colleagues Joël Thoraval, Anne Cheng, and Sébastien Billioud. Our aim was to attend the ceremonies honoring Confucius for his birthday. Because this occurred one year before the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the events were supported by the Shandong provincial government as well as by the Ministry of Culture. They provided a good opportunity to observe how Chinese authorities relate to Confucianism today. Omission of Religiosity from the Public Sphere 1.1 On September 28th, the main official ceremony in the Kongmiao took place. Billioud and Thoraval described it as follows: The ceremony itself is very simple. The delegations of guests (among them a CPPCC Vice-President, Shandong provincial Party secretary, Yu Dan, delegations of overseas Chinese, etc.) invited to honor Confucius are waiting at the foot of the terrace. When instructed, they walk up the stairs one after the other and head towards the altar. Then, for each group of delegates, two PLA soldiers display floral offerings before the altar. The delegates then walk to the floral displays to ritually arrange them (on the right, then on the left); then they step back (three steps) and bow three times (san jugong) before the statue of the Master.4 It is a simple ceremony if we compare it with “the complex preparation, liturgy, and animal sacrifices offered to Confucius in Imperial China and even up into the contemporary era in Taiwan.”5 But one could even go further and posit that it is a secularized ceremony.

4  Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval, “Lijiao: The Return of Ceremonies Honouring Confucius in Mainland China,” in China Perspectives 4 (2009): 91. 5  Ibid., 91.

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In a very careful manner, the religiosity of Confucianism has been omitted from this ceremony, even though some ritualistic procedures such as offering of incense (上香 shangxiang) and sacrificial offerings remain. In the offering of incense, there is no apparent reference to the ancestral spirituality of Confucius and his descent. As for sacrificial offering, flowers are used in place of animals. In short, this very simple ceremony obviously invents new secularized rituals. In such a context, it was not religiosity but rather the academic and international dimensions of the ceremony that were primarily emphasized. In front of the main temple, banners were displayed featuring excerpts of the Analects.6 At the same time, young students positioned around the dancing stage also chanted passages from the Analects. These examples point to a certain academic dimension of this ceremony. What matters here is neither Confucius himself nor his ancestral spirit, but Confucianism as morality, ethics, philosophy and education in the modern public sphere. I intentionally use the term of “public sphere” because this ceremony displays a political representation of some sort of secularized publicness that needs to be differentiated from individual beliefs in the religiosity of Confucianism. In principle, it could—at least, for the organizers of the event—be shared by everybody in the world. This is precisely why the international dimension of the ceremony is also strongly emphasized. Eminent international scholars join the ritual process of this ceremony, by taking part in the floral offerings and international students are integrated in the practice of reciting texts. The author of this chapter and his colleagues were also involved in this ceremony as international guests. Enduring Dimensions of Confucian Piety 1.2 A second ceremony took place in the afternoon, after most of the audience had already left. It was supposed to be an ancestral ritual performed by the descendants of Confucius. However, the direct line of Taiwanese descendants did not participate in the ceremony whereas other collateral lines of descendants were 6  Quotes from the Analects are as follows: “有朋自遠方來，不亦樂乎(學而/book 1, To have friends come from distant quarter, is this not a source of enjoyment?); 四海之內，皆兄弟也(顏淵/book 12, Everyone in the world is their brother); 禮之用，和為貴(學而/book 1, Achieving harmony is the most valuable function of achieving ritual propriety); 德不孤，必有鄰(里仁/book 4, Excellent persons do not dwell alone, they are sure to have neighbors).” Translations are borrowed from Roger T. Ames and Henry Rosemont Jr., The Analects of Confucius: A Philosophical Translation (New York: Ballantine Books, 1998).

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involved in it. In other words, it was not a simple repetition of a traditional ancestral ritual. On the other hand, the international dimension of the ceremony was strongly emphasized, as indicated by the multiple origins of the Confucian descendants. In any case, like the official ceremony, this ancestral ritual was clearly a new invention. Whither religiosity in this second part of the ceremony? First, it is necessary to emphasize that manifestations of religiosity traditionally associated with ancestral ritual—and that can be for instance observed in Kong lineage rituals in Taipei—were weakened to the extent where I even wonder whether it is still justified to speak about a real ancestral ritual. The ritual was in fact reduced to its simplest expression and, apart from ritual dances performed by professional dancers, it mainly consisted for the descendants of the Kong lineage to briefly pay respect to their ancestors. But this dwindling religiosity does not mean that nothing religious endured. The ancestral ritual is originally a performance of filial piety to connect living descendants to parents and past ancestors. In other words, it displays a form of continuity—a continuum—between the living and the dead. Despite its striking formal simplicity, the ritual still entailed some solemnity and reverence, and a form of filial piety that one cannot easily get rid of when honoring an ancestor. This remaining religiosity is also a form of Confucian piety. Does this, by contrast, mean that the first part of the ceremony is completely devoid of expressions of Confucian piety? For sure, the first part is a clearly secularized ceremony without religious content. However, it is noteworthy that a ritual form still endures. It might be largely superficial, loaded with obvious political and economic dimensions (lots of tourists attended the ceremony), but it cannot irrevocably be reduced to these dimensions either. The mere fact that official sacrifices to Confucius have been restored and that they maintain an ancient connection to the past and to forms of rituals that have been repressed for a long time is in itself significant. History teaches us that what has been repressed always tends to reappear. Therefore, one could maybe posit that, beneath the superficial and ideological ritual that obviously prevailed in 2007, a thin relationship to the past and to a Confucian value system—in other word, a “shadow of Confucian piety”—still endured even during the official ceremonies. 2

De-secularized Ceremony in Taipei

Thanks to the support of Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, I conducted two field missions in Taipei and Changchun. During the prewar period, both places were

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colonized or occupied by the Japanese Empire. One of my concerns was to understand whether some influence of the modern Japanese secularization process—a process that was quite different from the one that prevailed in Europe—still remained there. It is well known that the category of “religion” was an imported category in Japan (the functional neologism shūkyō 宗教) and that it did not exist as such before the modern period. Therefore, the modern process of Japanese secularization—another imported category—was in fact first and foremost a differentiation process between existing traditions. As such, it was also accompanied by a process of “religionization.” In brief, and taking the risk of oversimplification, it is possible to posit that Confucianism and Shintō were understood or conceptualized as non-religious teachings whereas Buddhism and Christianity were considered religious.7 Given the central role still ascribed to Confucianism and Shintō—these two “non-religions”—in the process of secularization during the modern era, such a process was obviously not merely thought of as a separation between church and state. It is with this historical background in mind that I went to Taipei and Changchun asking myself whether traces of the legacy of the specific Japanese secularization pattern could still be felt and, if so, were still useful to analyze Confucian ceremonies. Short History of the Kongmiao (1) 2.1 The ceremony in Taipei’s Kongmiao that took place on September 28, 2011, was quite different from that in Qufu. The historical background of Taipei’s Kongmiao is very complicated. It was first constructed between 1879 and 1884, under the Qing government. After the 7  In Japan as elsewhere, the problem of applying Western categories to indigenous teachings and traditions has generated lots of discussions and difficulties. Confucianism had been central during the late Tokugawa period. However, during the first years of the Meiji period, it was attacked, Confucian worship banned and the central place of Confucian worship in Tokyo, the Yushima Seidō, secularized. By the end of the 1890s, Confucianism was revived but as political philosophy and ethics. On these issues, see Kiri Paramore, Japanese Confucianism, A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 146–153; Nakajima Takahiro, “Confucianism in Modern Japan,” in The Bloomsbury Research Handbook of Contemporary Japanese Philosophy, ed. Yusa Michiko. (London, Oxford, New York, New Delhi, and Sydney: Bloomsbury, 2017), 43–63. There have been many discussions about the nature of Shintō. Pierre-François Souyri explains that the fact that Shintō was not a religion was commonsensical at the end of the 19th century. As for State Shintō, the imperial ideology, it was to some extent above religions and all Japanese people were supposed to accept it (Pierre-François Souyri, Moderne sans être occidental: aux origines du Japon d’aujourd’hui (Paris: Gallimard, 2016), 316). For a discussion on the issue of “State Shintō” as a religion, see Shimazono Susumu, State Shintō and the Japanese 島薗進『国家神道と日本人』(Tokyo: Iwanami-shoten, 2010).

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First Sino-Japanese War in 1894, the Japanese military occupied Taiwan: The Kongmiao was destroyed and the ceremony interrupted. However, a significant change took place in January 1917. The official web site of the Taipei Confucius Temple provides the following explanation: In January 1917, the Ocean Society of Poets [Yingshe 瀛社] and the Taishō Association [Da Zheng Association 大正協會] organized the Chong Sheng Society [崇聖會]. Kimura Tadashi [木村匡], Japanese, was made President, and two members of the Taipei gentry, Yen Yun-nien [顏雲年] and Li Ching-sheng [李景盛], were made Vice Presidents. Every year, on Confucius birthday (the 27th day of the eight month of the lunar calendar) the tablets were respectfully taken out of the pavilion of the Japanese school and sent to the Tataocheng Public school, the Penglai Public school, the Lungshan Temple at Mengchia or the Paoan Temple at Da Longdong for worship ceremonies to be held. Although the organizers of these ceremonies wanted to rebuild the Confucius Temple, their wish could not be realized because of the lack of money. (“The History of the Taipei Confucius Temple”)8 Later, the Japanese colonizer Kimura Tadashi (see below) and two members of the Taiwanese gentry, Yen Yun-nien and Li Ching-sheng, took the initiative to reconstruct the Kongmiao, and they resumed the Confucian ceremony straight away. What was the background of this change? In order to understand it, we have to look at the relationship between Kimura Tadashi, the Ocean Society of Poets, and the Taishō Association. Kimura Tadashi, the Ocean Society of Poets, and the Taishō Association Kimura Tadashi (alias Kyō: 木村匡, 1860–1940) had a multifaceted experience. Before he came to Taiwan as a colonial officer, he had been a teacher of business and economics at both a normal school and a high school, as well as a civil officer in the Ministry of Education. When he arrived in Taiwan in 1895, he first devoted himself to colonial administration focusing on business and education and later, in 1900, he resigned from the civil service and became a banker in the private sector. In 1912, he took the initiative to establish the Taishō Association. Takano Fumie explains that after ten years of Japanese occupation of Taiwan, the 2.2

8  See http://english.tct.taipei.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=1083616&CtNode=29451&mp=102142 [accessed on June 10, 2013]. Unmodified quote from the Taiwanese website.

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lack of communication between Japanese colonizers and local Taiwanese remained blatant and generated numerous misunderstandings. It was in this context that Kimura Tadashi, tried to find ways to overcome this problem. He appealed to a Taiwanese named Li Yanxi (李延禧). Together, they set up the Taishō Association whose target was to promote some form of “fusion” of Japanese and Taiwanese cultures.9 Thus, Kimura’s main purpose was to promote a “fusion of Japanese and Taiwanese cultures.” Since he was no longer a civil officer when he launched this project but a banker, the activities of the Taishō Association stemmed from a private initiative. Takano mentions that its members were both Japanese and representatives of the Taiwanese gentry mostly involved in the business world. The Taishō Association had neither ostensibly received support from the Governor-General of Taiwan nor cooperated with Japanese authorities.10 However, the Taiwanese members of the Taishō Association could also be members of the Ocean Society of Poets (瀛社).11 The Ocean Society of Poets was established in 1909 in Taipei for the purpose of gathering Taiwanese poets. Because it was strongly supported by the Governor-General of Taiwan, it carried out wide-ranging activities during the colonial period.12 Considering its close relation with the Ocean Society of Poets, the Taishō Association was not purely and simply a private sector organization. To the contrary, it maintained a secret relationship with the Governor-General of Taiwan. In short, it was some sort of private arm of the colonial power or a site where colonial power was closely intertwined with the private sector. In 1916, the Taishō Association began to reveal its political dimension, when it performed a Confucian ceremony with the Ocean Society of Poets. One year later, in January 1917, as cited above, “the Ocean Society of Poets and the Taishō Association organized the Chong Sheng Society.” Takano highlights three reasons for this politicization of the Taishō Association. The first reason was to deepen the relationship with the Governor-General of Taiwan by organizing a ceremony that it could support. The second reason was to facilitate relations between Japanese colonizers and the Taiwanese gentry through the performance of Confucianism-related activities (Confucian ceremony, reconstruction of the Confucian temple) that really mattered to the gentry. The 9  Takano Fumie, Another Side of Japan-Taiwan Intellectual Exchange Under Japanese Rule— Taking Kimura Kyo as the Main Subject of Analysis (1895–1925) 高野史惠《日據時期日 臺官紳的另外交流方式——以 木村匡為例(1895–1925)》(Tainan: Master’s Thesis, Department of Taiwanese Literature, National Cheng Kung University, 2008), 35–36. 10   Ibid., 36. 11   Ibid., 37. 12   Ibid., 69.

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third reason was to provide a framework for the practical organization of the Confucian ceremony.13 In this way, both colonizers and the colonized elites cooperated together to reconstitute Confucian ceremonies in Taiwan, even though they probably had different ideas in mind. In a colonial context, the representation of modernity differs among colonizers and colonized elites. However, they both needed “traditional cultural activities such as Confucian ceremony and the reconstruction of a Confucian temple.” “Traditional cultural activities” could grant much better legitimacy to colonial rule than military power. It is noteworthy that a similar process took place in Japan as well. After the Meiji Restoration, Confucian ceremonies had ceased. In 1907, the Association for Confucian Ceremony (Kōshi Saitenkai 孔子祭典會) was established by scholars, businesspeople, and politicians.14 In the same year, it restored a Confucian ceremony in Yushima Seidō, the old Confucian academy in Tokyo. One of the members of the Association’s Council was Izawa Shūji (伊澤 修二) with whom Kimura had collaborated when he was a civil officer in the Governor-General’s office of Taiwan. In 1919, the Association for Confucian Ceremony was absorbed into the Shibun Kai (斯文會), an organization that had been established in 1918 to propagate Confucianism based upon the Imperial Rescript on Education, an important text enacted in 1890 by the Meiji Emperor in order to serve as a guideline for educational policies.15 In the case of Taiwan, then, Kimura’s initiative followed the suzerain’s political use of Confucianism to the letter. 2.3 Short History of the Kongmiao (2) With the financial support of the Taiwanese gentry, the reconstruction of the Kongmiao started in 1927 shortly after Kimura’s departure from Taiwan in 1926. The major parts of the edifice were completed in 193016 and Confucian ceremonies immediately resumed after an interruption of over thirty years. Following the outbreak of the Second World War, the Governor-General of Taiwan ordered that the traditional Chinese ritual carried out in the temple be replaced by a Japanese Shintō ritual including elements of Confucian ritual in the vein of the one performed at the Yasukuni Shrine.17 If we recall that the 13   Ibid., 72. 14  Shibunkai, History of Shibun in Sixty Years 斯文會『斯文六十年史』 (Tokyo: Shibunkai, 1929), 304–306. 15   Ibid., 316–320. 16  The whole construction process was completed in 1939. 17  See http://www.tct.taipei.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=1060114&CtNode=27764&mp=102141 [accessed on June 10, 2013].

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Japanese Shintō ritual was and is still used in the emblematic Yushima Seidō as a symbol of the fusion of Japanese spirit and Confucianism, this order was a natural result of the ideology of the Japanese empire at that time. As for the situation of the Kongmiao after the Second World War, “The History of the Taipei Confucius Temple” provides the following explanations: After the war, there were so many things to be done, and the ceremonies were temporarily suspended. In 1946, in order to restore the Confucius ceremonies, it was decided that the Taipei Chong Sheng Association should be restored. The mayor of Taipei City, Yu Mi-chien, was appointed as chairman of the committee. Huang Chi-jui, the minister of education, and Koo Chen-fu were selected as vice chairmen. The committee was to be responsible for the yearly Confucius ceremony. In 1950, to celebrate Confucius’ 2,500th birthday, a special worship ceremony was held, and R.O.C. President Chiang Kai-shek gave the temple an inscribed wooden tablet on which he personally wrote Education for All. (“The History of the Taipei Confucius Temple”)18 The Taipei Chong Sheng Association, that is, the Chong Sheng Society set up during the Japanese era, was restored and Koo Chen-fu (辜振甫) was nominated as a vice chairman of the committee. He was a son of Koo Hsien-jung (辜顯榮) who was himself a member of the Taishō Association and had supported the reconstruction of Kongmiao financially. Later on, Confucian ceremonies would be jointly held by the Taipei City and National Government. The basic framework of the Confucian ceremony in the Kongmiao, that is, the cooperation between the private and political sectors, did not change after the War. The Confucian ceremony remains a highly political matter, not only for Taiwanese domestic politics, but also for its diplomacy. An example of this phenomenon is provided by the relationship between the Yushima Seidō and Taiwan. Each year, Yushima Seidō holds a Confucian ceremony on the 4th Sunday of April and a representative of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representatives Office always comes to give an address.19

18  See http://english.tct.taipei.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=1083616&CtNode=29451&mp=102142 [accessed on June 10, 2013]. 19  See http://www.seido.or.jp/cl02/detail-6.html [accessed on June 10, 2013]. Another symbol of these links is a statue of Confucius erected in Yushima Seidō and donated by the Taipei Lions Club in 1975. See http://www.seido.or.jp/year.html [accessed on June 10, 2013].

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2.4 Kongmiao in Taipei: The September 2011 Ceremony Let us now move on to the current situation of Kongmiao. The Confucian ceremony I attended was held on September 28, 2011. A strong contingent of Taiwanese officials took part to the ceremony, some of them with key ritual roles. Hau Lung-pin (郝龍斌), Mayor of Taipei City, acted as the Principal Presentation Officer (正獻官), Huang Lu Ching-ju (黃呂錦茹), DOCA (Department of Civil Affairs) commissioner and Chief of Taipei Confucius Temple Governing Board was involved in the capacity of Ceremonial Supervisor (糾儀官). Finally, Jiang Yi-Huah (江宜樺), Minister of the Interior attended as a deputy of the President of the Republic of China20 to offer the incense (Zongtong Shangxiang 總統上香) and chant the blessing (Gongdu Zongtong Zhuwen 恭讀 總統祝文).21 It is important to underscore that these politicians did not attend the ceremony as mere guests, but played important roles in it. It is quite the opposite of a secular order that separates church from state and to some extent it reminds of the specificities of Japanese secularization. Considering the importance throughout the 20th century of the modernity narrative and of the Western secularization paradigm, we may call it a de-secularized ceremony.22 During this “de-secularized ceremony,” the utmost manifestation of religiosity crystallized into the ritual action of Kung Tsui-chang (孔垂長), the 79th direct descendent of Confucius. In his capacity of Sacrificing Officer (Fengsiguan 奉祀官), he not only offered incense but also had an instrumental role during what was maybe the religious climax of the ceremony, that is, the phases of “welcoming the Spirit” (Yingshen 迎神) and “escorting it” (Songshen 送神). “Welcoming the Spirit” means welcoming the descent of the spirit of Confucius (Yingjie Kongzi Shenling Jianglin 迎接孔子神靈降臨) and “escorting it” means

20  President Ma Ying-jeou 馬英九 himself attended the Confucian ceremony in 2010, because it was the 80th anniversary of the Confucian ceremony that resumed in 1930. 21  As for the sequence of the ceremony, see: http://www.tct.taipei.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=107 1206&CtNode=28554&mp=102141 and http://english.tct.taipei.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=10836 83&ctNode=29454&mp=102142 [accessed on June 10, 2013]. 22  By “de-secularized ceremony” I do not mean that there has not been a continuous intertwinement in Taiwan throughout the 20th century between the religious and the political. The historical retrospective and the relations with Japan discussed above are examples of this situation. However, there has always been a blatant contrast between reality—as it can still be observed in today’s Confucius ceremonies in Taipei—and the secularization ideal of a modern state. It is to emphasize this contrast that I speak here about a desecularized ceremony.

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sending it back (Gongsong Kongzi Shenling Likai 恭送孔子神靈離開).23 This is a traditional ritual performed during Confucian ceremonies and the Taipei Kongmiao follows this pattern.24 The manifestations of piety pervading the ceremony—e.g. during incense offerings—offer a vivid contrast with the situation in Qufu. In both cases, ceremonies remain clearly associated with political power. However, the Qufu ceremony is mainly endowed with an ideological dimension (the celebration of a tutelary figure of the Chinese nation) or a dimension of political economy (tourism and local politics). To the contrary, traditional cosmological schemes—continuum between the visible and the invisible dimensions of the universe that can be observed during the ritual—can be observed in Taiwan25 within a supposedly secularized framework that also reminds strikingly of a pre-War Japanese secularization process that has maintained a religious dimension—a “religious” dimension that does not tell its name—tightly embedded within the political. Ongoing relations, up to this day, between Taiwanese and Japanese Confucian circles are also noteworthy in such a context. All this being said, whither Confucian piety outside of politics? Since this is a key issued addressed by this volume, it is now time to turn to a third Confucian temple located in Changchun. 3

A Contemporary Form of Confucian Piety in Changchun

To what extent is there room in the course of Confucian ceremonies for expressions of piety that would not be entangled in politics? In their book The Sage and the People, Billioud and Thoraval studied the situation of ceremonies in Qufu initiated at a purely grassroots level as well as many other cases of local initiatives and projects launched by popular (minjian) Confucian revivalists. The case of the Wenmiao in Changchun (temple of literati) provides a 23  See http://www.tct.taipei.gov.tw/ct.asp?xItem=1071206&CtNode=28554&mp=102141 [accessed on June 10, 2013]. 24  As for the “Welcoming the Spirit” (迎神) and “Escorting the Spirit” (送神) in Taipei Kongmiao, see Du Mei-fen 杜美芬, “Taiwan kongyi sidian renwen ji yixu kongjian miao­ xue jiegouhou de yanbian” 臺灣孔子祀典人文暨儀序空間廟學解構後的衍變, Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies 3 (1) (2006): 144–152. 25  For detailed comparisons between cults in Qufu and in Taiwan, the continuity of traditional cosmological theme, and an overall reflection about the intertwinment of the religious and the political in such a context, see Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval, The Sage and the People, The Confucian Revival in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015).

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complementary example of citizens appropriating a public commons in order to express what we propose to coin a “civil spirituality.” In 1932, Manchukuo established its capital in Changchun and renamed it Xinjing. Some historical sites can still be traced back to this period in Changchun, such as The Museum of the Imperial Palace of “Manchukuo” and the Former Japanese Kantō Military Faction Administrative Headquarters, etc. Some Confucian scholars came from Manchukuo to attend a “Confucian Way Conference” that took place in Japan in 1935. When I visited the Wenmiao with some colleagues at the end of September 2010, I wanted to find out whether any traces of the Japanese use or abuse of Confucianism could still be found in Changchun. This did not happen to be the case. To the contrary, the atmosphere in the Wenmiao seemed to reflect contemporary concerns and to unveil new possibilities for the development of Confucian piety. 3.1 Short History and General Condition of the Wenmiao in Changchun According to the official website of the Wenmiao in Changchun,26 it was first established in 1872 with the support of Zhu Chenjuan (朱琛捐), a member of the local gentry. In 1895 and 1924, it was renovated and expanded thanks to the support of Yang Tonggui (楊同桂), the provincial governor of Changchun, and Zhao Peng (趙鵬), the prefectural governor of Changchun. During the Cultural Revolution, it was completely destroyed. In 2002, Li Shu (李述), the mayor of Changchun City, took the initiative to rebuild the Wenmiao. For this purpose, he decided to disburse governmental funds. In 2008, Zhu Yejing (祝業精) who was the director of the National People’s Congress in Changchun City, and Zhang Yuanfu (張元富) who was the Chairperson of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Changchun City raised funds to rebuild the Wenchang Pavilion (Wenchangge 文昌閣). As this short historical account indicates, the newly-built Wenmiao has no connection whatsoever to Manchukuo. In the recent period, it has been allowed to develop a variety of Confucianism-related events. Among those, and apart from the celebration of Confucius’ birthday, there are many cultural activities such as “enlightenment rituals” for children starting their studies (qimengli 啓蒙禮), age ceremonies (chengrenli 成人禮), traditional marriages (chuantong hunli 傳統婚禮), conferences for painting and calligraphy (shufa 書法), bridge-walking ceremony for examination laureates (Zhuangyuan qiao 狀元橋), red eggs blessings (song hongdan 送紅蛋), etc. These activities are welcomed by Changchun citizens. 26  See http://www.ccwenmiao.com/About/Group/ [accessed on October 18, 2015].

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One of the most important activities is a free program of lectures in the National Study Large Auditorium (國學大講堂). These lectures started in January, 2006. Lectures are given by specialists and scholars of National Studies and bureaucrats. The audience includes people of various ages, occupations, and backgrounds coming on a voluntary basis. On the side of the authorities, this project obviously has a classical function of jiaohua 教化, that is of “education/transformation” of the people and moral indoctrination. But on the other hand, it also responds to real social aspirations at the grassroots level. Therefore, its function is also to constitute a “public commons” for the citizens of Changchun. As for the form of the organization, Ishii Tsuyoshi defines it as a kind of Non-Profit-Organization (NPO): With respect to the form of the organization and although it still belongs to the Changchun Municipal Bureau of Culture, Wenmiao in Changchun is a self-financing organization and does not have the economic structure of an institutional organization. This means that Wenmiao in Changchun is not directly controlled by the governmental administration and has to independently secure its operating budget. According to Wang Hongyuan (王洪源, Director of the Administrative Office of Wenmiao in Changchun), almost all of the budget comes from cooperative donations, while each section of the City Government supports it in various ways. In order to get financial support, the Administrative Office of Wenmiao in Changchun makes a huge effort to conduct promotional activities and make proposals to each section of the City Government, as well as to company executives. The Administrative Office of Wenmiao in Changchun has eleven members including cleaners and cooks. In fact, the members charged with cultural activities are fewer, and many of them are young people. Among the young members, there are some who participated in the public-interest activities of Wenmiao as volunteers in their university days. They sympathized with Wenmiao activities and took a job there right after graduation. Apart from these official members, many volunteers also eagerly participate to the various activities of the Wenmiao. Whenever a Confucian Ceremony is held, the Administrative Office of Wenmiao in Changchun also asks companies and schools in Changchun City to send volunteers who can assist. During the ceremony, all dancers are students from the Xiwang High School. Among the volunteers, many come from high school associations or are young executives working in companies (funding partners). If we consider its membership and self-financing

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structure, the organizational form of Wenmiao in Changchun seems to share close features with NPOs found in Japanese society (Ishii 2010, 2–3, slightly modified; see also Ishii’s contribution to this volume). In both the content of its cultural activities and its organizational form, the Wenmiao in Changchun contributes to a “public commons.” This feature is quite different from the two other Confucian temples mentioned above, which are highly politicized. If we consider the distinction between gonggong 公共 (the public commons) and gong 公 (the highly politicized public sphere primarily associated with the emperor or the shogunate) in the Japanese context,27 Wenmiao in Changchun belongs to 公共, while the Confucian temples in Qufu and Taipei belong to 公. In other words, the Wenmiao in Changchun has the character of an “intermediary body” located between the individual and the state,28 in so far as it resembles a NPO. 3.2 Local Confucian Ceremony Because they are not highly politicized, Confucian ceremonies carried out in the Changchun temple are different from those in Qufu and Taipei. Even though the slogan of the 2010 ceremony—“Inquiring into the Root of Culture and Going the Way of Harmony (Xun wenhua zhi gen, zou hexie zhi lu 尋文化之 根，走和諧之路)”—seems to echo Chinese political discourses or slogans, the Confucian Ceremony has primarily local features. As mentioned above in Ishii’s observation, the dancers are students from Xiwang (“Hope” in English) High School. Students of this school are supported by the local government for their tuition fees, textbooks, uniforms, boarding and, in addition, even receive a stipend.29 According to Minakuchi Takuju, some of the officiants of the ceremony are also students at this school.30 27  Kim Tae-Chang distinguishes between these two concepts, and tries to apply them to the Chinese context. See Kim Tae-Chang, Public philosophizing with Chinese Friends: Dialoging, Co-acting and Opening New Horizons 金泰昌編著『公共哲学を語 りあう——中国との対話・共働・開新』(Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 2010). In the Japanese context, gong refers to political authorities such as the emperor or the shogunate, while gonggong mainly points to the common sphere existing in various associations of people such as village or town meetings. 28  I borrow this term from Ohbuko Shiro. 29  This support is called as “四免一補.” As for Xiwang High School, see http://www.edu0431 .com/zexiao/gaozhong/jianjie/351.html [accessed on June 10, 2013]. 30  Minakuchi Takuju, “The “Revival” of Confucian Ritual Activity at Wenmiao in Changchun in Jilin Province,” Unpublished article of the International Workshop “Confucian Revival in Contemporary China: Preliminary Reports from the Field” on December 3–4, 2010 at UTCP (University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy), 3.

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figure 5.1 Xiwang high school students © Nakajima Takahiro

In charge of the ritual operations are Liu Jishan (劉吉山 assistant researcher at the Center for the Development of National Studies Research, Changchun University) and the director of Changchun’s Culture Museum. Moreover, the composer of the background music is a “famous poet” in Changchun.31 Contrary to the situation in Taipei, the 2010 ceremony did not include rituals aiming at “welcoming the Spirit” (Yingshen 迎神) and “escorting it back” (Songshen 送神). Formerly, rituals were influenced by those performed during the Ming dynasty. But this was not the case after ceremonies resumed in the reconstructed temple. At the beginning in 2003, the rituals in fact imitated those of the Qing dynasty. However strong objections were raised against this style that reminded people of “Manchuria Qing.”32 Therefore, Ming garbs— fashionable within the larger movement of revival of traditional Han clothing (Hanfu yundong 漢服運動)—were afterwards adopted. It is worth noting that the Confucian Ceremony was followed by other events for local people. There was for instance an award ceremony to praise

31   Ibid. 32   Ibid., 4.

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excellent young students and citizens whose activities made significant social contributions to the city of Changchun. Two inauguration ceremonies also took place. The first was for a monument celebrating pious deeds of those who contributed to the construction of Wenchang Pavilion and the second was for the statues of the Qing dynasty Stone Lion (Shishi 石獅) and of a Chimerical Creature (Qilin 麒麟).33 The events that followed the Confucian Ceremony are very important and representative of the activities of the Wenmiao in Changchun. Clearly, this temple now plays an important role as a “public commons” for the citizens of Changchun. That is why this ceremony is referred to as a “public ceremony for the sake of the people” (群眾性公祭).34

figure 5.2 Praise for excellent young students © Nakajima Takahiro

33   http://ccszx.changchun.gov.cn/kzyjh/gzdt6/201207/t20120716_901512.htm [accessed on June 10, 2013]. 34  Minakuchi Takuju, “The “Revival” of Confucian Ritual Activity at Wenmiao in Changchun in Jilin Province,” Unpublished article read during the International Workshop “Confucian Revival in Contemporary China: Preliminary Reports from the Field” on December 3–4, 2010 at UTCP (University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy), 4.

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figure 5.3 Praise for citizens © Nakajima Takahiro

figure 5.4 Unveiling ceremony © Nakajima Takahiro

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3.3 Civil Spirituality How, then, can we understand religiosity or spirituality in Changchun’s Wenmiao? It seems far from the religiosity of the Taipei Kongmiao, which is supported by traditional religious rituals directly referring to the spirit of the sage that is welcomed and escorted back. However, there is a kind of spirituality shared by ordinary people (of the minjian sphere as opposed to the official one) at the Wenmiao in Changchun understood as a “public commons.” In the course of fieldwork, we could discuss directly the issue of the religious dimension of Confucianism with some of the activists involved in the revival of the Changchun temple. Among them were a lecturer at the National Study Large Auditorium (now at the National Traditional and Cultural Education Training Center) and some of her colleagues also involved in the revival of the Changchun temple. Emphasizing the absence of any transcendent God in Confucianism, these activists primarily regard Confucianism as an ethical, educational, and traditional form of teaching. However, they also posit that the importance of Confucian piety makes room for some form of Confucian religiosity that we might call a quasi-religious spirituality.35 Without this, the activities in the Wenmiao would not differ much from school curricula. Before she joined the Wenmiao, this lecturer, a lady in her early forties had been an elementary school teacher. However, she aspired to do something that could not be found in schools.36 Indeed, the clue to understanding the enthusiastic commitment of the Wenmiao members is this quest for a quasireligious spirituality. It is not spirituality simply aiming at individual relief, but rather a spirituality shared by others in a “public commons” and that we might call a “civil spirituality.” The aspiration for such a civil spirituality may also be understood in the framework of an increasing demand for things collective in a Chinese society primarily marked by a profound trend of “individualization.”37 At times, the vocabulary used by my informants to depict the situation was somewhat stereotypical, but they emphasized that this new type of contemporary spirituality was largely shared by ordinary minjian people. One day before the Confucian Ceremony, we joined a round-table discussion about the Confucian revival and Confucian piety with scholars in the Department of History and Culture of Northeast Normal University. The discussion focused on several points: the degree of public awareness about the Confucian revival; the link between this revival and the recognition 35  The point worth noting is that the simple revival of Confucian piety does not contribute to open up Confucian religiosity as civil spirituality. The latter appears only through critical and transforming process of the former. 36  Afterwards, this lecturer opened a place for orphans that she called “House” ( jia). See Ishii’s contribution to this volume. 37  See the introduction to this volume.

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figure 5.5 Round-table discussion in the Department of History and Culture, Northeast Normal University © Nakajima Takahiro

of the plurality of Chinese cultural traditions; the specificities of Changchun as a key junction of ethnic exchanges; the link between government-sponsored activities and popular demand in the field of traditional culture; finally, the emphasis was also put on the fact that Confucianism reflects “high culture” rather than a religion.38 The tone of this round-table discussion was generally not favorable to the activities in the Wenmiao and reflected a tension with grassroots activists. For university scholars, the main points of concern were that governmental control was very strong over cultural activities of the Wenmiao and that the ability of Wenmiao activists was insufficient to reconstruct traditional culture. Of course, they have some good reasons to harbor these concerns. Nonetheless, looking at the activities of the Wenmiao in Changchun from such a perspective

38  Ishii Tsuyoshi, “Today’s Confucianism and Cultural Diversity in Northeastern China,” Unpublished article read during International Workshop “Confucian Revival in Contemporary China: Preliminary Reports from the Field” on December 3–4, 2010 at UTCP (University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy), 2–3.

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does not help much to understand the socio-economic dimension of the phenomenon, a point that is emphasized by Ishii: If we sum up the features of the activities of Wenmiao in Changchun, they consist of the dissemination of traditional cultural values in the market by using traditional denotations such as Confucius, Mencius, Confucianism, National studies, and so on. Contrary to the understanding of scholars at Northeast Normal University, the current situation of Wenmiao in Changchun echoes the traditional image and ideas about Confucianism that can be encountered in the life of urban residents in China today.39 Thus, it is problematic for us to understand the activities of the Wenmiao in Changchun from a perspective that primarily views Confucianism as part of “high culture.” These activities are contemporary phenomena for “urban residents” who are isolated and detached from a stable value system. Indeed, this social situation fuels the revival of religious movements in today’s postsecularization era and China also follows this path. It generates, among other possibilities, what Ishii defines as a “civil” type of Confucian revival.40 Here, we may underline that “urban residents” no longer simply turn to established religion or religious movements since they have a much broader choice for the fulfillment of their spiritual needs. They can appeal to various cultural traditions, including Confucianism. In this respect, Changchun is not so specific, because every large city in the world is becoming more multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and “multi-spiritual,” thus increasing people’s opportunities. And, indeed, taking part to the activities of the Wenmiao in Changchun is only one choice among many—and a non-exclusive one—for Changchun’s “urban residents.” Such a “civil” Confucian revival entails a form of civil religiosity that should nevertheless be well distinguished from Bellah’s idea of a “civil religion.” In fact, it is difficult to speak about a “civil religion” to describe such a minjian phenomenon: first, after one century of anti-traditionalism, Confucianism is still certainly perceived negatively by part of the population and nothing tells us that its social basis is today strong enough to become a civil religion; second, since Rousseau used the term “civil religion” it has always presupposed the state as a framework. On the contrary, minjian Confucian activities often proceed from grassroots initiatives and are widely open. They might have the potential 39  Ishii, 4, slightly modified. 40  Ishii, 4.

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figure 5.6 Wenmiao in Changchun © Nakajima Takahiro

to contribute to fashion a new type of community beyond the traditional established forms such as the family and the state. Such a new Confucian community would of course be relevant to civil society. If we can locate some sort of “civil spirituality”—“civil spirituality” is the term that I prefer to use to describe this movement—it is definitely to be found in this burgeoning civil society. 4 Conclusion Let us now come back to the issue of modern secularization that was the starting point of this chapter. My first point is that the Confucian revival unveils ongoing processes that point to the limits of secularization. The Confucian ceremonies in Qufu and Taipei show us contrasting relations between Confucian religiosity and politics. They reflect different paths taken by modern secularization in East Asia. Whereas the Confucian Ceremony in Qufu still follows a path of Chinese modern secularization that ousts religiosity from the public sphere, the Taipei ceremony bears many common points with Japanese modern secularization in its controlled use of religiosity for politics. Despite their differences, they share a common ambition to invent forms of contemporary Confucian piety that fits their politics or public spheres.

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In contrast to both of them, the Confucian activities in Changchun show us the possibility of expressing Confucian piety in a “public commons” enabling the development of contemporary Confucianism’s “civil spirituality.” Confucian piety might contribute to the emergence of a new sense of community and human existence beyond the established socio-political order. One of the limits or one of the side-effects of secularization is that although it has served to emancipate people from strong connections to institutionalized religions, it also led them to affirm their unity within a state or a “nation.” In this respect, “civil religion” as understood by Rousseau, that is, with a compulsory dimension, has precisely played an important role in many places. However, those who did not recognize themselves in such a “civil religion” or “nation” were not taken into account in this process. In other words, the process of secularization did not necessarily leave enough ground for diversity. 41 Facing the global revival of religions, people living in liberal societies are invited to inherit from the emancipatory dimension of secularization and to respect the diversity of expressions of faith, religiosity, and spirituality found in civil society. Although Chinese society is not so liberal, “civil spirituality” observable in the “public commons” organizing Confucian activities is also an expression of civil society, an expression that could not be heard before the Confucian revival. Especially striking for me in Changchun, it can also be found to a lesser extent in the ritual activities organized in Qufu and Taipei. And, more importantly, it is now pervasive across the country in the variety of popular Confucian projects that are increasingly studied and documented. In brief, “civil spirituality” conveyed by popular Confucian activities contributes to the emergence of a “civil society” and needs to be clearly differentiated from the manifestation of a Confucianism-based “Rousseauist” civil religion (which does not exist as such in China) or from a civilizing project engineered by the authorities (which exists and builds on an instrumental use of traditional culture visible for instance in Qufu). It is of course difficult for us to predict how Chinese Confucianism will unfold in the future. Nonetheless, as the Chinese socio-political order changes, Confucianism transforms itself accordingly. The current development of Confucian piety should be followed closely since it also mirrors deep ongoing changes in Chinese society.

41  In this respect, I completely agree with Sébastien Billioud who emphasizes the idea of “a thin level of Confucian religiosity.” See Sébastien Billioud, “The Revival of Confucianism in the Sphere of Mores and the Reactivation of the Civil Religion Debate in China,” in Confucianism, A Habit of the Heart, Bellah, Civil Religion and East Asia, eds. Philip J. Ivanhoe and Sunmoon Kim (New York: SUNY press, 2016), 65.

chapter 6

The Revival of Traditional Culture and Religious Experience in Modern Urban Life: The Example of the Changchun Confucius Temple Ishii Tsuyoshi Introduction For a long time, classical theories of secularization anticipated a necessary decline of religious life. As it is well known, they proved to be wrong and religious life is still striving in most places around the world even though deep transformations and reconfigurations are everywhere at work. Some good amount of research has now been produced about the limitations of the secularization paradigm, providing evidence that “multiple modernities” also translate in multiple secularities. The specificity of the Chinese case stems from a century of ruptures, a chaotic Maoist episode of religious repressions (that also gave birth with the Mao cult to a real “political religion”) and an enduring official atheist ideology. After the Cultural revolution, in an overall context of trauma, anxiety but also hope, discussions flourished again in society about the meaning of life and the issues of value and spiritual quest. The so-called “Pan Xiao discussion” of the 1980s studied by He Zhaotian exemplifies this trend.1 Besides, “high speed growth and GDP ideology” promoted by the authorities in the following decades—to some extent as substitutes to Marxist teleology—proved insufficient to channel deep-rooted aspirations for a meaningful life or provide relevant existential orientations. It is in this 1  The discussion also known as “the great discussion on the meaning of life” which took place in 1980 was triggered by the publication of a letter from a woman named “Pan Xiao” (潘曉) in Zhongguo Qingnian (中國青年). Two other newspapers, Zhongguo Qingnian Bao (中國青 年報) and Gongren Ribao (工人日報) subsequently published papers on the topic. “Pan Xiao” was not a real person but a name given by an editor of the journal to personalize a set of discourses stemming from letters and interviews of two people called Huang Xiaoju and Pan Wei. Pan Xiao’s letter reveals skepticism about common moral values in society and raises the issue of the meaning of life. Since the discussion took place only four years after the end of the Cultural Revolution and at the very beginning of the “opening and reform” policy, Pan’s letter stirred sensation in Chinese society. See He Zhaotian 賀照田, “Cong Pan Xiao taolun kan dangdai Zhongguo dalu xuwuzhuyi de lishi yu gainian chengyin” 從“潘曉討論”看當代 中國大陸虛無主義的歷史與觀念成因, Kaifang Shidai 7 (2010): 5–44.

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context that China experienced a multifaceted religious revival of which the Buddhist revival or the quick expansion of Christianity are blatant illustrations. However, the administrative framework for the management of religions— only five religions are officially recognized—proved completely unable to take into account the diversity of forms taken by the revival of religious or “quasi-religious” (one knows well the difficulties of applying the category of “religion” in an Asian context) aspirations. The “qigong fever” documented by David A. Palmer, the development of popular religion analyzed by Adam Yuet Chau or the rapid expansion of sectarian movements such as the Yiguandao explored by Sébastien Billioud provide clear evidence of the diversity of ongoing developments.2 The Confucian revival studied through multiple cases in this volume can also be understood within such an overall background. Thus, one of its functions is to provide an answer to spiritual or existential aspirations, both at the level of the individual and of the community, that may or may not be defined in religious terms. At the same time, as it is reminded in the introduction to this book, such a grassroots movement also maintains ambiguous relations to a political context where Chinese authorities, both at the national and at the local levels, do not hesitate to instrumentally use and promote traditional culture. Many of these elements crystallize in activities organized around the Changchun Confucius temple studied in this chapter, on the basis of fieldwork carried out in 2010 and in 2012. 1

General Overview of the Changchun Confucius Temple

The Changchun Confucius Temple was built in 1872, during the 11th year of the Tongzhi reign of the Qing dynasty. Like many other Chinese historical artifacts, it was badly damaged during the Cultural Revolution. It began attracting renewed interest from the local government in the 1980s, and in 1987 it was listed among the important historical monuments marked for preservation in Jilin Province. The Changchun municipal government put up the capital to properly rebuild it in 2002. The temple’s reconstruction and subsequent development went smoothly, and the first post-reconstruction grand ceremonial offering to Confucius was held there in 2003. The ceremony continues to be 2  David. A. Palmer, Qigong Fever: Body, Science, and Utopia in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Adam Y. Chau, Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in Contemporary China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006). Sébastien Billioud, Reclaiming the Wilderness: Contemporary Dynamics of the Yiguandao (forthcoming). See also, Sébastien Billioud and David. A. Palmer, eds., “Religious Reconfigurations in the People’s Republic of China,” Special issue of China Perspectives 4 (2009): Introduction.

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held there every year on September 28 (see Takahiro Nakajima’s contribution to this volume). Among Changchun’s many historical artifacts, the Confucius Temple is one of the oldest, and activity there has increased since the beginning of the twenty-first century, but for a long time escaped the notice of Changchun residents. When we first visited Changchun in 2010 and engaged in exchanges with teachers and students at the School of History and Culture at Northeast Normal University, most of them said that until our visit, they didn’t even know that Changchun still had a Confucius Temple.3 Among the minority who did know about it, very few had actually gone to the temple. This fact allowed us to directly observe that the Changchun Confucius Temple was far removed from the daily lives of most ordinary residents. But during my second trip in 2012, I had the feeling (even though I cannot document this with figures) that people’s global awareness of the temple and its activities had increased substantially. The reconstruction and development of the Changchun Confucius Temple was made possible thanks to the involvement and support of various

figure 6.1 The main hall of the Changchun Confucius Temple © Ishii Tsuyoshi 3  On September 27, 2010, I visited that university with Nakajima Takahiro and Minakuchi Takuju from the University of Tokyo to take part in an academic symposium hosted by the director of the School of History and Culture, Han Dongyu.

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organizations and structures: local government, companies and the mass media. The mayor of Changchun at that time instructed the Changchun municipal government to provide more than eight million yuan in order to finance the reconstruction in 2002. After the reconstruction, the Museum of Changchun Confucius Temple became increasingly part of the cultural life of Changchun residents. Various kinds of channels and structures contributed to make the temple widely known among people: government (providing official support), companies (providing funding), schools (involved in some of its activities), the media (reporting about its activities), citizens (engaged in voluntary work), etc. The Confucius Temple underwent another large-scale expansion in fall 2012. A 24,000 square meter wide park was constructed at the west side of the Temple. At the same time, Dong Er Elementary School on the east side was renamed Wenmiao (the Confucius Temple) Elementary School (officially called the Changchun No. 3 Experimental Elementary School) with a newly built traditional style building. Consequently, the original site of the Confucius Temple plus the park at west side and the school at the east side now compose the Confucius Cultural Park. It is located on the east side of one of Changchun’s main thoroughfares, Yatai Avenue, so it is not surprising that local residents have become aware of the Confucius Temple. Since completion of the construction work, the Confucius Cultural Park dominated by the Confucius Temple at its center can be divided into three zones with different functions. The Confucius Temple Museum in the center is an architectural preservation zone, and apart from the Great Hall of Confucius, Western Side Hall, Eastern Side Hall and Lingxing Gate rebuilt in 2002, it also has a newly constructed Drum Tower and Bell Tower, and a reconstructed Kuixing 魁星 (God of Literature) Pavilion that was once located along the Yitong River in the eastern part of the city, but was lost in a fire in 1917. The eastern and western side halls have been renovated as exhibition galleries. The Confucius Cultural Park’s western zone, more or less a park and square with Confucian cultural characteristics, is an open-style recreation ground for entertainment and cultural activities. In the education zone to the east, at the time that I visited the Confucius Temple Elementary School, construction of the school building had just been completed, though classes were not yet being formally held there. Reportedly, once classes began, they were to offer enriched content on traditional culture. It is clear that official forces, especially the Changchun municipal government, energetically supported the development of the Changchun Confucius Temple. Official promotion and support combined with cultural and social effects pushing for development provided the basic conditions for the rapid development of the Changchun Confucius Temple over the last ten years.

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figure 6.2 The construction site of the Confucius Cultural Garden © Ishii Tsuyoshi

figure 6.3 The Confucius Temple Elementary School © Ishii Tsuyoshi

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These are also the prerequisite conditions we must affirm in order to understand and reflect on the “Confucian revival” in Changchun. Based on material in hand, before the current museum director and head of the temple management office, Wang Hongyuan (王洪源), became director of the reconstructed temple in September 2003, there were two other directors, including one surnamed Kong (the same surname as Confucius) who left after only one month.4 According to Wang Hongyuan, the temple’s administrators have not completely lost contact with the descendants of Confucius; members of the Kong clan who belong to a local Kong genealogy compilation committee have donated funds in their individual capacities. However, the restoration of the temple and its subsequent development were not carried out through present-day ties with the Kong clan, but consisted of a series of transformative processes that upgraded private worship rites to a public cultural undertaking. For this reason, the implications of the rebuilding of the Changchun Confucius Temple cannot in its strictest sense be generalized through the concept of a “revival” at the grassroots level of Confucian culture. Rather, it resembles the construction of a new pattern of cultural coding also adopted in response to certain political and economic demands today. The economic reforms that started in 1978 and accelerated in the following decades resulted in deep transformation in the social and economic spheres throughout China. Changchun is no exception; under the larger trend of developing the market economy, the exploitation of various tourism resources, cultural properties, etc. was also driven forward on a grand scale at this time. For example, the new plan for the Manchukuo Palace Museum, geared toward the large-scale tourism consumer market and the education and culture market, occurred in 2001, just two years before the rebuilt Changchun Confucius Temple was opened. It can be imagined that the reappearance of the Changchun Confucius Temple in this form before the eyes of Changchun residents is closely related to economic and social development trends in the city and throughout the country. They also reflect the necessity for local authorities to commodify their cultural and historical resources in order to respond to instructions to reform State Owned Enterprises and enhance local development. In the first decade after its reconstruction, the Changchun Confucius Temple as an economic entity 4  Li Dan 李丹, Yafang Wang 王亞芳, and Yue Pang 龐月, “Changchun wenmiao bowuguan” “[長春文廟博物館],” Ruxue yu Shenghuo 儒學與生活 25 (September 2010). The figures and various other information cited in this article in relation to the Changchun Confucius Temple all come from this magazine, along with material provided by the Changchun Confucius Temple Management Office and the author’s field notes.

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was still required to “assume sole responsibility for its profits and losses,” and its income sources, apart from government allocations and corporate sponsorship, included admission fees and various fees for traditional rites and other consumer services. If compared with another Confucius temple in the vicinity—the Jilin 吉林 Confucius Temple—the special character of the operation of the Changchun Confucius Temple becomes even clearer. The Jilin Confucius Temple was built even earlier than the Changchun Confucius Temple, in 1736 (the first year of the Qianlong period), and in 1907 (the 33rd year of the Guangxu reign) it was expanded under the influence of the contemporary trend to honor Confucius. At present, the Jilin Confucius Temple occupies an area of 16,354 square meters, and is considered one of China’s four great Confucius temples, along with those in Qufu (the birthplace of Confucius), Beijing and Nanjing. The Jilin Confucius Temple is a major venue maintaining links with the local Kong clan to this day. Its annual grand ceremony to Confucius is coordinated with similar ceremonies at Confucius temples throughout the country, and involves either official or lineage sacrifices in accordance with the arrangements for nationwide activities. For example, during our visit in

figure 6.4 The Manchukuo Imperial Palace Museum attracts tours by groups of primary school students. © Ishii Tsuyoshi

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figure 6.5 Tour groups of primary school students can also be seen at the Changchun Confucius Temple © Ishii Tsuyoshi

2010, the ceremony took the form of family offerings.5 According to the head of that Confucius Temple Museum, members of the Kong clan in the vicinity of Jilin City are all invited to take part in these activities. As mentioned above, the development of the Changchun Confucius Temple diluted the temple’s character as a private shrine of the Kong clan, while enhancing its official and public character. At present, both the Changchun and Jilin Confucius temples are Jilin Province’s main representatives for contact with Confucius temples throughout the country and even overseas and in shouldering the global revival of Confucian culture, but it should be said that each has its own specific characteristics. The open and public nature of the Changchun Confucius Temple is not only in terms of various traditional rites and services; public welfare activities also constitute a significant share. The “National Learning (Guoxue 國學) Great Lecture Hall” should be the most focused embodiment of this. This is a 5  2010 marked the 2,56 1st anniversary of the birth of Confucius, an odd number. A guide at the Jilin Confucius Temple explained that family ceremonies are normally carried out in odd years, and official ceremonies in even years.

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figure 6.6 The Jilin Confucius Temple © Ishii Tsuyoshi

series of lectures on traditional culture presented at the Changchun Confucius Temple, open to the public free of charge and geared toward the general public, with the cooperation of the Jilin Provincial Social Sciences Federation (JSSF) and Changchun Television, and with funding from the municipal government. Starting in January 2006, the lectures have been presented once a week or more, an astonishing frequency that had tallied up 394 lectures by the time of our 2012 visit, and reached 546 as of October 23, 2015. Most of the speakers are scholars from Changchun’s universities, as well as scholars from Taiwan and Hong Kong. The content is not necessarily related to Confucian thought, but also include lectures on various thinkers and works of the late Zhou, ancient literature, the achievements of great historical personages and anything else relating to traditional culture or “national learning.” The National Learning Great Lecture Hall series could be considered cultural courses in a popular style. Wang Hongyuan explained the aims of the lectures this way: “To popularize and spread the cream of Chinese traditional culture at the most basic level of society, to perpetuate the public good, and to have specialist scholars circulate among ordinary people in a low-profile manner.”6 6  Wang Hongyuan 王洪源, “Guoxue da jiangtang de cengjing guowang” 國學大講堂的曾 經過往, Ruxue yu Shenghuo 儒學與生活 25 (September 2010): Preface. Another striking

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As the example of the National Learning Great Lecture Hall shows, the Changchun Confucius Temple flexibly and pragmatically demarcates and applies the core iconography of the teachings of Confucius, Mencius and other Confucian scholars. The utilization of these icons of Confucian culture is not strictly limited to the framework of Confucian orthodoxy; in fact, it uses the names of Confucianism (Rujia 儒家) and Confucius to represent all of China’s traditional cultural thought and conventions. In other words, what is crucial for organizers of the activities at the Temple is not precisely to distinguish and promote Confucian culture as something specific and differentiated from the rest of Chinese traditional culture, but to integrate Chinese traditional culture under the iconography of Confucianism. 2

The Geographical and Cultural Features of Changchun and the Positioning of Confucian Culture

Jilin Province, in which Changchun is located, is in northeastern China, occupying a surface area of 187,000 square km and with a population of around 27 million. Jilin Province was created in 1907 (the 33rd year of the Guangxu reign). In that same year, the Jilin Confucius Temple was renovated and expanded. At that time, as a major province in the northern northeast, Jilin included in its jurisdiction a large portion of present-day Heilongjiang Province, including its capital, Harbin. The act of creating the province of Jilin corresponded with the contemporary international situation of imperial Japan and Russia expanding their influence in that region. Changchun City has a population of around 7.57 million, including 3.63 million in the city proper. Its urban population ranks Changchun 15th among China’s cities, and in the three northeastern provinces it ranks third after Shenyang and Harbin. In terms of per capita economic levels, Changchun residents have an average disposable income of around 23,000 yuan, and per capita consumption of around 18,000 yuan. Compared with the national average of around 25,000 and 17,000 yuan, respectively, incomes are slightly lower than the national average, but consumption is slightly higher. It can generally be said that in terms of enjoying modern Chinese urban living, Changchun residents occupy a medium level.7 example of this popular guoxue (國學) lectures is analyzed in Dulery’s contribution to this volume. 7  The various figures come from: Jilin Province Statistics Bureau and National Bureau of Statistics Jilin Survey Team, Jilin tongji nianjian 2013 吉林統計年鑒2013 (Beijing: Zhongguo

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From the perspective of current ethnic distribution, Jilin is a province with a relatively large presence of ethnic minorities.8 Of course, this was decided by the geographical background of the region historically being part of the nomadic hunting and pasturing cultures from beyond the Great Wall. Among the province’s ethnic minorities, the more numerous include Manchus, Mongolians, Hui, Korean and Xibo. Among them, Koreans entered the region in the first half of the twentieth century against the backdrop of Japan’s colonial rule in the Korean Peninsula and that region. During the Qing dynasty, most of this region was out of bounds to external migrants. By the latter and late Qing periods, restrictions were relaxed and the prohibition was lifted, and especially with the establishment of the Cultivation Bureau in 1878 (fourth year of the Guangxu reign) and the launch of large-scale wasteland reclamation, it absorbed many migrants seeking a livelihood in the Northeast. Due to this historical background, Confucian culture was not the intrinsic culture in the Northeast region (as it was in the Central Plains region), nor was it a product of a state civilizing ideology under an independent and unified state regime (as in Korea and Vietnam). Beginning in the Qing dynasty, local Confucian culture was constructing under the state framework of the Qing Empire. This area, as the cradle of Manchuria, was largely closed off from the rest of China. Therefore, although it was a core territory of the Qing Dynasty (and therefore a source of dynastic power) the Central Plain’s culture also remained marginalized. In addition, in modern times, this region became a site of the Russian and Japanese empires’ struggle for dominance, and at one point came under occupation by Japanese colonialist expansion as the puppet state of Manchukuo.9 Given this historical background and geographical situation, the dissemination of Confucian culture in this region is inseparable from the intervention of political power. The two large-scale repairs and expansions of the Changchun Confucius Temple during the late Qing and early Republican eras were both managed by the governments administering that region; the Manchu era Emperor Pu Yi’s ancestral offerings at the Temple were an even more classic example of political authorities dictating worship activities. When Manchukuo was “founded,” this “country” attempted to establish its legitimacy through a benevolent government posture of venerating tongji chubanshe, 2013); China Urban Development Research Association, Zhongguo chengshi nianjian 中國城市年鑒 (Beijing: Zhongguo chengshi nianjian chubanshe, 2013). 8  For information relating to ethnic minorities, see “Jilin Province Ethnic and Religions,” http:// mw.jl.gov.cn/. 9  Regarding the policies of colonial rule that Japan carried out in Manchuria, see Komagome Takeshi 駒込 武, Shokuminchi Teikoku Nihon no bunka togo 植民地帝國日本の文化統合 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten Publishers, 1996).

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the Confucian code and Confucianism and actively developed a nationwide campaign of promoting Confucian ethics, with Pu Yi also worshiping at the Changchun Confucius Temple (at that time called the “New Capital—Xinjing 新京—Confucius Temple”). But from 1935 onward, with the expansion of Japanese imperial political power, the Manchukuo monarchy’s Confucian iconography gradually faded, to be replaced by the Shinto style of state worship and sacrifices under the slogan of “Japan and Manchuria, one mind and one body.”10 Under the push to construct the socialist state after the founding of the New China, the Changchun Confucius Temple unavoidably fell into longterm neglect. In short, from the historical standpoint, the Changchun Confucius Temple was all along under the control of the officially dominant ideology, and although its reconstruction following Reform and Opening was carried out in a context of depoliticization, this still doesn’t indicate a bottom-up grassroots push behind construction undertaking in this new period. It should be said that the roots of traditional Confucian culture are very shallow and thin in this region, which allows us to once again affirm that the phenomenon occurring in today’s Changchun doesn’t fit the general term of “Confucian revival.” We should be able to understand the “Confucian revival” in this locality as an attempt to re-implant and build Confucian culture under the conditions of the times. Moreover, the method of building Confucian culture under official direction may be the common characteristic of Confucian culture in the northeast region. The renovation and expansion of the Jilin Confucius Temple in 1907 coincided with the establishment of Jilin as a province and such a development reflected the instrumental role that it was supposed to play for the Qing authorities. Later on, in 1932, when such a role was no longer relevant because Manchukuo established Xinjing (Changchun) as its capital instead of Jilin, official support faded and, although the temple could still continue its activities, 10  Sagai Ken 嵯峨井 建, “Kenkoku Shinbyo to Kenkoku Chureibyo no Soken: Manshukoku Kotei to Shinto” 建国神廟と建国忠霊廟の創建—満州国皇帝と神道, Shinto Shukyo 神道宗教 156 (1994): 26–62. Tsuda Yoshiki 津田 良樹, “‘Manshukoku’ kenkoku Chureibyo to Kenkoku Shinbyo no kenchiku ni tsuite: Ryobyo no zoei kettei kara shunko ni itaru keika to sono yoso”「満洲国」建国忠霊廟と建国神廟の建築について － 両廟の造営決定から竣工にいたる経過とその様相, in A Research Result Report: Hi-moji Shiryo kara Jinrui Bunka e: Kenkyu Sankakusha Ronbunshu 非文字資料から人 類文化へ ―研究参画者論文集―, ed. Kanagawa University 21 Century COE Program 神奈川大学21世紀COEプログラム研究推進会議. “Systematization of Nonwritten Cultural Materials for the Study of Human Societies” 人類文化研究のための非文字 資料の体系化 (2008): 71–90. Shimakawa Masashi 島川 雅史, “Arahitogami to hakkoichiu no shiso: Manshukoku Kenkoku Shinbyo” 現人神と八紘一宇の思想: 満州国建 国神廟, Shien 史苑 43(2) (1984): 51–93.

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the ways it was operated had to change. Today, Jilin City is no longer a provincial capital and its political importance is inevitably less than Changchun. In such a context, the Jilin Confucius Temple no longer needs to play any officially important role, and as a result, it still preserves the characteristics of an ancestral temple supported by both the local government and the Kong lineage. The situations of both the Changchun and the Jilin Confucius temples lead us to ponder over a correlation between political arrangements and the iconography of Confucian culture. If it is said that Confucian culture centered on temple sacrifice has a definite correlation with local politics, what exactly is the relationship between Confucian culture and the lives of the local populace? We exchanged views on the phenomenon of Confucian revival and Confucian piety in the Changchun region at a symposium hosted by the Northeast Normal University School of History and Culture in 2010.11 Most of the opinions expressed at the symposium questioned this proposition, and can be summarized as follows: 1. Ignorance or lack of interest in the phenomenon. Quite a few people said they knew nothing about formal worship ceremonies being carried out at the Changchun Confucius Temple, or even that Changchun had a Confucius Temple. 2. Acknowledging traditional Confucian customs, but questioning the term Confucian revival. Almost without exception, attendees acknowledged the value of traditional culture or customs represented by Confucian thought; in particular, many people identified with the implied values in interpersonal relations expressed through the etiquette and concerns of traditional culture. At the same time, however, they said that this identification was not necessarily tantamount to a popular reversion to Confucianism, traditional Chinese culture being even richer and more complex. 3. Acknowledging and emphasizing cultural pluralism. Changchun City, and even the entire Northeast region, has a pluralistic culture where many ethnicities mingle. The Han ethnicity that makes up the absolute majority of the population is also a migrant populace that sought a livelihood in the Northeast by cultivating virgin land, and like other ethnicities took root here on a foundation of cultural diversity. Many people therefore emphasized the great cultural inclusiveness of this region. 4. The connection between the phenomenon of Confucian revival and official behavior. This view, which could also be called “official-popular” 11  We had six scholars from the North East Normal University as discussants and approximately thirty people attending the symposium.

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bifurcation, holds that activities at the Changchun Confucius Temple were politically dominated and therefore could not be seen as representing popular demand for traditional culture or values evolving from civic life. 5. Challenging the connection between Confucianism and religion. The majority stated that Confucian thought and culture should not be regarded as a type of religion. Some also held that popular religious forms can present themselves through the imagery of Confucian culture, but that this was different from Confucian thought as high culture. Apart from these views, there was a minority view that if the Confucian iconography represented by Confucian temples and so on could serve the purpose of establishing a sense of community cohesion, it would facilitate the retrieval of a sense of sustenance in social life for the multitudes of people atomized by the conditions of the market economy era. Someone even proposed that an overview of the history of China’s dynastic replacement suggests that each relatively major dynastic shift was accompanied by massive destruction, but that once the turbulence of political radicalism suppressing traditional culture subsided and a period of economic construction began, a reversion to and flourishing of traditional culture, especially Confucian thought, could be seen. After experiencing more than 100 years of revolution, China has now entered a stage of stable development, so the development of Confucian culture from this time forward should be considered a natural part of this cyclical development. With the raising of urban living standards, urban residents have rediscovered the value of traditional culture and traditional morals. This is a very natural phenomenon, and the Changchun region is no exception. Among the many students and teachers who spoke at the symposium, very few expressed misgivings or criticism regarding the return to tradition. Even so, there was not an enthusiastic emphasis on the resurrection of Confucian tradition, and almost no one felt that the Changchun Confucius Temple was a core force in rebuilding traditional culture. The unanimous view was that the Northeast region, as an immigrant society hosting multiple cultures, could not possibly accommodate a unitary cultural iconography that predominated exclusively over other cultural elements. But under careful consideration, their impressions of tradition and Confucian culture are in fact not that far removed from the orientation behind the rebuilding of the Changchun Confucius Temple; they can even be considered quite close. And within this point may lurk a revelation regarding today’s research on Confucian revival and Confucian piety. That is to say, the recovery and rebuilding of the Changchun Confucian Temple was followed by new

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developments that catered to the wider populace of the city, corresponding to the cultural views current among the urban populace, and even characteristic of the Northeast’s cultural diversity. The traditional resource of Confucius worship passing down from ancient times to the present under the guardianship of the lineage of Confucius was not the main force behind the development of the Changchun Confucius Temple. The special character of activities at the Changchun Confucius Temple can be summarized as follows: the popularization of traditional cultural values geared toward Changchun residents under the iconography of ConfucianismMencianism, national learning, etc., and in terms of social relations, its activities relying on government, corporate and popular entities each playing their own specific roles in a joint effort to form a unique cultural space. The Changchun Confucius Temple seems even closer to the traditional imagery and conceptions of today’s Chinese urban residents, because it both conforms to the pluralistic cultural values under market economy of not infringing on the religious freedom of others, and responds to the interest and affection many citizens have for traditional culture. Therefore, the understanding of Northeast Normal University students and teachers of the cultural characteristics of the Northeast region and their views on mainly Confucian traditional culture are not necessarily antagonistic to the reconstruction of the Changchun Confucius Temple, but rather are in harmony with the direction of its development. There is no conflict between the cultural life or the public morals advocated and developed by the Changchun Confucius Temple and ideals of the majority of ordinary residents, and it can at any time accommodate all kinds of cultural demands and consumer demands that inspire interest in traditional cultural iconography. It can fulfill the demands of residents for enlightenment ceremonies,12 adult initiation rites, marriage rites and all kinds of other cultural rites, and provide lectures on national learning and other cultural promotion activities in response to ordinary people’s desire to understand various aspects of traditional culture, and these activities can enhance the cultural flavor of urban life for Changchun residents. At this point, we need to recognize that the Changchun Confucius Temple and the socio-cultural demands sampled in our on-site observation to a great extent represent the cultural characteristics of the modern city.

12  TN: Ceremonies performed for students when they begin their schooling.

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The Popular Force in Activities at the Changchun Confucius Temple

For a long time after its reconstruction, the Changchun Confucius Temple came under the administrative jurisdiction of the Changchun Municipal Cultural Bureau, but as an economic entity it assumed all responsibility for its own profits and losses. This meant that the Changchun Confucius Temple was not under the direct administrative management of the government, and had to independently raise funds to ensure the economic resources that would allow it to keep operating. According to the director of the Confucius Temple Management Office, Wang Hongyuan, a large share of its capital came from corporate donations, and various government departments also provided funding of various kinds. In order to obtain financial support, the Confucius Temple Management Office expended great effort on public relations with government departments and heads of enterprises as well as on submitting applications. At the time of our visit in 2010, the Changchun Confucius Temple Management Office employed 11 staff, including cleaning staff, kitchen staff and other logistical staff. In fact, it had very few core staff, and its employees tended to be young. Among the young staff, some had volunteered at the temple while in college and had participated in the temple’s public welfare activities, which made the temple’s work resonate with them and led them to seek employment at the temple. During our second visit in 2012, Wang Hongyuan disclosed that the status of a self-sustaining unit made it very difficult for the temple to meet the pay and benefits requirements of its staff, and in order to solve this problem, the temple was considering applying to become a public institution. In subsequent follow-up exchanges, we learned that the temple had been formally converted into a public institution under the city’s Bureau of Culture, Radio, TV, Film, Press and Publication. What kind of change will this qualitative transformation bring to the Changchun Confucius Temple’s originally “civic” (i.e., largely based on the involvement of citizens) operational mode? This will require further observation and study.13 At the very least, the financial resources that the Confucius Temple requires for its operations are now entirely allocated by the government. In any case, the temple’s previous reliance on corporate sponsorship and individual donations in addition to government funding is likely to change. Apart from formal staff, the Changchun Confucius Temple has volunteers who play an important role in the development of its various activities. 13  This change was accompanied by an increase of the staff to 15, and appropriate employment conditions.

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Sun Jingli 孫景麗, who has presented the largest number of talks among the 400-plus lectures in the National Learning Great Lecture Hall series, is one of those volunteers.14 A former primary school teacher who has always loved ancient culture, Sun explains that she is fully committed to the promotion of National learning and Confucianism. Sun is also actively engaged in children’s education, managing a privately-run nursery that takes in children of various ages for a 24-hour boarding-style course that trains them in a cultivated lifestyle centered on traditional culture. She refers to this nursery as “Home” ( jia). She started operating it in 2006 in a small residential neighborhood near the Changchun Confucius Temple. Children and young people ranging in age from three or four years old to university level spend Monday through Friday eating and living collectively at “Home” and in accordance with the “Home rules” set by Sun Jingli.15 Apart from school-age children going to class during the day, the children spend the rest of the time at “Home” enhancing their accomplishments in traditional culture through reading the classics, learning taichi (taijiquan) and practicing calligraphy, while at the same time, through collective living, learning how to treat people courteously, becoming self-sufficient and enhancing practical physical training. During my visit in September 2012, I saw seven students, the youngest three years old and also including university students. According to Sun Jingli, the average number of students is around ten, and the tuition fee is set according to the student’s family circumstances; there have been instances in which students have been accepted tuition-free. At “Home,” the children wear beautiful and identical clothing with the words “Confucius School” embroidered on the breast. The knowledge and training provided is very wide-ranging, from calligraphy to the foundations of traditional Chinese medicine, and there are children’s teaching materials on Confucianism, as well as instruction in Buddhism. What is sought isn’t Confucian thought as a classical rational knowledge but rather a lifestyle symbolized by “national learning.” The education at “Home” adopts a teaching model that integrates knowledge with daily work and cultural cultivation; it is a distinctive attempt at childhood education. But the use of the term “Home” leads one to feel the unique symbolism it implies. Sun Jingli seems to treat this undertaking as not merely normal childhood education, but more as an attempt to recover or create some kind of value that can only be described as 14  This lecturer is also mentioned in Nakajima Takahiro’s chapter. 15  There are just two “Home rules”: 1) Don’t do what you shouldn’t do; 2) gain a capacity for self-education. At “Home” from Monday to Friday, children are required to “start work at daybreak,” reading classics such as the “Rules for Pupils,” the “Three-Character Classic,” the “Thousand-Character Classic,” “The Great Learning,” “The Golden Mean,” etc.

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figure 6.7 A corner of “Home” ( jia), a private-run nursery training children in a cultivated lifestyle centered on traditional culture. © Ishii Tsuyoshi

“home.” I repeatedly asked her the formal name of the place, but she persisted in calling it “Home.” This “Home” is run entirely by Sun Jingli and has no direct connection to the Changchun Confucius Temple. However, the fact remains that the Confucius Temple’s management focus on public interest to a great extent relies on volunteers from the community. Among them are private citizens such as Sun Jingli who actively involve themselves in the temple’s various social welfare activities through their own undertakings. This is a key reason why the construction of the Changchun Confucius Temple cannot be analyzed simply from the perspective of an official-versus-community binary. Through my conversations with Sun Jingli, I observed that the reason that she has so actively volunteered her involvement in the public interest activities of the Changchun Confucius Temple and the management of her innovative and loving “Home” is closely related to her personal experience. My interview with her in 2012 corresponded with a visit by a Buddhist monk from Taiwan.16 16  The name of this monk is Guo Yongjin (郭永進) or Konghai (空海), from Longyunsi (龍雲寺) Temple (Taipei area). He is the leader of a new Buddhist transnational organization developing in Taiwan, China, the USA and South East Asia. For more information, see: https://konghaijtd.wordpress.com. He gave several lectures at the National

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figure 6.8 Images of the Buddha and Laozi’s Classic of Virtue on a wall at “Home” © Ishii Tsuyoshi

According to Sun Jingli, a chance meeting with this monk several years ago had had an enormous effect on her, and returning to Changchun from elsewhere around that same time, she began participating in the lectures hosted by the Changchun Confucius Temple. These fortuitously concurring events led her to throw herself into volunteer activities. Most of the lectures Sun Jingli gives at the National Learning Great Lecture Hall are about “The Golden Mean,” the “Classic of Filial Piety,” the “Three-Character Classic,” the “ThousandCharacter Classic” and other ancient Chinese texts focusing on childhood education and family morals. Her interest and skills in these subjects are probably related to her past experience as a teacher, but the subjective motivation that sustains them originates in a Buddhist spirit of benevolence reminiscent of the modern Neo-Confucian, Liang Shuming (1893–1988). In their book entitled The Sage and the People, Billioud and Thoraval highlight a phenomenon of “alliance” between Buddhism and Confucianism that now develops in Mainland Learning Great Lecture Hall. Especially interesting is that all his lectures were centered on Confucian classics, specifically, the Great Learning (Daxue 大學) and on the Daoist Daodejing (道德經), which are not scriptures one would necessarily associate with his identity of Buddhist monk. The expansion strategy of this Buddhist group in China seems to share some common features with the very influential Buddhist organization led by Master Jingkong. See Ji Zhe’s contribution to the present volume.

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China. This is somewhat echoed here by the aforementioned example of Sun’s embrace of Confucian practices stemming from Buddhist concerns. In sum, one can posit that for some activists a religious compassionate concern centered on Buddhism is combined with a social practice inspired by Confucian cultural resources in order to fuel plans to rebuild society in Changchun. The work of Billioud and Thoraval, but also Ji Zhe’s chapter in the present volume show that such a situation is in fact common throughout China. The combination of Buddhist concern and Confucian social practice maybe one of the emerging ecologies for individual religious experience under the conditions of modern China.17 Most of the activities of the Changchun Confucius Temple are planned, prepared and operated by the temple’s management office; the 2010 grand ceremony to Confucius that we observed was one such example. But the office staff pay great heed to the advice and suggestions of experts in an effort to enrich the temple’s traditional cultural connotations. Wang Hongyuan herself is not an expert in this area, nor is she a descendent of Confucius. She has enthusiastically invested herself in this undertaking as an employed administrator, but at the outset she had no specialist knowledge of Confucian culture. During the first grand ceremony to Confucius in 2003, the use of Qing dynasty costumes caused considerable controversy. In response, the temple’s management lost no time in seeking the assistance of experts to prove that wearing Qing costumes or Han costumes was not a significant issue, and concluded that “Confucius belongs to the world, and anyone from anywhere in the world can offer sacrifices to Confucius wearing whatever national costumes they like.”18 The Changchun Confucius Temple management should have at the outset found some way to strengthen cooperation with the descendants of Confucius or of having them as a main force behind the temple’s rebuilding and development, but they didn’t take this road; instead, in the process of expanding the temple and constructing the Confucius Culture Park, they demolished the long-neglected Kong and Meng clan ancestral shrines that existed within the temple’s boundaries.19 These examples show that the main force the Confucius Temple Management Office relied on for perfecting the 17  See, Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval, The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 117–121. 18  Website of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference Changchun Municipal Party Committee, “Television Forum” column. This television program was broadcasted by Changchun Television in December 2011: http://ccszx.changchun.gov.cn/dslt/201207/ t20120716_899070.htm. 19  “Chancheng jiang xiangqi chenzhong mugu” 長春將響起晨鐘暮鼓, Changchun Evening News, September 24, 2012. http://ccwb.1news.cc/html/2012-09/24/content_267932.htm.

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figure 6.9 A ceremony to worship Confucius (2010). Students play the part of temple staff performing rites © Ishii Tsuyoshi

temple’s traditional cultural connotations came more from the city’s universities, research institutes, museums and other research organs and researchers, along with volunteers who invested themselves in this undertaking and ordinary citizens participating in various activities. The enthusiastic participation of the latter in particular has given the temple its vitality and have made it a dynamic and active cultural platform in modern society. The official character of the Changchun Confucius Temple is undeniable, but we cannot say that the temple’s operational mechanism is completely controlled by the government and that it constitutes purely official action. 4

How to Interpret Traditional Cultural Concern?

The Changchun Confucius Temple and the revival of Confucian traditional culture centered on it in the Changchun region can generally be summarized like this. If it is said that the Jilin Confucius Temple belongs to the “orthodox mold,” then we can say that the Changchun Confucius Temple is a temple in the “citizen mold,” characterized by interaction between various social forces, including the government, businesses, media, the academic community and

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local residents, and striving to propagate culture and ethics around a nucleus of public interest under the conditions of market economy. The effect of government policy arrangements on the Confucius Temple cannot be underestimated, but these arrangements in themselves also need to be coordinated with market demand and the demands of the wider citizenry; as just one of many cultural artifacts, the Changchun Confucius Temple needs a major selfhelp effort in order to ensure its operations and development. This is a place lacking the support of traditional social groups such as clan and townsman associations, and also lacking the Confucian-style religiosity that people like Kang Youwei (1858–1927) or Chen Huanzhang (1881–1933)20 attempted to practice in modern times. Of course, from the perspective of the macroenvironment of national policy, another side can be seen: the promotional role of policy slogans such as “building a harmonious society” and the ideological and political arrangements behind them, etc. But can we also regard the phenomenon observed in Changchun from yet another angle? When our first on-site observation was made in 2010, docents at the Changchun Confucius Temple Museum said they referred to the traditional culture they venerated as the Confucian school (Rujia 儒家  or Ruxue 儒學), explicitly differentiating it from the Confucian religion (Rujiao 儒教). Their meaning was that Confucianism could not be understood as a religious faith served by a specific sect. To the contrary Rujia or Ruxue point to an integrated cultural or intellectual entity that should be open to anyone. As everyone knows, the phenomenon of Confucian revival in mainland China began to emerge in the 1980s, first in scholarly circles, with an intense rethinking of revolutionary radicalism. In summarizing this phenomenon, Nakajima Takahiro says that in the period from the late Qing through the Cultural Revolution, when literature and Mao Zedong Thought propped up revolutionary history, China was “clearly a country that separated church and state under the cover of secularization in the sense of laicization,” while the CCP in the era of Reform and Opening abandoned Maoism and attempted to include Confucian thought as part of the new foundation of its legitimacy.21 Of course, the 20  Kang Youwei and Chen Huanzhang were the main advocates of a project establishing Confucianism as a religion. They founded the Confucian Church (Kongjiaohui 孔教會) in Shanghai in 1912. 21  Nakajima Takahiro 中島 隆博, “Chugoku ni okeru shukyo to sezokuka: hihan jukyo no tameni” 中国における宗教と世俗化―批判儒教のために, in Sezokuka to Raishite 世俗化とライシテ, ed. Haneda Masashi 羽田 正 (Tokyo: The University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy, 2009), 97–99. This book contains some articles relevant to dereligionization (laïcité) in France, in particular, includes three articles by Jean Baubérot, whose titles are respectively “Sécularisation et laïcisation,” “La laïcité en France:

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situation is complex and Confucian thought is definitely not the only element included in the CCP’s ideological strategy that produces a narrative emphasizing the continuity with the socialist heritage and even Maoism. However, in the conditions of market economy, dogmatic Maoist mobilization is no longer a topic and Confucian culture has once again become an effective resource for recovering and maintaining national and cultural identification even though it is certainly not the only ideological policy adopted by the current regime. But the prerequisite for this process from beginning to end was that Confucian culture could not be understood as a religion. After experiencing revolution and construction under socialism, all ideological policies (including of course the recourse to Confucianism) must have as their prerequisite a logical suitability for expounding on and proving the legitimacy of socialist discourse, and Confucian thought is no exception. Here, Confucian thought must emerge under the premise of secularization, otherwise it will come into conflict with the principle of laicization under the mechanism of socialism. The historical developmental trend of modern China toward dereligionization still exists, and governs the Changchun Confucius Temple’s self-designation of its purpose as a non-religious public interest undertaking. However, behind this self-designation we can still glimpse an appeal to the individual soul or the quest for something like spiritual meaning playing a background role in the motivation of the participants. We must acknowledge the importance of the urban character of the Changchun Confucius Temple. This temple came into being under the objective conditions of Changchun City becoming the provincial capital. As an important city in the old industrial base of the Northeast, Changchun City possesses a large number of urban consumers who are relatively educated and have a relatively high standard of living, but in contrast with many other cities in China that have long histories, it became built-up as a city only around 100 years ago. Chen Bisheng’s acute observation shows how Confucian folk rites provide cohesion to rural communities in the rural space of China’s southern regions. His comprehensive Histoire et défis actuels” and “De la Déclaration universelle sur la laïcité au XXIe siècle.” Laicization was originally a special term referring specifically to France’s policy of separation of church and state, but according to the views made known in the “Déclaration internationale sur la laïcité” (Twenty-first century manifesto of laïcité) signed by some 120 scholars all over the world, led by the French scholar Jean Baubérot, this concept in recent years has begun to cross national boundaries as a general reference to the idea or political practice of separation of church and state, consisting of three objectives: to safeguard the freedom of thought and belief, reject state rule by religion, and oppose any discrimination or rights infringement based on religion. TN: For an English translation of the manifesto, see http://laicity.info/bli/?p=61.

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field research shows that apart from Confucian thought-ecologies22 with traditional Confucian perspectives such as systemic Confucianism and academic Confucianism, there is also a Confucian folk ecology.23 However, the Changchun Confucius Temple and its vicinity don’t have a space for traditional folk rites and customs in this sense. The phenomenon of Confucian culture revival naturally includes a revival of folk customs and worship forms such as offerings to ancestors, the compilation of clan genealogies, the rebuilding of ancestral halls and so on, and the revival of these rites and customs should have a definite relationship with the rebuilding of social groups and their internal ties (on these issues, see Chen Bisheng’s contribution to the present volume). But in Changchun, a modern city that wasn’t developed until the twentieth century, it is very hard to see social networks like those in the rural space of the south; the majority of residents live their modern urban lives in an atomized manner. Of course, we can also see some social grouping bonds that create interpersonal ties. In societies such as Changchun in which many ethnic groups coexist, ethnic identity is undoubtedly the specific mode of social bonds. For example, the northeastern part of Changchun City has a mosque that was first built in 1824 (the fourth year of the Daoguang reign), earlier than the Confucius Temple, and to this day it retains the architectural complex built in 1862 (the third year of the Tongzhi reign), which is in an excellent state of preservation and is listed among the important cultural preservation units at the provincial level. I visited the mosque just when the city’s Muslim residents were assembling for a rather large-scale gathering there. The mosque also has a marriage introduction agency, which serves as an intermediary among local Muslims for keeping romantic attachments within the ethnic group and multiplying its subsequent generations. It can be seen that the Changchun Mosque, as a place for carrying out religious rites, also plays an important role in maintaining ties in the local Muslim community, and provides opportunities for social interaction and strengthening internal human networks. Clearly, what enables the continuance of social group activities in the mosque is the shared ethnic and religious traditions of the participants. But the Confucian revival centered on the Changchun Confucius Temple is different. The human 22  TN: Or “psychological panarchy” cf. Will Varey, “Psychological Panarchy: Steps to an ecology of thought,” 17, Proceedings of the 54th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences–2010, Waterloo, Canada, http://journals.isss.org/index.php/ proceedings54th/article/view/1424. 23  Chen Bisheng 陳壁生, “Shinsei seikatsu ni okeru juka shiso” 神聖生活における儒家思 想 [Confucian thought in sacred life], trans. Morikawa Hiroki 森川 裕貫, Modern Chinese Traditional Culture and the Revival of Confucianism, Booklet 5 (Tokyo: The University of Tokyo Center for Philosophy, 2008), 191–212. See also Chen’s contribution to this volume.

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The Changchun Mosque © Ishii Tsuyoshi

networks formed at such a modern urban cultural facility are naturally different from the social relations bound by traditional rites and customs or religion. We can see their potential in volunteer participation in the undertakings of the Changchun Confucius Temple, the cultural popularization activities of the National Learning Great Lecture Hall, and Sun Jingli’s attempts at “Home.” Another issue that may be closely linked to the aforementioned issue of the emotional bonds of folk community networks is the issue of individual spiritual anxiety and finding one’s place. Changchun City has many religious venues, among which the most eye-catching is the Huguo 護國 (Protecting the Nation) Prajna Temple in the city center. As its name implies, this temple was developed during the Manchukuo era, and it still draws many local residents praying and requesting the blessings of Buddha. The streets running along the temple walls are filled with fortune-tellers soliciting passers-by, indicating a demand for their services among a large number of the people who come here to pray. And as in other cities and towns in China, we also see the rapid development of Protestant Christianity. Changchun’s main Christian church, built in 1998, is located in an obscure side street, but it is a very large and imposing structure. According to what I learned from people on duty at the door, more than 1,000 believers attend services every week. This is probably not a reliable figure, but based on the size of the church, it is probably not exaggerated.

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When considering the Changchun Confucius Temple as the result of a flourishing society, the corresponding conditions of the religious facilities one finds in Changchun City should serve as important reference material. Setting off from the proposition of “Confucian revival and Confucian piety” which was the former title of our original research project, it appears that this research topic cannot avoid the question of whether Confucian culture is religion, let alone whether the dissemination and practice of Confucian culture can coexist with the various religious creeds in the normal sense. The situation of Christian education in Hong Kong as described by Gan Yang 甘陽 is an interesting example. Gan mentions an amazing discovery experienced by a mainland Chinese person observing Hong Kong’s current education conditions: The school mottos of Christian schools are all quotes from Confucianism.24 The example of Sun Jingli that we encountered in our observation of the Changchun Confucius Temple is similar. What is important here is that it is altogether possible for the individual soul’s religious concern to be expressed by way of “Confucian revival.” Regarding this question, I am inclined to endorse the mentality of “in everyday life, seeking a permanent spiritual home that is

figure 6.11

The Huguo (protecting the nation) Prajna Temple © Ishii Tsuyoshi

24  Gan Yang 甘陽, Wenming Tang 唐文明, et al., “Kang Youwei yu zhiduhua Ruxue” 康有為 與制度化儒學, Kaifang Shidai 開放時代 5 (2014): 12–41.

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figure 6.12

Street outside the Huguo Prajna Temple © Ishii Tsuyoshi

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The Changchun Christian Church © Ishii Tsuyoshi

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richly meaningful and that everyone can reach.”25 This is the formulation that religious scholar Xiao Yan arrived at in his 2010 essay summarizing research in Confucianism. While analyzing the structural manifestation of the lifestyles of popular Confucianism, Xiao Yan put a greater emphasis on the question of spirituality, and this spirituality is what people commonly demand from the various forms of religious cultures in modern Chinese society.26 This mode of discourse corresponds strongly with the question of religion under the conditions of modern secularization. In the early twentieth century, William James re-defined the meaning of religion in accordance with contemporary conditions. He disregarded all outward formal conditions such as sacrifices, rites, temples and scriptures, and treated the psychological exercise of the interrogation of the spiritual27 as the sole standard for defining religion.28 Charles Taylor deduced from James’s research into religious psychology his discussion of how religious faith exists today from the dimension of “expressive individualism.” Taylor points out that in societies where expressive individualism occupies a mainstream position, religious life reveals the following characteristics: The religious life or practice that I become part of not only must be my choice, but must speak to me; it must make sense in terms of my spiritual development as I understand this.29 He also says that in a modern society where disenchantment is complete,30 people’s pursuit of particular beliefs has not disappeared, but that in this kind of society, conformance to an individualized spirituality is nearly the only injunction that people can accept. For that reason, societies that acknowledge this kind of spiritual path must be pluralistic societies. In such places, the rule not to violate individual liberty enjoys political guarantees, but such guarantees must at the same time constitute new limits.31 “With this restriction, one’s path can range through those which require some community to live out, even 25  Xiao Yan 肖雁, “2010 nian Rujiao yanjiu de lilun yu shijian” 2010 年儒教研究的理論與 實踐, in Zhongguo zongjiao baogao (2010) 中國宗教報告 (2010), eds. Ze Jin 金澤 and Yonghui Qiu 邱永輝 (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2011), 196. 26   Ibid. 27  TN: In James’s words, “the individual’s experience of his relation to the divine.” 28  William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 29–30. (First published in 1902 by Longmans, Green, and Co., New York). 29  Charles Taylor, Varieties of Religion Today (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2002), 94. 30  TN: Taylor refers to this as the “post-Durkheimian age.” 31  TN: In Taylor’s words, “My spiritual path has to respect those of others.”

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national communities or would-be state churches, but it can also range beyond to those which require only the loosest of affinity groups.”32 The Confucian revival movement at the Changchun Confucius Temple has developed within a socio-economic trend in which consumer culture reigns supreme, and through the various symbols and iconography acknowledged by Chinese group culture. Its epochal conditions are clearly a demystified modernity in which commodity economy has permeated the lives of all people. This is largely identical to what Taylor analyzes as the existential forms of modern religion. If that is the case, while focusing on the phenomenon of Confucian revival, should we not also consider the following question: If we can likewise see in the reality of Chinese society the modern social symptom of the atomization of the individual soul that provides the practical foundation for the emergence of William James’s proposition of personal religion and Charles Taylor’s proposition of an individualized spiritual path, then how are we to decipher the fact that the traditional culture emerging under the name of “national learning” acts in concert with the official construction of cultural ideology under these conditions? The results of our on-site observation in Changchun tell us that it is altogether possible for government-led traditional cultural reconstruction projects to complement civil society forces; that to some degree, an individual sense of calling combined with social networking ties, and using the cultural hardware and software formed under government direction as platforms, form spheres that are relatively autonomous from the government; and that a grassroots mindset reliant on individual spiritual awakening can, under the conditions of modern urbanization, give vitality to the gathering together of numerous atomized souls. Under the various complex and mutually constituted tensions between forces such as the state, the market and capital, how can the atomized individual soul receive adequate respect and settle comfortably and coexist in harmony with its surroundings? This is a problem that exists in all modern societies and that has never been truly resolved. In the crevice presupposed by the binary between officialdom and the citizenry, we find another means of subjective participation; and in this crevice, a volunteer force that does not yet fit a pattern and that may indeed reject any fixed orientation may be the actual protagonist in the phenomenon of the so-called “Confucian revival.” Translated by Stacy Mosher

32  Taylor, op. cit., 101–102.

chapter 7

Contemporary Confucius Temples Life in Mainland China: Report from the Field Anna Sun 1 Introduction Since 2000, I have conducted ethnographic research in 15 Confucius temples in Mainland China.1 Some Confucius temples have a vibrant ritual life, some do not. Why the difference? When I speak of a vibrant ritual life, I am referring to the density of ritual activities in Confucius temples, which can be seen in Mainland China as well as Taiwan today (the focus of this study is Confucius temple life in Mainland China). Here I am not referring to the public performance of rituals in Confucius temples such as the celebration of Confucius’ birthday, which are in general organized by temple management and often in collaboration with local municipal government offices. My focus is on what I call the “private rites” in Confucius temples, namely rituals performed by individuals that are not part of any public performances. Some of these rituals are traditional, some newly modified or invented. 2 Here is a list of the most commonly observed ritual activities in contemporary Confucius temples:

1  My greatest thanks to Sébastien Billioud for inviting me to be part of this project on Confucian piety and for being an excellent editor of this volume. I also thank the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and helpful comments. 2  See Anna Sun, Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).

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Sun Most commonly observed ritual activities in contemporary Confucius temples

Ritual activities in Confucius temples

Traditional rituals

New or modified rituals

1

Burning incense in courtyard of the temple

2

Praying to Confucius (kneeling or bowing)

3

Offering objects of sacrifice (such as dry food items, flowers, fruits)

Placing packages of incense on the altar of the temple (due to fire regulations) Writing prayer cards and hanging them on shelves or trees inside the temple Purchasing items of blessings (such as printed cards or silk pouches)

In this chapter, I try to answer the question of the differences in ritual life in these temples by examining the social conditions under which ritual activities may thrive or wither. The density of ritual activities in a given temple does not remain constant; in fact, it is constantly changing, reflecting the ecological relations the temple has with its physical surrounding as well as the larger social, institutional, political, cultural, religious, and ritual systems of which it is a part. I argue that the social factors that would cause differences include at least the following: a) Ritual availability within the temple; b) Economic structure of the temple; c) Location of the temple in local temple ecology; d) Ritual habitus of local religious systems; e) Relation to the local ritual calendar. I believe these are in fact elements that affect not only Confucius temple life, but also ritual life in China in general. Although the focus of this study is Confucius temples, I hope such analysis may be able to shed light on the general patterns and structures of religious practices in contemporary China.3

3  This is the direction of my current ethnographic research project on prayer life in contemporary urban China, which covers multiple religious traditions. However, this chapter focuses mostly on Confucius temples.

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Overview of Fieldwork

According to the website of the Chinese National Association of Confucius Temples (CNACT), there are currently 124 member temples across 31 provinces in Mainland China, plus 4 in Taiwan. The CNACT holds annual meetings; the 17th annual meeting took place at Deyang Confucius Temple in October 2016, with more than 200 people attending the conference. For this project on contemporary Confucius temple life, I have conducted ethnographic research in 15 Confucius temples in several different regions in Mainland China. The temples are the following: Beijing Confucius Temple, Beijing 北京孔廟; Tianjin Confucius Temple, Tianjin 天津文廟; Shanghai Confucius Temple, Shanghai 上海文廟; Qufu Confucius Temple, Shandong Province 曲阜孔廟, 山東省; Jinan Confucius Temple, Shandong Province 濟南文廟, 山東省; Deyang Confucius Temple, Sichuan Province 德陽文廟, 四川省; Bishan Confucius Temple, Sichuan Province 璧山文廟, 四川省; Zizhong Confucius Temple, Sichuan Province 資中文廟, 四川省; Suzhou Confucius Temple, Jiangsu Province 蘇州文廟, 江蘇省; Nanjing Confucius Temple, Jiangsu Province 南京夫子廟, 江蘇省; Hangzhou Confucius Temple, Zhejiang Province 杭州文廟, 浙江省; Wujiang Confucius Temple, Jiangsu Province 吳江文廟, 江蘇省; Foshan Confucius Temple, Guangdong Province 佛山祖廟, 廣東省; Kunming Confucius Temple, Yunnan Province 昆明文廟, 雲南省; Jingzhou Confucius Temple, Hubei Province 荊州文廟, 湖北省. The regional distributions are the following: Northern provinces 北方省份: Hebei and Shandong provinces 河北, 山東; South of Yangtze River provinces 江南省份: Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces 浙江, 江蘇; Southern provinces 南方省份: Hubei, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Guangdong provinces 湖北, 四川, 雲南, 廣東. The development of ritual life in Confucius temples certainly has a temporal dimension. This study focuses on ritual activities observed between 2000 and 2014, during the period of robust cultural and political revival of Confucianism

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in China.4 For the temples I have revisited since 2014, the end of my fieldwork for this project, such as the Confucius temples in Beijing, Shanghai, and Qufu, necessary updates are provided. 3

Conceptual Framework: The Linked Ecology of Confucius Temple Life

In social theory, there have been many attempts to theorize social action in the larger context of society and culture. The most widely used concepts in recent years include theories of social systems;5 rational choice theory of the market;6 theories of toolkits, repertories, and habitus,7 and theories of fields, including theories of “strategic action fields.”8 Goossaert and Palmer have discussed the possibility of using the concept of ecology to study religion in modern China.9 I propose to examine Chinese religious life through the conceptual metaphor of “linked ecologies.” The concept of “linked ecologies” was first 4  Daniel Bell, China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Anna Sun, Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); Sebastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval, The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015); Kenneth Hammond and Jeffrey Richey, eds., The Sage Returns: The Confucian Revival in Contemporary China (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2015). 5  Talcott Parsons, The Social System (New York: The Free Press/Macmillan, 1964); Niklas Luhmann, Social Systems (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995). 6  Gary Becker, The Economic Approach to Human Behavior (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976). Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000); Yang Fenggang, “The Red, Black, and Gray Markets of Religion in China,” The Sociological Quarterly 47 (2006): 93–122. 7  Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociological Review 51(2) (1986): 273–86; Robert Campany, “On the Very Idea of Religions (in the Modern West and in Early Medieval China),” History of Religions 42 (4) (2003): 287–319. Gareth Fisher, From Comrades to Bodhisattvas: Moral Dimensions of Lay Buddhist Practice in Contemporary China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014); Anna Sun, “Theorizing the Plurality of Chinese Religious Life: The Search for New Paradigms in the Study of Chinese Religions,” in Religion and Orientalism in Asian Studies, ed. Kiri Paramore (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 51–72. 8  Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990). Neil Fligstein, and Doug McAdam, A Theory of Fields (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 9  Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer, The Religion Question in Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). David A. Palmer and Xun Liu, eds., Daoism in Twentieth Century China: Between Eternity and Modernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012).

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articulated by the historical sociologist Andrew Abbott, who suggests that we need to understand the structure of social processes through “reconceptualizing the social world in terms of linked ecologies, each of which acts as a (flexible) surround for others.”10 Abbott suggests that the concept of ecology consists of three components: “actors, locations, and a relation associating the one with the other.” This relation is what he calls “ligation,” which “constitutes and delimits both actors and locations.”11 This conceptual framework allows us to analyze religious life not from the assumption of firm commitments to beliefs and membership, assumptions rooted in monotheistic understanding of religion, but from a perspective that focuses on the fluid interconnections amongst pluralistic practices. These are indeed the cultural toolkits and repertories of Chinese religious life.12 Following this analytical conceptualization, I argue that there exists not a single ecological system of Chinese religious life, but a set of linked ecologies, allowing different systems of ritual practice to coexist through competition as well as interdependence. More specifically, I propose two linked ecologies. First, there is a linked ecology of temple life, which refers to the ways religious organizations and sites coexist through competition as well as interdependence. The actors in this system are the temple organizations, the locations are the actual physical sites, and the ligation refers to the constantly evolving relationship amongst them. This may lead to studies of ecologies of local temple life, which examine not only how temples coexist and thrive (or fail) together in a region, but also the linked ecologies of local social, political, and cultural life. Second, there is a linked ecology of religious traditions, which refers to the ways religious belief, rituals, and equipment are often circulated in different religious traditions in a polytheistic society. The actors in this system are the different religious traditions. In the case of China, they are Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, and the so-called popular or folk religions.13 They often share 10   Andrew Abbott, “Linked Ecologies: States and Universities as Environments for Professions,” Sociological Theory 23 (3) (2005): 245–274. 11   Ibid., 248. 12  Ann Swidler, “Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies,” American Sociological Review 51 (2) (1986): 273–86; Gareth Fisher, From Comrades to Bodhisattvas: Moral Dimensions of Lay Buddhist Practice in Contemporary China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2014); Anna Sun, “Theorizing the Plurality of Chinese Religious Life: The Search for New Paradigms in the Study of Chinese Religions,” in Religion and Orientalism in Asian Studies, ed. Kiri Paramore (London: Bloomsbury, 2016), 51–72. 13  Although I speak of “Buddhist,” “Daoist,” and “popular or folk religion” temples here, in the context of contemporary Chinese religious life, it is often difficult to make a distinction between a Daoist temple and a so-called poplar or folk religion temple. A good case

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the similar ritual activities, such as the burning of incense as part of prayer, the offering of fruit or other food items as sacrifice, and the burning of paper goods (such as spirit money) as sacrifice. The two monotheistic traditions in China, Christianity and Islam, have far stricter boundaries about ritual activities that can and cannot be performed by their adherents, hence are less likely to be part of this linked ecology, even though there are certain ritual connections— or slippage—between them and the other religious traditions as well.14 The locations of this second linked ecology are the sites where the rituals are performed, such as temples or home shrines, and the ligation refers to the ritual actions shared in this linked ecological system. A study of the ecology of Chinese religious traditions will lead to a more nuanced understanding of the way different religions coexist in Chinese society; unlike the idea of the religious economy and market, in which different religions and groups compete for success and dominance on the religious market, the emphasis here is on the coexistence and interdependence of temples, shrines, ritual practices and ritual apparatus, since people don’t need to choose one or the other in their religious life, but many different things at once.15 4

Ritual Life and the Economic Structure of a Confucius Temple

The economic structure of a Confucius temple and the availability of ritual apparatus in the temple are intimately connected in contemporary China. The reason is quite straightforward: most of the ritual apparatus, such as packages of incense, prayer cards, and various objects of blessing, are items sold by the in point is the City God temples 城隍廟, temples dedicated to the local deity of a city, town, or village who guards and protects the people living under his jurisprudence. In the current religious management system in China, City God temples are usually placed within the administrative boundaries of local Daoist Associations. In the City God Temple in Shanghai today, for example, the Daoist priests (of Zhengyi lineage) are the clergy in charge of all ritual activities in the temple. For accounts of the complex development of Daoism in contemporary China, see Palmer and Liu 2012. 14  Here I will only mention two examples from my fieldwork. The first is the well-documented case of the way many Chinese Christian converts—both Catholics and Protestants—still practice ancestral rituals such as incense burning and the burning of spirit money, which I have observed frequently. The second is from my fieldwork in a mosque in Beijing in 2015, where I observed the offering of incense in front of the historical tombstone of a legendary imam. This is a ritual practice mostly associated with Confucian grave rites, which—theoretically—was not supposed to take place in a mosque. 15  For discussions of Chinese religious life through the lens of religious economy, see Yang 2006.

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temple management for the consumption of individual visitors. None of these items is for free, and one is discouraged from bringing in items such as incense purchased from outside of the temple. It is up to the temple management to decide whether it is necessary to have these items for sale. In other words, in order to perform the rituals commonly seen in Confucius temples today, such as burning incense in the courtyard or writing prayers on paper cards, the items have to be available for purchase in the temples in the first place, usually in the temple gift shop or at a selling station by the entrance of the temple. And it is also up to the temple to set up what I call “ritual points” within the temple complex, such as incense burner in the courtyard or wooden shelves for people to hang their prayer cards. Without these ritual items and “ritual points,” the performance of rituals in a given temple becomes merely an abstract idea. If it is the case that the availability of ritual apparatus is directly related to the density of ritual life in a Confucius temple, then the economics structure of the temple is directly related to the creation and maintaining of this availability, as I have suggested elsewhere. Since Confucianism is not officially recognized as a religion by the Chinese state, Confucius temples are not under the purview of the State Administration of Religious Affairs (SARA). The temples, as “cultural institutions,” are owned by the state and managed by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) under the Ministry of Culture, which has localized policies regarding the economic responsibilities of each “cultural institution” under its management. As a result, Confucius temples often have different economic structures based on the different local municipal policies governing “cultural institutions.” For instance, the Suzhou Confucius Temple, at the time of my fieldwork, was given a budget as a temple museum, and it also houses the local steles collection. This meant that the temple management received its operating budget as well as personnel salaries from the Suzhou municipal government. Since there was no incentive for the temple to generate additional income—the income would not be able to be shared by the temple personnel—the management had done very little to encourage ritual activities. For example, there was no one selling incense or prayer cards, nor any other ritual-related items. However, this did not mean there was no ritual life in this temple. During my fieldwork, I did observe an incense burner placed in front of the statue of Confucius in the temple courtyard, which had a few sticks of incense left by visitors. A different example is the Nanjing Confucius Temple. It is entirely “自負盈 虧” (“the organization is responsible for its own profits and losses”), with the salary of the temple management coming based on the income that the temple can generate. In order to generate income, it has been leased to a company

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specializing in tourism to manage its day-to-day operation. As a result, the temple has the most vibrant ritual life I have seen among the temples I have studied. There are at least 16 “ritual points” within the temple where ritual items can be placed and ritual activities performed, from hanging prayer cards to kneeing on prayer mats, from burning incense to donating money for blessings. In addition, there were a dozen or “tour guides” who offered free tours of the temple. All dressed in light blue dawn parkas in the wintery weather during the period of my fieldwork, they told visitors where one should offer incense, purchase prayer cards, and make donations for blessings. The most surprising instruction involved how one should ask for blessings from one of the stone statues of Confucius’ disciples that lined the main path once one entered the temple. The young woman who guided me instructed on how to touch the carved stone fish held in the hands of one of the statues: “You should touch the fish from its head to tail, not the other way around, which will bring you complete fulfillment of your wishes.” There were several things unusual about this instruction, such as a) these statues are unique to this temple, rather than a regular part of any Confucius temple; b) the stone fish in the hand of the disciple is unrelated to any existing Confucian ritual tradition; c) such rituals for blessings is not seen in any other Confucius temple. But the fact that such rituals exist testifies to the imaginative power of temple management (or the company it hires to run the temple economy), for the richness of rituals performed in temple space creates a field of enchantment that would more likely lead to increased monetary contribution. In a sense the Nanjing Confucius Temple operates more like a Buddhist or Daoist temple in China today. Buddhist and Daoist temples are overseen by SARA, which seems to have a more uniform policy regarding temple economy in recent years. I learned from a monk in a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Shanghai in February 2015 that, every year, 5% of the temple income is given to the local SARA administrative office; the temples and the monks can keep whatever is left after expenses. Since such Buddhist temples are entirely responsible for their own profits and losses, there is great incentive for the temples to find ways to create revenue, which in general takes the form of selling many different kinds of incenses and blessed objects, as well as formal services such as special prayers for deceased ancestors. This in the end creates a temple environment conducive to a vibrant ritual life. Here is how these different economic structures may affect the way the temple managements facilitate (or not) ritual activities in the temple:

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table 7.2 The impact of different economic structures on the way the temple managements facilitate (or not) ritual activities State funding situation

Incentive for providing ritual apparatus

Density of ritual life

Full State Funding: Municipal Government Supported Institutions

Low incentive for temple management to sell ritual apparatus and to encourage ritual activities Intermediate incentive to sell ritual apparatus and to encourage ritual activities High incentive to sell ritual apparatus and to encourage ritual activities

Low density of ritual life in the temple

Low State Funding: Semi-state-funded Institutions Little or No State Funding: Mostly Self-Supported Institution’s

5

Intermediate density of ritual life in the temple High density of ritual life in the temple

The Ecological Location of the Temple

There are at least three sets of relationships a Confucius temple has with other temples: a) Relationship with other Confucius temples, both regionally and nationally; b) Relationship with other temples in the same region; c) Relationship with other temples in the same neighborhood. I suggest that the density of ritual life in a given Confucius temple often depends on its physical position in the local temple ecology; this ecological location of the temple, especially its relation to other sacred sites and/or attractions within walking distance, is crucial to the vitality of its ritual life. The annual meetings of the Chinese Association of Confucius Temples are an institutional location where new ideas for Confucian rituals are often circulated. It was at the national conference in 2004 that the creator of the paper prayer cards, the temple manager of the Shanghai Confucius temple, shared her invention with managers from other temples, which allowed the new ritual to spread nationwide.16 16  For details see Anna Sun, Confucianism as a World Religion: Contested Histories and Contemporary Realities (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013).

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Yet it is the actual physical relation that matters the most to the ongoing ritual life in a given temple. If we examine the temples with the most vibrant ritual life in my fieldwork, we see they share the proximity to other sacred sites and/or central local attractions. Please note that here I am only focusing on the dates important for individual private rituals, rather than the dates of official ceremonies, such as the celebration of Confucius’ birthday. Here is a summary of the commonalities of these ritually rich temple sites: table 7.3 Commonalities of ritually rich temple sites Temples with Centrally Proximity to dense ritual located other temples/ life main attractions

Yes Nanjing Confucius Temple 南京夫子廟

Shanghai Confucius Temple 上海文廟

Yes

Foshan Confucius Temple 佛山孔廟

Yes

Qufu Confucius Temple 曲阜孔廟

Yes

Full or semi Proximity to deities self-supporting from other religious economic traditions structure

Yes Yes: Part of the Qinghuai River Tourism Zone 秦淮風光景區, and near the Jiangnan Civil Examination Museum 江南貢院 Yes Yes: Near Yu Garden Cultural Zone 豫園文化區

Yes Yes: Inside the Ancestral Temple Complex 祖廟廟群 Yes Yes: The main attraction of the Confucian tourist city of Qufu

No: Key site of Confucian education

Significant annual dates for personal rituals

College Entrance Exam; Chinese New Year

Same Yes: Near the City God Temple 城隍廟(adminis­ tratively considered a Daoist temple) Same Yes: In the same temple complex as the Bei Di Temple 北帝廟 (Daoist temple) Same No: It is the singularly most sacred temple of Confucius

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Confucius Temples in Fieldwork

The best way to get a sense of the differences between these temples is to see the contrast between a temple with high ritual density, such as the Nanjing Confucius temple, and a temple with light ritual density, such as the Suzhou Confucius temple. Here is an overview of the density of ritual activities in the Mainland Confucius temples I have studied: table 7.4 Density of ritual activities in Mainland Confucius temples

Metropolitan City

Rural

Dense ritual activities

Moderate to light ritual activities

Shanghai Confucius Temple 上海文廟a Nanjing 南京夫子廟 Foshan 佛山祖廟

Beijing 北京孔廟

Qufu 曲阜孔廟

Jinan 濟南文廟 Deyang 德陽文廟

No ritual activities

Wujiangb 吳江文廟 Jingzhoub 荊州文廟

Suzhou 蘇州文廟 Hangzhou 杭州文廟 Kunming 昆明文廟 Zizhong 資中文廟 Bishan 璧山文廟

a The density of ritual activities in a given temple is not static; in fact, changes are the norm in the social life of a temple. This overview is based primarily on fieldwork conducted between 2006 and 2014, which captures no more than snapshots in time of the temples studied. b Both temples are now on the grounds of local high schools and are encircled by high school buildings. The public has no access to the temples.

In what follows, I summarize the three categories of Confucius temples I have studied according to their level of ritual activities at the time of my fieldwork. The density of ritual activities in a given temple is not static; in fact, changes are the norm in the social life of a temple. This overview is based primarily on fieldwork conducted between 2006 and 2014, which captures no more than snapshots of the time during which the temples were studied.

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Temples with Dense Ritual Activities

7.1 Shanghai Confucius Temple 上海文廟 Shanghai Confucius Temple was originally built in 1294, during the Yuan Dynasty. Its location was changed several times throughout history, with the last move taking place in 1855. During the Qing Dynasty, the full name of the temple was “Shanghai Confucius Temple and Academy” 上海縣學文廟, reflecting the historical convention that, wherever there was a Confucius temple, there was a Confucian academy attached to it. After the republican revolution ended the Qing Dynasty—and the imperial era—in 1911, the temple was used as an educational center until 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was established. Although the temple was designated as a “cultural heritage site” of the Nanshi District 南市 區of Shanghai in 1959, it still did not escape damage during the Cultural Revolution, during which most religious rites in China suffered different degrees of destruction. It was used as a site for athletic training in those years, and many buildings in the temple complex were demolished to make room for athletic facilities. In 1979, however, the temple became one of the first Confucius temples to be renovated after the Cultural Revolution. The Shanghai Bureau of Cultural Heritage 上海文物局 funded the restoration of the Dacheng Hall 大成殿, the main ceremonial hall, in 1979. In the years that followed, the temple became the site of a popular antiquarian book market (1986–1997). In 1997–1999, a more thorough restoration of the temple took place, including the rebuilding of side streets. In 2002, the temple was designated as a Shanghai “cultural heritage site” 文物保護單位. Since then, the Shanghai Confucius Temple has become one of the most renowned Confucius temples in Mainland China, partly due to its proficient management. For instance, it is the birthplace of the prayer cards, which were invented by Ms. Ai-Zhen Wang, the director of the temple administration office, in 2002.17 It is also one of few Confucius temples with its own, professionally designed website. Shanghai Confucius Temple had a vibrant ritual life during my fieldwork from 2003 to 2014. Many people prayed to the tablet and altar of Confucius in the Dancheng Hall. A large quantity of prayer card were purchased by visitors from the gift shop, which were then filled with written prayers and 17  It was at the national conference of the Association of Confucius Temples in 2004 that the temple manager of the Shanghai Confucius temple shared her invention of prayer cards with managers from other temples, which allowed the new ritual to spread nationwide.

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hung on the wooden shelves by the Dancheng Hall, as well as the dozens of trees in the courtyard. I have also observed many instances of incense being offered in the incense burner in front of the statue of Confucius in the courtyard. However, the location of the Shanghai Confucius Temples in the local temple ecology has gone through slow yet crucial changes in the past few years. It is within walking distance to Yu Yuan 豫園 and the temple complexes there (the Temple of City God 城隍廟 and the Buddhist temple 沉香閣), arguable the center of cultural tourism in Shanghai, with its historically important sites as well as tourist-friendly souvenir shops and restaurants offering local flavors. As a result, this is an area particularly attractive for religious and cultural tourists, and the Confucius Temple had steady visitors and ran a successful ritual object shop for most of the first decade of the 21st century. Nevertheless, the ritual life of the temple has been gradually reduced in the past few years because of the general declining economic conditions of its immediate surrounding neighborhood, which consists mostly of older residential buildings in dire need of renovation. It is no longer easy to reach the temple by car because most of the nearby streets have been turned into flea markets for inexpensive everyday wares, which effectively isolated the temple from the larger ritual ecological field. This has been especially true for the religious and cultural tourists, who would find the inconvenience of locating and reaching the temple from the center of the Yu Yuan area amongst bustling venders of cheap goods on increasingly narrow and non-scenic streets a real impediment. Nanjing Confucius Temple 南京夫子廟 7.2 The Nanjing Confucius Temple had the highest density of ritual life among all the temples I visited during the time of my fieldwork. The temple was originally built in 1034, during the Song Dynasty. The Jiangnan Provincial Civil Examination Complex 江南貢院, the largest examination site ever built in imperial China, was erected right next to it in 1168, a great complex with more than 20,000 cells for exam takers. After being rebuilt in 1869, it was nearly destroyed by fire by Japanese army during the Sino-Japanese War in 1937. In 1984 it went through thorough restoration and opened to tourists shortly after. In 1991 it was certified as one of the “Top 40 Tourist Sites in China” by the government. The Nanjing Confucius Temple was indeed one of the very first to open to the idea of tourism. Because of its superbly central location—next to the famous civil examination site and right by the fabled Qinhuai River—it was conceived as part of the “Qinhuai River Tourism Zone” from the start of its

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renovation. This was indeed a profound transformation: instead of treating the Confucius Temple as a somber museum, it became the centerpiece of the exuberant tourist district managed by the Nanjing Qinhuai River Tourism Bureau. Unlike many other Confucius temples that are standalone sites, the Nanjing Confucius Temple is part of a large network of tourist attractions, which combines historical sites such as temples and gardens with endless shops and restaurants. It is in many ways like the structure of an amusement park, with masses of people flowing in and out of each site, all following the invisible course dictated by the general plan of the tourist zone. The Nanjing Confucius Temple is a must-see stop for this tourist schedule, which ensures tens of thousands of visitors to the temple every year. Among the ritual activities I have observed in the temple are: prayers to the portrait Confucius in the Dancheng Hall; offers of incense to Confucius; offers of donation to the temple; purchase of objects of blessings; prayers to other sacred deities (such as Confucius’ disciples) in the temple. Qufu Confucius Temple 曲阜孔廟 7.3 The earliest and most important Confucius temple in the world, the Qufu Confucius Temple, is one of the most important tourist attractions in China today. First established in 478 BCE, the year following Confucius’ death, it was initially the site of Confucius’ residence. Starting in 195 BCE, the Han Dynasty emperor Han Gaozu 漢高祖 started the tradition of imperial veneration of Confucius in the temple. In the next millennium, the temple was expanded and rebuilt numerous times. By the 18th century, it was already one of the largest architecture complexes in all of China, second to the Forbidden City, the imperial palace. After 1949, the temple became the best-preserved Confucius temple in Mainland China. It became a “cultural heritage site” of Shandong Province in 1957, and a “national cultural heritage site” in 1961 (the first national list of heritage sites). Alas, even this official designation could not protect the temple from the destructions of religious sites during the Cultural Revolution. The most serious damages were done during the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, in 1966.

Contemporary Confucius Temples Life in Mainland China

figure 7.1 Nanjing

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In 1984, the temple began to be restored. In 1994, the entire temple complex was designated as a “world cultural heritage site,” giving it international visibility and prestige. Today, at 130,000m, the temple complex is still the second largest classical architecture compound in China, after the Forbidden City. It receives tens of thousands of visitors a year, both domestic and international. Numerous tour groups include the Qufu Confucius Temple as one of its key sites, and this assures the endless stream of visitors passing through the temple at all times of the year. Since 1984, the temple has been hosting the annual ceremony to mark the birthday of Confucius on September 28th every year. It has been a thoroughly choreographed event, a great public performance.18 However, religious activities are carried out outside of the realm of public events as well. Many visitors—mostly domestic tourists—burned incense and offered prayers in the courtyard of the Dacheng Hall during all hours of the day. There were vendors selling incenses and candles inside the temple, making it easy to obtain ritual apparatus. Prayer cards were also on offer, especially near the tomb of Confucius, one of the main ritual centers in the temple. The prayers performed at the tomb tend to be more elaborate than those at the Dacheng Hall, with prayers offered with solemn bowing and kneeling. During my two fieldwork trips there, the stream of people burning incense and making prayers never ceased. 7.4 Foshan Confucius Temple 佛山孔廟 Foshan Confucius Temple is the only temple I studied that does not belong to the National Association of Confucius temples. The reason is simple: it was built right after the end of the imperial ear, in 1911, by the local Association of Confucianists 尊孔會 who were part of the failed national effort to make Confucianism into China’s “national religion” 國教. In other words, it technically does not belong to the traditional system of Confucius temples, with its intimate connection to Confucian academies and the imperial civil examination system.

18  For analyses of such ceremonies, see Sebastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval, The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). For a nuanced history of the Qufu Confucius Temple, see James A. Flath, Traces of the Sage: Monument, Materiality, and the First Temple of Confucius (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016).

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However, what makes the Foshan Confucius Temple unique is not its origin, but its very location. It is part of the Foshan Zumiao 佛山祖廟 complex, an architectural compound that consists of the following five parts: a) The Temple of Bei Di 佛山北帝廟, also called 佛山祖廟, a Daoist temple originally built in the 11th century for the worship of 真武大帝, or 北帝, who is known as the most important local god; the temple was rebuilt and expanded in 1451; b) The Confucius Temple 佛山孔廟, originally built in 1911, for the worship of Confucius; c) The “Ten Thousand Blessed Fortune” Stage 萬福臺, originally built in 1658 as part of the Bei Di Temple, an open-air theatre for the performance of Yue Opera 粵劇, a local opera form originated in this region, during temple festivals; d) The Memorial Hall of Huang Fei Hong 黃飛鴻紀念館, a museum built in 2000, dedicated to the famous martial arts master Huang Fei Hong, who was born in Foshan; e) The Foshan City Museum 佛山市博物館, established in 1959, which is in charge of all the different institutions that are part of the Foshan Zumiao complex. In addition to the pluralistic nature of the temple compound, one of the many things that make the Foshan Confucius Temple unusual is the name of the Dancheng Hall, which is not Dacheng Hall 大成殿 but the Sacred Hall of Confucius 孔聖殿. This goes back to its origin as a relatively new temple built by the local Association of Confucianists 尊孔會 in the beginning of the 20th century. The Confucius temple management has been taking excellent advantage of its ideal religious ecological location. The temple sells not only incenses and prayer cards, which are popular with visitors, but also red silk ribbons, with words of blessings printed on them, to be thrown over the branches of dozens of trees on temple ground. Indeed, the trees of the temples were so adorned with these red ribbons that they looked as if they had permanent dense red blossoms. The temple management also hosts annual Confucian social ritual events such as the “Opening of Brushes” 開筆禮 ceremony for elementary school children, and the “Threshold to Adulthood” 成人禮 ceremony for high school students. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the vitality of the Foshan Confucius Temple has a great deal to do with the vitality of the Foshan Zumiao 佛山祖廟 complex as whole. The temple complex holds a central position in the ritual life of the city of Foshan, especially on important ritual dates such as the first

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day of the Spring Festival, when it is part of the tradition of the city for people to offer incense in all the temples that are part of the Zumiao complex. Being part of this ritual center allows the Confucius Temple to stay in the heart of Foshan ritual life. 8

Temples with Moderate to Light Ritual Activities

8.1 Beijing Confucius Temple 北京孔廟 Beijing Confucius Temple is the one of the most important Confucius temples in Mainland China, arguably right behind the Qufu Confucius Temple in its religious, cultural, and political significance. It was built in 1302, during the Yuan Dynasty (1260–1368). It had been the official site for the imperial veneration of Confucius for about seven centuries, until a new republic replaced the imperial rule in 1911. An enormous classical architectural complex, the temple has been rebuilt many times throughout history, including major renovations during the Ming Dynasty (1411) and at the end of the Qing Dynasty (1906). It was first opening to public in 1928, during the Republic of China. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, it was the second Confucius temple, after Qufu, to be on the “National Heritage” list, in 1988. A major tourist attraction, it is on the must-see route of many visitors— especially foreign tourists—in Beijing. Additionally, the Tibetan Buddhist temple Yonghe Gong 雍和宮 is only a few blocks away, with a street full of shops specializing in ritual objects between them, creating a religious ecological environment that has great potentials for ritual density. The Beijing Confucius Temple formally has two parts: the Confucius Temple 孔廟 and the Imperial Academy 國子監. Architecturally they form two halves of the temple complex, and institutionally they belong to the same management system, which has various offices overseeing educational, touristic, ceremonial, and other aspects of temple life. The ritual apparatus for visitors in the Confucius Temple side of the complex is not abundant. In the Dacheng Hall, although there are several altars with objects of sacrifice—packages of unlighted incense, flowers, and fruits— on display ceremonially, visitors cannot make any offerings of their own, since the altars are roped off, far from the visitors’ reach. In the early 2000s there were two prayer mats before the main altar, which have since been taken away, leaving ritual activities mostly to peripheral sites in the temple. Among the rituals I observed were people offering prayers to Confucius in the Dancheng Hall through bowing and verbal utterances of prayer (although they could

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not kneel which would have been the preferred bodily practice). There were also the offerings of incenses—still wrapped in their plastic package rather than lighted—to Confucius in the gift shop in front of a make-shift small altar before a long hanging portrait of Confucius, something people could not do in Dacheng Hall. There were also many objects of blessings to be purchased in the gift shop. A most recently development has to do with the ritual activities in the part of the complex that is technically not part of the Confucius Temple. A side hall towards the back of the Imperial Academy 國子監 has been rented to a company selling ritual objects and tourist souvenirs in recent years. Not having officially made their rented space a temple, the company has nevertheless erected a statue of Confucius half concealed by crimson curtains towards the back of the ritual object shop, where people could offer prayer cards as well as other objects of sacrifice. 8.2 Jinan Confucius Temple 濟南文廟 Jinan Confucius Temple is located in the center of Jinan City, the capital of Shandong Province. It was first built in 1068, during the Song Dynasty, and rebuilt in 1369, during the Ming Dynasty. Like many other Confucius temples, it has gone through many restorations throughout history, although unlike the major temples such as the Qufu and Beijing temples, which escaped the devastations of the Cultural Revolution, it was in terrible shape after decades of destruction and neglect. After becoming a provincial cultural heritage site in 1992, it was finally restored to its formal glories in 2005. Although it is not yet a popular tourist attraction, the Jinan temple had a steady stream of visitors during my fieldwork. There were people praying in the Dacheng Hall, and there was a vendor selling incense and prayer cards in the courtyard in front of the Dacheng Hall. He did not have too many customers, and it was clear that the temple did not need to rely on the sales of these ritual apparatus for its financial health. However, the presence of the vender meant that there was always some degree of ritual life taking place. Whenever there is an incense burner in a temple, there are prayers for blessings. 8.3 Deyang Confucius Temple 德陽文廟 Deyang Confucius Temple is one of the most celebrated Confucius temples in Mainland China. Occupying 28,000m, it is the largest Confucius temple complex in Sichuan Province. The temple was first built in 1368, during the Ming Dynasty, and thoroughly renovated between 1848 and 1855, during the Qing Dynasty. It was included on the list of “Important National Cultural Heritage Sites” in 2001.

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Located in the center of the city of Deyang, with a large public park leading to the temple complex, Deyang Confucius Temple went through a thorough renovation in the first decade of the 21st century. A large, imposing, and beautifully restored temple, it has a visible ritual life inside the courtyard, with an incense burner filled with incenses, and people offering prayers and ask for blessings, particularly during the season of the national college entrance examination. The temple is also a pioneer in arranging new forms of rituals. In April 2015, for instance, the temple organized the ceremony of “Confucius and Ancestral Rites” 祭祀孔子與祖先 on the Day of Qingming 清明, in collaboration with a Buddhist association as well as local cultural and commercial entities. 8.4 Suzhou Confucius Temple 蘇州文廟 Suzhou Confucius Temple was founded by the famed literati scholar official Fan Zhongyan 范仲淹. In 1035, Fan, as the magistrate of Suzhou, decided to combine the Confucius temple and the local Confucian academy as a single institution, hence starting the tradition of 廟學合一. In its heyday, the Suzhou Confucius Temple—and the Academy next to it—was one of the most important in Southern China. However, it fell into neglect by the end of the civil examination era, at the turn of the 20th century. In 1961, the Song Dynasty steles in the temple were designated as objects with the status of “national cultural heritage,” although the temple itself was not on the list. (At the time, the only Confucius temple recognized as a “national cultural heritage” site was the Qufu Confucius Temple.) The famous stele collection has been the main identity of the Suzhou temple ever since 1961, and the temple officially became the Suzhou Stele Museum in 1985, with a collection of more than 1,000 steles. Suzhou Confucius Temple is a good example of the temple operating entirely as a museum. It charges a museum entrance fee, and its management treats the temple as essentially a site for the well-known stele collection. But a stele collection, no matter how famous, is not a great tourist draw; it is very much for specialized connoisseurs. As a result, there were very little activities in the museum, let along temple activities. During my fieldwork, I saw no prayer mats inside the Dacheng Hall, nor an altar for offerings. There was no incense to be sold, no prayer cards from the gift shop, nor any other ritual apparatus. However, there was an incense burner in the main courtyard, right in front of the stone statue of Confucius. Although I did not have a chance to observe someone making offerings in the incense burner, there were a dozen

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or so candles left, also incense ashes. People have been praying to the spirit of Confucius here, even though he is guarded by hundreds of engraved stone steles. 8.5 Hangzhou Confucius Temple 杭州文廟 Hangzhou Confucius Temple is one of the most recently renovated temples. It is located in a refined neighborhood in a beautiful city, surrounded by greenery and not far from the famed West Lake. It was the site of the Linan Provincial Academy in the Song Dynasty. Originally build in 1131, it was rebuilt and expended several times throughout history. For many years it was used as the official school site of the Hangzhou city government. Renovated in 1986, it is now one of the popular tourist sites in Hangzhou. It is also the site of a legendary collection of steles dating back to the Tang Dynasty, with more than 500 pieces housed in the temple. There was little ritual activity in the temple during my fieldwork, although there were prayer cards to be purchased, and there was an incenses burner in the temple. The focus of the development of the Hangzhou Confucius Temple seemed not to be on ritual apparatus, but on social rituals. Like the Foshan Confucius Temple, it has a calendar filled with newly invented social ceremonies such as “Opening of Brushes” 開筆禮 ceremony and the “Threshold to Adulthood” 成人禮, in addition to the obligatory annual ceremony honoring Confucius’ birthday. At the time of my fieldwork, most of the ceremonies had been programmed by a local cultural production firm, which worked with various temples as well as local television stations. In my interview with the entrepreneur who ran the firm, he expressed his general enthusiasm for traditional Chinese culture and stated that, as a committed Buddhist, he found the work with the Confucius Temple most congenial with his personal cultural and religious outlooks. 8.6 Kunming Confucius Temple 昆明文廟 Kunming Confucius Temple has an excellent location in the provincial capital city of Kunming. It was originally built in 1276, during the Yuan Dynasty. The temple school used to be the largest Confucian academy in Yunnan Province. The current structure dates back to 1690. Although in recent years the local municipal government has been using the temple as a community cultural and entertainment center, in 2011 a grant plan was drafted to return the temple to its formal glory. Currently under renovation, part of the temple was closed during my fieldwork, including the Dacheng hall. However, most of temple complex was still accessible; for instance, one of

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figure 7.2 Suzhou

the buildings was used as a teahouse, and its central location made it a popular stop for tourists and retirees alike. Even though there was little ritual life to be detected in the temple complex during its renovation, for people seeking opportunities of venerating Confucius, they can walk to the street right next to the temple and find a

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bookstore called, simply, “Confucius Bookshop” 孔子書店. The bookstore sells only books related to Confucianism, from scholarly monographs to textbooks for elementary and high school students. Inside the bookstore, which has bookshelves lined against the walls, was a black wooden altar dedicated to Confucius, with a large portrait of Confucius hanging on the wall facing the entrance. During my fieldwork visits, there were always fresh flowers, fruits, and candles as offerings on the altar. 8.7 Zizhong Confucius Temple 資中文廟 The first Confucius Temple in the town of Zizhong was built in 984–987, during the Song Dynasty. It was moved to the current location and rebuilt in 1829. The town of Zizhong is quite rural, about three hours by car from Chongqing, the nearest city. One imagined a small, obscure temple in such a remote setting. It was located at the end of a newly developed commercial street. There were almost no tourists at the temple during my fieldwork—I counted only a handful. Yet the temple took my breath away with its magnificence. Although it had not been renovated in recent years, the temple had the grandeur of the Deyang Confucius Temple, even as the buildings were clearly falling into disrepair. In my interview with the sole temple management person, a young woman working for the local cultural bureau, I learned that renovation might be soon underway. The Dacheng Hall was essential empty, except for a large stone statue of Confucius. It was apparently the largest statue of Confucius in China, at 5m tall and weighing 12 tones. Its placement was also quite unusual, since most statues of Confucius would be erected in a courtyard rather than inside the Dacheng Hall. However, even with only a very small stream of visitors in this temple, there were signs of ritual life. In the mostly empty Dacheng Hall, there were two thick yellow prayer mats, much used, in front of the great stone statue of Confucius. No matter how the statue was seemingly out of place, here was the presence of Confucius, to whom people could still offer prayers and ask for blessings. 8.8 Bishan Confucius Temple 璧山文廟 Bishan Confucius Temple is another temple in Sichuan Province. Bishan, a district not far from the great metropolis of Chongqing (an hour away by car), has had a Confucius temple as early as the 13th century, during the Yuan Dynasty. The temple, like most Confucius temples in China, has gone through the process of deterioration and restoration several times throughout history. In fact, its very location has been moved at least three times, the last one in 1733. During the 19th century, several major renovations were conducted, and the temple one sees today is largely the temple restored in 1887, a splendid

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complex of halls and courtyards. Historically it has been an important temple site; all local magistrates had to go to the temple to venerate Confucius before taking office, and the temple school, important regionally, was probably in use until the beginning of the 20th century. In 1950, shortly after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the temple was used by the Bishan Police Department as its base. The Bishan city hall was right next to the temple, making the temple site a convenient choice for governmental agencies. It was one of the reasons why the temple was saved from destruction during the years of the Cultural Revolution. In 2000 the Bishan Confucius Temple was declared a “Cultural Heritage Site” of Chongqing. This led to the latest round of renovation, which lasted from 2011 to 2014. When the renovation completed, Tang Enjia, the head of the Hong Kong Confucian Academy 香港孔教學院, donated a bronze statue of Confucius to the temple.19 The location of temple is quite unusual. It is at the foot of Mount of Bi 璧山, a small hill in the center of the city. Right behind the temple are stone steps along a slope leading up to the top of the hill. Named “The Phoenix Slope” 鳳凰坡, there were dozens of large Buddhist statues made of stone on the slope, as well as statues of Daoist deities. These sacred objects were collected over the years by the Bishan Bureau of Cultural Relics and relocated to this site. During my fieldwork, I observed many people offering incenses in front of the statues. There were also many lighted candles and red ribbon offerings to the statues. Surprisingly, there was little ritual activity in the temple. I believe the main reason was the lack of ritual apparatus. For instance, there were no prayer mats in the Dancheng Hall, no incense being sold on temple ground, and no incense burner in the courtyard. There were even no donation boxes anywhere to be found during my fieldwork. The only place where people could do something inside the temple was in one of the pavilions, which had been turned into a popular teahouse, with retirees being its main customers. However, I did observe people offering prayers in the main courtyard. With a vibrant ritual site right behind the temple—with Buddhist as well as Daoist statues attracting worshippers—I think it will not take long for the temple to be included as part of this de facto ritual center of Bishan.

19  Although the official translation of the name of the academy in English is “Hong Kong Confucian Academy,” the Chinese original 孔教學院 explicitly denotes “Confucianity” as a religion rather than only a religious or cultural tradition.

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Temples with No Ritual Activities

9.1 Wujiang Confucius Temple 吳江文廟 Among the temples I have studied, only two temples have no ritual activities: Wujiang 吳江文廟 and Jingzhou 荊州文廟. Wujiang Confucius Temple is in the city of Wujiang, not far from Hangzhou, in Jiangsu Province. It was built between 1131 CE and 1162 CE, during the Song Dynasty. It has been destroyed several times over the past 800 years due to warfare or fire damage, like most of the temples I have visited. The temple was rebuilt more than once in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, including an extensive renovation in 1873. However, today one can barely find the temple, even though the Dancheng Hall, 大成殿, has been well-preserved. The reason is that, although the temple is in a central location in the city of Wujiang, it is no longer visible from the street, for the entire temple has been encircled by the main high school of the city, the Wujiang High School. The school was built around the temple after the temple had fallen from use in the beginning of the 20th century. The temple was completely neglected until 1998, when the Bureau of Cultural Affairs of the city built a new gate (櫺星門) leading to the Dancheng Hall. The latest restoration took place in 2001, funded by the municipal government of the City of Wujiang. A few years later, in 2006, the temple was officially recognized as a “Cultural Heritage Site of Jiangsu Province.” However, the school remained on temple ground, and the public had no access to the temple. In fact, I had to ask for permission to enter the high school first, which was always closed to non-school personnel. As a result, the restored temple remained an awkward part of the school. During my fieldwork in 2010, the Dancheng Hall of the temple was used as a reading room, with the large library sign of “Quiet” posted in the hall. There were dozens of tables and chairs in the space, making it look nothing like a temple, but a typical school classroom. With no pictures, statues, or scripts that referred to Confucius anywhere in the hall, and with no ritual apparatus such as prayer mats to be found, the space was entirely secular, with no signs of ritual life. 9.2 Jingzhou Confucius Temple 荊州文廟 I was to discover, however, that I would see one more Confucius temple with no ritual activity. This was another temple on the grounds of a local high school, encircled by high school buildings, with no access for the public. It was the Confucius Temple in the city of Jingzhou, an ancient river town in Hubei Province. Not far from the major metropolitan city of Wuhan, situated right

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figure 7.3 Wujiang

on the Yangzi River, Jingzhou has historically been an important port, with its name appearing in well-known classical poems and essays. Rebuilt several times in history, its most recent major renovation was in the 18th century, during the Kangxi reign of the Qing Dynasty. It became a grand complex, with a large stone pond in from of the Dancheng Hall, connected by three stone bridges. The bridge in the middle had the images of dragon and phoenix, the symbols of imperial power, carved on its footpath. Tradition dictated that only the ones who had won the highest honor in civil examination (狀元) may step on this step when they returned to Jingzhou to venerate Confucius. Although Hubei Province had about 78 Confucius temples at the end of the imperial period, today only 20 have survived, according to the National Association of Confucius Temples. And most of them are not fully intact. In the Jingzhou Confucius Temple, the bridges, along with the pond, had long disappeared. Today only the Dancheng Hall has survived, a great structure through which one could imagine the original grandeur of the temple complex. Even though it is also on the list of provincial level cultural heritage sites, the temple is not yet a tourist site. The Dancheng Hall, 大成殿, is right in the center of the enclosed compound of the High School Affiliated with Changjiang University (長江大學附屬中學), facing a large athletic field for students. On

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the day of my visit, there was a soccer game going on right in front of the temple, as well as other athletic activities. No one seems to pay any attention to the majestic, well-preserved Qing Dynasty structure right in the center of the campus. The great doors of the Dancheng Hall were firmly closed, with no light coming through the windows. 10

Conclusion: The Importance of the Local Ritual Ecology

If we examine the most frequently seen rituals performed by individuals in Confucius temples today, it would not surprise us to find that many are commonly shared practices in other sacred sites, such as Buddhist and Daoist temples. What affects the density of ritual life in a given Confucius temple is not how many unique rituals there are, but how many common rituals are available to the people who visit the temple. Indeed, I believe that the density of ritual life in a given Confucius temple is more about the temple’s physical position in the local temple ecology. This ecological location of the temple, especially its relation to other sacred sites within walking distance, is crucial to the vitality of its ritual life. In other words, the general level of saturation of rituals in a region or city has a crucial impact on the level of ritual density in a given temple. Compared to people in Northern cities such as Beijing and Tianjin, people in Southern cities such as Shanghai, Nanjing, and Foshan tend to follow seasonal ancestral rites more regularly and to practice rituals in Buddhist, Daoist, or other local temples more frequently. This could be due to many factors, including the political climate (for instance, Beijing as a capital city has a higher degree of regulation of ritual activities in temples than provincial cities such as Nanjing or Foshan); the historical richness of temple life in a region; and the support of different groups in the rebuilding of Buddhist, Daoist, and ancestral temples in the past 30 years (for example, certain regions receive more donations from lineage groups for the rebuilding of ancestral temples than others). It is not an overstatement to say that the rituals performed in Confucius temples can be seen as expressions of the shared repertoire of ritual habitus of the people from the same region. In Figure 4, we can easily draw connections between most of the rituals performed in Confucius temples today with rituals performed in other ritual sites, mostly Buddhist or Daoist temples. What differs from region to region is not necessarily the lack of a specific ritual, since most of the rituals in this chart are shared across regions and religious traditions. What differs is the intensity or frequency of ritual activities and the configurations or combinations of ritual acts. For example, we see more

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kneeling in prayer

bringing objects as sacrifice

writing prayer cards

burning incense

returning to offer thanks donating money

rituals in Confucius temples

other rituals

figure 7.4 Confucius temples share a ritual habitus with rituals performed in other ritual sites.

ritual habitus from this chart being practiced in the Nanjing Confucius Temple, in terms of higher frequency and richer and more diverse configuration, compared with what we see in the Beijing Confucius Temple. In other words, the general level of saturation of rituals in a region, a city, and a neighborhood has a crucial impact on the level of ritual density in a given temple. One question that might be raised about the linked ecological understanding of ritual life is the issue of agency. Are we allowing room for agency in our depiction of the ecological structure of both temple ecology and ritual ecology? The answer is an unequivocal “Yes.” What we are outlining here are the systems of conditions of practice in religious life. Human agency is central to any form of ritual, and an analytical account of the systems of conditions of practice does not take away the centrality of freedom and creativity in religious activities.20 In fact, to acknowledge the complexity of such systems helps us see better the broad range of possibilities of human actions. To draw a metaphor from nature, if we were to study a lake as an ecological system, we would have a good understanding of how the vegetation, the fish, and the birds are, in their complex interactions, at once interdependent on one another and in 20  Another question that might be raised is whether we need to separate “sincere” ritual practice from lesser forms, such as religious tourism. I have addressed these issues indepth elsewhere; see Anna Sun, “A Sociological Consideration of Prayer and Agency,” Special Issue on Social Performance Studies in The Drama Review 60 (4) (2016): 118–129.

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competition with one another. But such an approach would not take away neither the beauty of individual bird songs, nor the enchantment of the sight of a golden spruce tree. Another question naturally arises: If the ritual life in Confucius temples is so porous, varied, and fluid as if it were coral reefs in the ocean that is the Chinese ritual ecosystem, then in what ways can we still speak of these rituals as “Confucian”? In “Spirits and the Soul in Confucian Ritual Discourse,” Thomas Wilson sets out to answer a similarly difficult question: “In spite of their reputation for reticence on matters of spirits, Confucian officials nonetheless performed sacrifices to spirits throughout imperial times until the early twentieth century. The emperor, court ministers, and civil officials followed a strict calendar of rites devoted to scores of gods and spirits at altars and temples in the capital and throughout the empire”.21 How did the Confucians resolve the problem of reconciling the long-standing practice of “the imperial cults and ancestor veneration” with classical Confucian sources? Wilson argues that the classical Confucian sources indeed provide a solid foundation for guiding later ritual practices. He shows through extensive historical analysis that, although “Confucians held no monopoly on rites to spirits and ancestors,” “their insistence upon adherence to particular canonical authority as promulgated by the court in their ritual practices distinguishes their ritual procedures from Daoist and popular forms of veneration, even though they arguably shared the ideas about the nature about spirits and the soul” (186). In other words, it is not necessarily the ideas about spirits and souls that are uniquely Confucian, but rather the emphasis on “adherence to particular canonical authority.” It remains to be seen whether the revival of ritual practice in Confucius temples today may eventually follow “canonical authorities” again, in the present case, by those Confucian scholars who promote the revival of Confucianism as a religion, and whom I have called “Confucianist activists.” There is some evidence of interactions between scholars of classical Confucianism and the revival of rituals in Confucius temples in recent years. But as we have seen, Confucius temples are sites beholden to and affected by many other forces as well, from political to economic, from cultural to ritual. The continuity of the transmission of what is seen by some as “authentically Confucian” rites in this context may seem tenuous at times, but it should be emphasized that, as long as there are rituals taking place in sacred sites 21  Thomas Wilson, “Spirits and the Soul in Confucian Ritual Discourse,” Journal of Chinese Religions 42 (2) (2014): 185–212.

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dedicated to Confucius, we should recognize the rituals as fully Confucian, no matter how different they may seem to be from the distant past. It also remains to be seen whether, in the long term, ancestral rites, or “rites to spirits and ancestors,” might again become the most important and prevalent Confucian practice for ordinary people in Chinese society. In my recent fieldwork on prayer life in urban China, I have observed a great recovery as well as an opulent reinvention of rituals related to the spirits of deceased family members, at graveside and in homes or shrines. The return to ancestral rites since the 1980s is another great continuity of traditional Confucian practice, a further deepening of the revival to which this volume bears witness.

chapter 8

Rites Bridging the Ancient and Modern: The Revival of Offerings at Urban Ancestral Temples Chen Bisheng In Confucian thought, of all the rites, the greatest importance is attached to sacrificial offerings ( jili 祭禮). Making offerings to ancestors is a moral act by children and grandchildren paying a debt of gratitude to their forebears by carrying out these posthumous rites, as well as a collective activity paying respect to the lineage and affirming the moral principles of social relations. In terms of the former, the individual’s demonstration of filial piety to his forbears is the source of human kindness, as in The Analects (Xu’er): “Filial piety and fraternal submission—are they not the root of all benevolent actions?” As regards the latter, family and lineage offerings are related to an understanding of political organization, social structure and interpersonal relations. Therefore, the form of sacrificial rites in ancient times was not only emotional-moral, but also ethical-political. In the century of changes attached to China’s social modernization, traditional culture, especially Confucian culture, has deteriorated and become almost moribund. In modern China, the disintegration of lineages and social transformation have resulted in ancestor worship steadily declining, and in many localities disappearing altogether. Around the year 2000, however, in a Chinese society far removed from its own traditions, there emerged a spontaneous popular revival of traditional culture, expressed chiefly in activities such as children learning the Confucian classics, a national studies (guoxue) craze, etc.; and academic research and education have been attaching increasing importance to traditional culture, especially the Confucian classics. The popular reversion to tradition is displayed in many aspects. In areas of the coastal southeast, where lineage culture is relatively developed, the rebuilding of ancestral halls and the reemergence of communal offerings to the gods and ancestors has become a very typical cultural phenomenon. Changes to the social environment have led to the function of ancestral halls and forms of worship to demonstrate their significance in ways that are neither ancient nor modern. I undertook a five-year survey of three ancestral halls in the central Chaoyang District of Shantou City, and will now observe the significance of worship activities in these three ancestral halls in the rebuilding of

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lineages and society today, with a special focus on the Xiao lineage’s Sixu (Four Seasons) Hall. 1

The Rebuilding of Ancestral Halls and the “Modernization” of Their Identity

Chaoyang is located on the southeastern coast of Guangdong Province under the jurisdiction of Shantou, and is a famous hometown of overseas Chinese. Since being established as a county under the Jin dynasty, Chaoyang has gone through many changes. It had been under the jurisdiction of Chaozhou Prefecture since ancient times, but in 1993 the county became a city until 2003. At that time, the city status was abandoned and Chaoyang was divided up into Chaoyang District and Chaonan District and put under the jurisdiction of Shantou City. Ever since the Song Dynasty Prime Minister Chen Yaozuo wrote his poem “Seeing Off Wang Sheng on Passing the Imperial Examination and Returning to Chaoyang,” containing the line “The seaside homeland of Mencius and Confucius is Chaoyang,” Chaoyang has been known as the “seaside homeland of Mencius and Confucius.” From the Song dynasty onward, with the flourishing of neo-Confucianism, the cultural heartland moved southward, and Ming dynasty gazetteers explicitly referred to Chaoyang’s flourishing cultural treasures and gradual association with the Central Plains. The Jiajing era (1522–1566) Chaozhou Provincial Gazetteer spoke thus of customs in Chaozhou at the time: The rise of the Ming dynasty brought massive cultural development. As scholars-literati became acquainted with Neo-Confucianism, customs changed dramatically. Rites for capping, marriage, death and sacrifices were largely guided by the rules in Zhu Xi’s Family Rites and people regarded the area as the “seaside homeland of Confucius and Mencius.” … When people erected buildings, they first had to go to the ancestral hall; They emphasized patrilinear lines of descent, made sure that families without son could adopt one, paid attention to common lands of the lineages. In all families, people read the Book of Songs and the Book of History, and the sound of their recitation and singing echoed throughout the land. Thus it stood out as the most civilized place in the Guangdong region. It can be seen that in the Ming dynasty’s Jiajing period, Chaozhou’s literati class was already building ancestral halls and performing family rites. During the Ming’s Longqing period (1567–1573), a resident of that district, Lin

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Dachun, revised the Chaoyang County Gazetteer and in its “Biography of Zheng Nansheng” commented: Even though our Chaozhou, since ancient times had been known as another homeland of Mencius and Confucius, where veneration of Confucius was flourishing and refined, it is under the Neo-Confucianism of the Song dynasty that it dedicated itself to orthodoxy and became outstanding as a prefecture of Confucian masters, and this began with the teachers Zheng and Guo. Due to the efforts of these two gentlemen, the people of Chaozhou still today follow Zhu Xi’s Family Rites and the descent line system set by Guo Shuyun.1 “Zheng” refers to Chaoyang’s Zheng Nansheng (鄭南升) and “Guo” refers to Jieyang’s Guo Shuyun (郭叔雲), who were followers of Zhu Xi during the Southern Song’s Shaoxi period. In “Biography of Zhang Huan,” Lin Dachun writes, “The Confucian teaching of rites (lijiao 禮教) is gradually falling into decrepitude. [Zhang] Huan declared that Duke Wen’s four rites would bring enlightened transformation to his hometown, and transform local customs.”2 Zhang Huan lived during the late Song and early Yuan dynasties, and his tomb is on Lianhua Peak in Haimen, Chaoyang. Zhu Xi’s Family Rites called for an ancestral hall system with rites for capping, marriage, funerals and sacrifices, and the Chaozhou Prefecture Gazetteer and the Chaoyang County Gazetteer both particularly emphasized how the literati of Chaoyang-Shantou region from the Song dynasty onward engaged in the widespread construction of ancestral halls and performance of the Four Rites. Furthermore, from the Song dynasty onward, many people from the Central Plains migrated to the Chaoyang-Shantou region, and Chaozhou lineage genealogies remain complete and credible to the present day. After moving and settling here, these migrants procreated and gradually formed lineages. The Ming dynasty imperial court allowed ordinary people to build ancestral temples for the worship of these founding local ancestors. Zhu Xi’s Family Rites satisfied the needs of people from the same lineage congregating in one place and constructing lineage communities. It can be said that Zhu Xi’s termination of ancient rites and creation of Family Rites had a practical significance in the enculturation of the Chaoyang-Shantou Region. 1  Lin Dachun 林大春, Chaoyang xianzhi 朝陽县志, Vol. 12, Collected in Tianyi Pavilion, Shanghai Antiquarian Bookshop, photocopied in 1963. TN: Guo Shuyun was a Song dynasty neo-Confucian. 2  Lin Dachun 林大春, ibid.

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figure 8.1 The Xiao lineage Sixu Hall in an urban residential area © Chen Bisheng

The present-day Chaoyang city center has three rather large ancestral halls: the Xiao lineage’s Sixu (Four Seasons) Hall, the Zheng lineage’s Kong An Hall and the Yao lineage’s Dazong (Great Ancestral) Hall. From 1949 onward, these three ancestral halls, like almost all rural ancestral halls, ceased offerings and had their shrines for ancestral tablets demolished, and the rebuilt main halls were converted into school buildings. Following Reform and Opening, with the urbanization of Chaoyang, the former sites of these three ancestral halls vanished among the residential and commercial districts; lineage members whose homes were centered around these ancestral halls long ago dispersed throughout the city, and many of them migrated to other cities, resulting in the thorough dismantlement of the traditional grouping of lineage members in the same residential area with the ancestral hall at the core. It could be said that the Smashing of the Four Olds and the Cultural Revolution in the first 30 years after 1949, followed by urbanization in the next 30 years, led to the almost complete disintegration of traditional society. The social structure in which members of a given lineage all lived in one locality completely disappeared, accompanied by the collapse of lineages and the atomization of individuals. In theory, there should have been no possibility of vehicles of lineage culture such as ancestral halls being rebuilt. However, starting in the twenty-first century, in southeastern coastal areas with a deeper

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foundation of lineage culture, lineage activities that had been lying low for more than 50 years began to emerge again. In the last ten years or so, ancestral halls in many towns and villages of the Chaoyang region have come into their own again and have resumed ancestor worship. Many villages in the Chaoyang Region inhabited by clans sharing the same surname have not only rebuilt ancestral halls and resumed ancestor worship, but have also appointed groups of elderly people to manage the ancestral halls and decide on various matters such as the annual parading (youshen 遊神) and worship of the gods. In some relatively prosperous villages, these “elder groups” even play the role of collecting donations and arranging for the building and repair of roads and bridges and even local public security. In the Chaoyang urban area, the Xiao lineage’s Sixu Hall, the Zheng lineage’s Kong An Hall and the Yao lineage’s Dazong Hall have one-by-one reverted to the possession of their lineage members and ancestor worship activities have been relaunched. The process of these three ancestral halls being recovered and rebuilt has been full of twists and turns, and their character and functions are very different from those of traditional ancestral halls. Their specific situations are summarized in the table below: table 8.1 Situations of three ancestral halls Name

Founding local ancestor Status before rebuilding Rebuilding method Year of rebuilding Classification

Sixu Hall

Kong An Hall

Yao Dazong Hall

四序堂

孔安堂

姚氏大宗祠

Song, Xiao Xun

Song, Zheng Nansheng

Ming dynasty

City primary school

Overseas Chinese reclaimed ancestral property through the Office of Taiwan Affairs and the United Front Department 2006 2009 2011 1. Shantou City cultural 1. Shantou City 1. Guangdong objects preservation unit cultural objects Province cultural 2. Chaoyang Yao Lineage preservation unit objects preservation Association Headquarters 2. Chaoyang Zheng unit 3. Former location of Lineage Association 2. Chaoyang Xiao Association of Chaoyang Headquarters Lineage Association Young Comrades Headquarters Resisting Japan and 3. private nonSaving the Nation enterprise unit

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These three ancestral halls are all in the busy downtown area of Chaoyang City. After 1949, they were all nationalized and became primary schools. In each case, the lineage’s reclaiming of the ancestral hall and reestablishment of ancestral worship required a lengthy process. Chaoyang is famous as the hometown of many overseas Chinese. Since ancient times, many residents of this locality went overseas to earn a living, and particularly during the mass exodus after 1949, many fled to Hong Kong. Many of those who left the locality rose to fame and fortune overseas, and after 1979, when China began implementing its policy of Reform and Opening and invited outside investment, many of these overseas Chinese took the opportunity to return to their hometowns. In the context of the economic development of the 1990s, both local people and overseas Chinese felt the need to rebuild ancestral halls. However, because land had been nationalized, and the old sites of ancestral halls had become primary school buildings, there was no way for lineages to reclaim their ancestral possessions. Overseas Chinese and local lineage members thought of a new breakthrough point, which was to have the ancestral hall classified as a “cultural object.” The aforementioned three ancestral halls all have relatively long histories. Among them, the origin of the Xiao clan’s Sixu Hall is recorded thus in the lineage records: In the first year of the Southern Song’s Qingyuan period (1195), Xiao Xun, the top scholar3 in Zhangzhou, Fujian Province, the grandson of Longtuge scholar Xiao Guoliang, and the son of Xiao Yu, a successful candidate in the highest imperial examination and a Grand Master for court discussion (chaoyi dafu 朝儀大夫), passed the provincial-level imperial examination for Mingjing, and was appointed county magistrate of Chaoyang … After nine years in office, in the fourth year of the Jiatai reign (1204), the county’s people repaid the favor he bestowed on them by constructing a temple (shengci 生祠)4 in his honor. In the third year of the Kaixi reign (1207), Xiao Xun submitted his resignation due to age, and the county’s people sincerely entreated him to stay and make Chaoyang’s Nancheng his home, thus paving the way for Chaoyang City to become the home of the Xiao clan. After Xun retired, the temple dedicated to him operated a village school called Sixu Hall, engaged in education and the fostering of talent.5 3  Zhuangyuan (狀元): title conferred on the scholar who came first in the highest imperial examination. 4  Temple to a living person 5  Xiao shi zupu 簫氏族譜, 84.

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figure 8.2 Confucius shrine. In the past, the Sixu hall encompassed a school or sishu (私塾) and Confucius worship was also performed. A shrine to honor Confucius has been reconstructed in today’s ancestral hall. © Chen Bisheng

Xiao Xun named his school the Sixu or Four Seasons Hall, adopting the name from the Zhou Yi Ching stating, “The great man is he who is in harmony, in his attributes, with heaven and earth; in his brightness, with the sun and moon; in his orderly procedure, with the four seasons; and in his relation to what is fortunate and what is calamitous, in harmony with the spirit-like operations (of Providence).”6 Examining the Sixu Hall’s extant stone inscriptions, there is a quote from Jiang Xin’s book Chaoyang Xiao Lineage Ancestral Temple Record, dating from the Ming dynasty’s Hongzhi period (1470–1505), which states, “During the Song dynasty, the top scorer in the palace examination, Guoliang, was appointed governor of Zhangzhou. His son Yu was appointed Bureau director of a Left office (zuosi langzhong 左司郎中), and his grandson Xun was appointed county magistrate of Chaoyang and settled in Chaoyang.” There is also a stone engraving from the Ming dynasty Chenghua period by Xiao Xuan, another descendent of Zhangzhou’s Xiao Guoliang, stating, “Although many 6  T N: This is the James Legge translation.

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years have passed, the genealogy has never been unclear,” which shows that the Xiao clan genealogy is largely accurate. Regarding the other two ancestral halls, the Zheng clan’s Kong An Hall traces its origins back to Zheng Nansheng, a disciple of Zhu Xi during the Southern Song dynasty. An engraved stone outside the hall states: During the Southern Song’s Shaoxi period, Zhu Xi initiated expounding on the orthodox teachings of Confucianism in the southeast. The local scholar Zheng Nansheng and Guo Shuyun from Jieyang concentrated on studying Confucian and Mencian philosophy and became known for placing high on the list of successful examination candidates, returning to their hometown after finishing their studies. A city resident and imperial tutor, Zheng Kaixian, built a guesthouse in Miancheng’s west gate for them to give lectures, called Kong An Hall. During the reign of Baoyou (1253–1258) during the Song dynasty’s Lizong period (1205–1264), Zheng Kaixian’s son, Zheng Cizhen, who was prefectural magistrate of Kuizhou and Junzhou and also in charge of military affairs, rebuilt Kong An Hall with three halls and two courtyards, two corridors and a gate decorated with the green dragon and white tiger.7 He also added a large front yard and a screen wall. He called this new building the Zheng lineage ritual Memorial Hall. He then had the lineage’s ancestors of official rank moved to the Kong An Hall for worship, and changed its name to the Zheng Clan Ancestral Temple, while still using it for lectures. As for the Yao Lineage Dazong Temple, its history can be traced back to the memorializing of Chaoyang County Magistrate Yao Ding, who followed Wen Tianxiang (1236–1282) in resisting the Yuan. It would be altogether impossible for local people to apply to the local government to reclaim an ancestral hall as a “cultural object.” The three clans therefore reclaimed their ancestral property in the name of overseas relatives, bypassing the local government and going straight to the State Council’s Office of Taiwan Affairs and United Front Department and other state organs to seek assistance. Only then could the ancestral halls be returned to the management of the lineages. The main reason that the three ancestral halls were reclaimed with relative ease was that their histories were very long, and the lineages could submit their applications in the form of “cultural object preservation units,” which then became the primary status of the ancestral halls. This status determined that the ancestral halls were not merely venues for 7  T N: Symbols and guardian spirits of the east/spring and west/autumn, respectively.

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lineages activities, but also tourism venues for the Chaoyang area. In order to solve the problem of replacing the primary school once the ancestral hall was reclaimed, the Xiao lineage raised funds to build a new “Xiaoshi Sixu School” next to the ancestral hall. The second status of the ancestral halls is as “lineage association headquarters” for the three lineages. The lineage association headquarters govern the three domestic lineage associations while liaising regularly with their respective lineage associations overseas. Taking the Xiao lineage Sixu Hall as an example, in the year 2000, the Sixu Hall conducted a census of Xiao Xun’s descendents in all cities and counties and determined that they were scattered among more than 100 villages. After taking residence in Chaoyang, Xiao Xun moved his ancestors there for worship at the Sixu Hall, and his descendents in these various villages also have local ancestral halls for worshiping their ancestors. Each place is therefore a branch of Xiao Xun’s lineage, and the Sixu Hall is considered the main ancestral hall, while local ancestral halls serve as branch halls. In this way, the establishment of one urban ancestral hall as the headquarters and village ancestral halls as branch halls forms an enormous lineage network. In terms of external relations, the lineage association headquarters places particular emphasis on liaising with lineage members in other localities and overseas. In April 2010, the Chaoyang Xiao Lineage Sixu Hall Lineage Association Headquarters hosted the “Seventh Global Xiao Lineage Reunion,” attended by representatives of Xiao lineage associations from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and elsewhere. Such reunions of lineage representatives are mainly geared toward overseas Chinese and are conducted once every few years, with the lineage associations of different localities and countries taking turns to host the reunion. This is undoubtedly extremely significant in terms of affirming a sense of belonging among overseas Chinese and strengthening relations between residents of the coastal region and those overseas, especially in Southeast Asian countries. Furthermore, how the ancestral halls should be designated within the Chinese administrative system is a question that never existed previously. In terms of the Chaoyang area ancestral halls, their functions include aspects of cultural object preservation, ancestor worship and charitable undertakings, each of which has its own supervisory department. The Xiao lineage Sixu Hall made a groundbreaking attempt to register as a “private non-enterprise unit” under the Ministry of Civil Affairs. In 1998, the State Council promulgated its Interim Regulations on Registration Administration of Private Non-enterprise Units, in which Chapter 1, Article 2 states, “Private non-enterprise units referred to in these Regulations are defined as social organizations which are established by enterprises, institutions, associations or other civic entities as well

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as individual citizens using non-state assets and conduct not-for-profit social service activities.”8 Because ancestral halls engage in raising donations, collection of fees for lineage members to install memorial tablets for their ancestors and other such fund-raising activities, they require a legal organizational status in order to avoid potential trouble. After the Sixu Hall resumed operations, it devoted its energies to applying for registration as a “private non-enterprise unit,” and in January 2011, the Shantou City Chaoyang District Bureau of Civil Affairs approved the Sixu Hall’s application in Document No. 26, “Official Reply Approving the Registration of the Shantou City Chaoyang District Sixu Hall Cultural Preservation Management Office.”9 In this way, the urban ancestral hall became an independent legal entity. The social foundation for the establishment of a traditional ancestral hall was based on a lineage group living in the same location, and with the disintegration of this social foundation, the rebuilding of an ancestral hall requires a qualitative redefinition and partial transformation of function. In any case, the ancestral hall’s core function remains the worship of ancestors and the rebuilding of the lineage community. The main significance of rebuilding ancestral halls lies in the exploration of new ancestor worship activities and new means for bringing lineage members together under the practical conditions of modern life. 2

Ancestor Worship: From an Emphasis on the System of Differentiated Descent Lines10 (zongzi fa 宗子法) to the Implementation of Lineage Organizations ( jiazu zhi 家族制)

In order to understand the significance of ancestor worship in modern ancestral halls, it is necessary to see it in the context of the lineage system and the historical development of the ancestral hall. The practice of ancestor worship in ancestral halls (citang 祠堂 or zongmiao 宗廟) can be roughly divided into three stages. The first stage was worship during the Three Dynasties era. The most thorough temple system is stipulated in the Book of Rites: Wang Zhi: The ancestral temple of the Son of Heaven had seven fanes (or smaller temples); the temple of a prince of a state had five fanes, senior officers had three fanes, and ordinary officers only one, while the common people presented their offerings in 8  TN: As translated at: http://www.lawinfochina.com/display.aspx?lib=law&id=14549&CGid=. 9  Shantou City Chaoyang District Civil Affairs Bureau Document No. 26 (2011). 10  EN: we borrow this translation of zongzi fa from Patricia Ebrey.

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their own homes. Thus the classic records that ancestral halls were constructed by all the nobility but were not expected of ordinary people in accordance with the principle that “Rites do not extend to the common people.” The second stage was the system of ancestral halls designed by Song Dynasty neo-Confucianism, which was aimed at reconstructing lineages. From the Northern Song period revival of the differentiated descent-line system (zongzi fa), which initiated the gentry’s lineage-based ancestor worship, Fan Zhongyan 范仲淹 (989–1052)11 established the Fan Clan Charitable Farmstead, and Sima Guang 司馬光 (1019–1086) wrote Writing on Rituals (Shu Yi), showing that various major Confucian scholars pondered the same question, which was how to rebuild society. Up until the Southern Song, when Zhu Xi 朱熹 carried forward Writing on Rituals through his Family Rites (Jia Li), the fundamental pattern of ancestral halls and ancestor worship was finally set, and it can even be said that Zhu Xi was the originator of the term “ancestral hall” (citang). The ancestral worship in ancestral halls designed by Zhu Xi was originally intended to revive small lineages (xiaozong 小宗), as manifested chiefly in the fact that Zhu Xi’s didn’t design worship around the lineage’s earliest ancestor. According to Zhu Xi’s plan, only gentry who became officials could establish family shrines (jiamiao 家廟, i.e., ancestral halls: citang) for the worship of four generations of ancestors, from great-great grandfather to father (gao 高, zeng 曾, zu 祖, fu 父). In the placing of memorial tablets as stipulated in Family Rites, Zhu Xi states: “Have four niches (kan 龕) for offerings to ancestral tablets.” He provides the additional annotation: “Inside the ancestral hall on the northern shelf have four niches, with one tablet placed in each. Great lineages and small lineages descended from the same great-great grandfather (gaozu) place the great-great grandfather to the west, the great-grandfather (zengzu) second to him, the grandfather (zu) next, and then the father (fu).”12 The Ming dynasty work Family Rites and Etiquette by Qiu Jun (1421–1495) drew a diagram based on Zhu Xi’s stipulation.13 What should particularly be noted is that Zhu Xi held that it would be going too far to worship the founding ancestors, and he therefore designed the ancestral hall for the worship of only the most recent four generations of ancestors. Zhu Xi himself said: “A Great lineage system should not be established, but only a small lineage system for worshipping as far back as the gaozu

11  Minister of the Northern Song who led a failed reform in 1043. 12  Zhu Xi 朱熹, “Jiali 家禮,” Zhuzi chuan shu 朱子全书, Vol. 7, 867. 13  Qiu Jun 邱濬, “Jiali yijie” 家禮儀節, in Qiu Wenzhuang Gong congshu 邱文莊公叢書 (Taipei: Qiu Wenzhang Gong congshu jinyin weiyuanhui: 1972), 4.

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figure 8.3 Qiu Jun’s diagram based on Zhu Xi’s stipulation in the Ming Dynasty work Family Rites and Etiquettes © Chen Bisheng

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(great-great grandfather).”14 Worship of the founding ancestor would involve the entire lineage under the management of the eldest son in the most direct patrilineal line of descent (lineage heir, zongzi 宗子). But if only the four preceding generations of a “gentleman” (junzi 君子) were worshipped, it would involve only lineage members within those four generations, and would be carried out under the management of the “gentleman” who, under these circumstances, would play the role of the lineage heir. Consequently, Zhu Xi’s ancestor worship served the objective of respecting the patrilineal line (jingzhong 敬宗), but because it didn’t involve worship of the founding ancestor and other ancestors beyond the fourth generation, it would not result in the formation of large lineages, and thus could be said to greatly reduce the aspect of “aggregating the lineage” (shouzu 收族). Zhu Xi’s Family Rites are in fact rites for officials and literati but not for ordinary people. But it is also necessary to observe that Chinese society in the Song dynasty was different from the subsequent Ming and Qing dynasties, with massive migration and significant population increase. In the absence of natural villages formed by people of the same lineages living together, it was extremely difficult to aggregate the lineages. However, the development of lineages in the Ming and Qing dynasties led to the literati and officials of those periods breaking with Family Rites and proposing the worship of the founding ancestor, which led the third stage in the development of ancestral halls. The third stage was in the Ming dynasty’s Jiajing period (1507–1567), after Xia Yan 夏言 (1482–1548) memorialized the emperor (1530), and ancestor worship at ancestral halls spread throughout the southeastern coastal areas. This stage was aimed at building lineages. In his memorial to the emperor, Xia Yan instructed all subjects of the emperor to make sacrifices to their founding ancestor at the Winter Solstice, indicating: “When Zhu Xi compiled the Family Rites, he felt that offering sacrifices to the founding ancestor was overstepping authority, so he eradicated this activity. After that, neither scholars nor common people worshiped the founding ancestor.”15 He said that people should be allowed to worship their founding ancestor in ancestral halls. At the same time, he also proposed that all ministers and officials should build ancestral shrines. The direct result of worshiping the founding ancestor and the widespread construction of ancestral shrines was the proliferation of great lineages. Why would the worship of the first ancestor have such a major influence? The so-called “founding ancestor” means the first ancestor that had moved to a 14  Li Jingde 黎靖德, ed., “Zhuzi yulei” 朱子語類, Zhuzi chuan shu 朱子全書, Vol. 14, 867. 15  Xia Yan 夏言, “Xia Guizhou xiansheng wenji” 夏桂洲先生文集, in Xuxiu Siku Quanshu 續修四庫全書 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2002), Vol. 14:528.

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specific location, which would make that ancestor the sole common ancestor of all lineage members in that locality. After the Ming dynasty, it became common to worship the founding local ancestor in ancestral halls, as illustrated by the example of the Wu lineage in Quhuali Mingzhou Village, Yurui Town, Xiuning County, Huizhou Prefecture (Anhui), during the Qing dynasty. Wu Zhai’s compilation of the Family Dictionary of the Wu lineage of Mingzhou, which describes itself as the rites for that lineage and “ceremonies complying with Duke Wen’s Family Rites,” provides a diagram for offerings in the ancestral hall (see figure 8.3).16 At that time, the founding ancestor of the Mingzhou Wu lineage was “Xiao Po,” who originated from Longtan and was the ancestor of many branches of the Wu lineage. In Mingzhou Village, the earliest local ancestor was Xiao Po’s descendant, “Rong Qi Gong” (Rong, Seventh Grandfather 荣七公). The Family Cannon held that Rong Qi Gong should be considered the founding ancestor, and installed his ancestral tablet in the ancestral hall. In order to cover the other Wu branches, they also established a shrine at the tomb of Xiao Po. In this way, the lineage established a pure patrilineal lineage village worshiping a single founding ancestor. In contrast, the ancestor hall ancestor worship designed by Zhu Xi to only worship four generations emphasizes the role of the main male descendant within a limited group, and highlights a system of differentiated descent lines (zongzi fa 宗子之法) that is aimed at molding a gentry culture (shifadu wenhua 士大夫文化). As implemented according to Zhu Xi’s Family Rites, it can revive lineages (zongzu 宗族) but cannot lead to the formation of “large lineages” (dajiazu 大家族). But in the Ming and Qing dynasties, the lineage (jiazu) was already the natural fundamental unit of the social structure of the southeastern coastal region, which necessarily proceeded from molding a lineage (zongzu) toward molding an “extended lineage” (dajiazu). The large lineage system (dajiazu zhi 大家族制) didn’t necessarily require establish a lineage heir (zongzi) or a system of classical descent group (zongfa), but it required establishing a lineage head (zuzhang 族長). In the early Qing dynasty, Guangdong scholar Qu Dajun 屈大均 described the lineage and family (zongzu, jiazu) structures of the Guangzhou region at that time as follows:

16  Wu Zhai 吴翟, Mingzhou Wu shi jiadian 茗洲吴氏家典 (Hefei: Huangshan shushe, 2006), 47. Editor’s note: The situation of the Wu lineage has already been studied. See Keith Hazelton, “Patrilines and the Development of Localized Lineages: The Wu of Hsiuning City, Hui-chou, to 1528,” in Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China (1000–1940), eds. Patricia Ebrey and James Watson (Taipei: SMC publishing), 137–168.

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figure 8.4 Diagram for offerings in the ancestral hall in Wu Zhai’s compilation of the Family Dictionary of the Wu lineage of Mingzhou © Chen Bisheng

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The famous lineages of Lingnan flourished in Guangzhou and, at their peak, also in rural areas. The soil was fertile and people many, with one, or sometimes two or three surnames per village. Since the Tang and Song dynasties, they had peacefully enjoyed their settlements and their customs and very rarely moved elsewhere. The ancestors of the greater and smaller lineages all have ancestral halls and with successive renovations each of these halls is more magnificent than the other. Every lineage of more than 1,000 members has dozens of ancestral halls, and the minor surnames and isolated families of less than 100 also have several ancestral halls. The ancestral hall of so-called great lineages is called temple of the founding ancestor. Ordinary people have shrines to the founding ancestor, where they honor the ancestors with offerings and gather the lineage together, thus displaying filial piety and benevolence … Today the lineage system focusing on the lineage heir—i.e the system of differentiated descent lines (zongzi zhi zhi 宗子之制)—cannot be restored. People today have only a general sense of the lineage [mainly understood as an organized group of agnates], but not of a direct descent line (有 族而無宗). Because the zong or direct descent line was abandoned, people find it more appropriate to emphasize the zu 族, that is, the group of agnates. When a group of agnates becomes scattered, restoring ancestral halls became more important, for with an ancestral hall, the later generations have a place where they belong and somewhere to root their family. And the practice of benevolence and filial piety grows here.17 With people [arriving from different places] and settling in one location, it was difficult to carry out the differentiated descent line system [emphasizing the role of the “zongzi,” that is, the lineage heir] but worshiping the common ancestor of the “large lineage” (dajiazu) helped them to “aggregate the lineage,” (shouzu) even though they could not respect the patrilineal line (jingzong 敬 宗). Furthermore, worshiping the founding local ancestor led China’s ordinary people to understand the importance of honoring ancestors with offerings and had a significant civilizing influence. At present, most of the Qing dynasty ancestral halls we see did not practice a system of differentiated descent line (zongfazhi), but a “family lineage organization” (jiazuzhi). The differentiated descent line requires giving special prominence to the status of the eldest son in the main line of descent, who offers sacrifices in ancestral halls to the four generations of gao, zeng, zu and fu. In villages with a single surname lineage, it is in fact inappropriate to particularly emphasize the status of the eldest son. 17  Qu Dajun 屈大均, Guangdong Xinyu 廣東新語 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2006), 464.

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For that reason, strictly speaking, ancestral halls opened “in the space of the people” (minjian) can only be used to “aggregate the lineage” rather than to honor the patrilineal line. The present three big ancestral halls in Chaoyang are all based on an extended lineage organizational system that does not emphasize the role of the eldest son in the main line of descent. The Xiao lineage’s Sixu Hall, for example, serves as the main ancestral hall for all people with the Xiao surname in Chaoyang to worship the ancestor Xiao Xun who first moved to this locality. This is how the shrine for ancestral tablets looks on the outside:

figure 8.5 Shrine for ancestral tablets in the Xiao lineage’s Sixu hall © Chen Bisheng

The shrine for the ancestral tablets is designed as follows for positioning the various generations of ancestors for worship: 18

18   Xiao shi zupu 簫氏族譜, 116.

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figure 8.6 Position of the ancestors’ tablets in the Sixu hall © Chen Bisheng

Among these ancestral tablets, there are seven spaces for the tablets of seventh generation ancestors, but none for the eighth generation or ninth generation, and one space for the tenth generation. This is because these tablets were originally enshrined in the Xiao clan branch ancestral halls in the Chaoyang county seat, and these ancestral halls were demolished after 1949 and not subsequently rebuilt, so the ancestral tablets of the founding local ancestors of those branch ancestral halls were brought into the main ancestral hall. At present, the management system for the Sixu Hall does not resemble a standard Law of Primogeniture with the eldest son as the core and main leader, and is also unlike the ancient system of the extended lineage under the leadership of a lineage head. Instead, the lineage established a “Lineage Association for the Xiao Lineage Sixu Hall in Chaoyang, Guangdong Province” to serve as the management organization for the ancestral hall’s day-to-day operations. The Association was established in 1995, with the positions of president and directors all held by relatively prominent members of the local Xiao lineage. The first president of the Association, Xiao Xinan, was born in Chaoyang and later moved to Hong Kong, making him an Overseas Chinese, and it was he who proposed resuming possession of the title for the Sixu Hall and applying for the status of a cultural object preservation unit. Why not require the lineage heir to play a central role for the organizational system of the ancestral hall? Sixu Hall director Xiao Zhihui explained it to me in 2013: The Xiao lineage in Chaoyang goes back many generations and has many members. Regarding the reestablishment of the ancestral hall, the lineage members held a meeting and decided not to establish a primogeniture system. In the past, some ancestral halls established primogeniture because the eldest son wanted absolute authority. Typically he was quite wealthy and rational in handling affairs, and could look out

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for the interests of everyone. But now Sixu Hall is a general ancestral hall, and establishing primogeniture would give prominence to one branch, which would not be conducive to harmony within the Xiao lineage. But we did establish the position of lineage head (zuzhang), which is held by the elderly person with the greatest seniority, and in ancestor worship, the highest ranking is that of clan head. But the management of the ancestral hall is the responsibility of the Lineage Association. Establishing a Lineage Association to manage the ancestral hall shows the “modernization” of the ancestral hall system. The earlier primogeniture system was aimed at respecting the patrilineal line and aggregating the lineage by giving prominence to the status of the eldest son in the main descent line. The lineage head (zuzhang zhi) system is a matter of electing the lineage member with the most natural authority in a place where the lineage is concentrated, and is aimed at managing the lineage’s internal affairs. At present, Chaoyang’s rural communities basically select an “elders’ committee” in a spirit originating in the “lineage head system” in order to manage the village’s worship and parading of the deities, and to collect funds to repair and build bridges and roads and other such general affairs. In urban life, establishing hereditary primogeniture is no longer meaningful in any way, and it is no longer possible for lineage members to all live in the same area. This has necessitated changing the management model in order to bring the lineage together again and establish a new great lineage community. The lineage association established for the Sixu Hall and other urban ancestral halls can be considered a systemic innovation in the traditional lineage system in modern society. It turns the lineage system into a modern legal entity and treats the lineage like a modern social organization, and it establishes a spiritual connection among the members of this social organization through worship at the ancestral hall. From the positioning of the niches in the Sixu Hall it can be seen that the Sixu Hall, as the general ancestral hall for the Chaoyang Xiao lineage, is the place of origin of the entire Chaoyang Xiao clan. Beginning with the local founding ancestor Xiao Xun, the sons and grandsons established ancestral halls in each village to worship their local founding ancestors, and these ancestral halls became branch halls under the Sixu Hall. The new edition of the Xiao Lineage Genealogy records that there are 105 branch halls under the Sixu Hall, spread throughout the cities, towns and villages of the Chaoyang and Hailufeng area. This has facilitated the formation of a network with the general ancestral hall as the main hall with branch halls under it. A common ancestor and common surname makes this network into an organism.

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Worship at the Sixu Hall has also involved a certain number of changes geared toward actual circumstances. Zhu Xi’s Family Rites called for offerings at the four seasons, marked by the second month of each season; furthermore, different generations of ancestors were worshipped at the Winter Solstice, the Beginning of Spring and the last month of autumn, and ancestors were honored on the anniversaries of their deaths. Worship at the Xiao clan’s Sixu Hall is also carried out at four times, namely the first day of the Lunar New Year, the 15th day of the first lunar month, the Spring Equinox and the Autumn Equinox. Since 2010, the ancestral halls have also responded to the custom among people in Chaoyang and Shantou to worship ancestors on Lunar New Year’s Eve by opening the shrines for worship on that morning. Compared with traditional ancestral hall worship, ancestor worship at Sixu Hall has two special characteristics: The first is its scattered and decentralized nature. In traditional offerings to the gods and ancestors, as in Zhu Xi’s Family Rites and other ancient books of clan rites, the rites are all loaded with specific details, while in modern urban ancestral halls, the sacrifices are managed by the lineage associations. The association’s board of directors prepares the various offerings, and first thing in the morning opens the main shrine of the main ancestral hall. Xiao lineage members from villages near the ancestral hall gather at the hall and separately burn incense and present offerings. The scattered and decentralized nature of worship at the ancestral hall shows that there is no unified assembly for worship, and also that there is no traditional, strict form of lineage rites. The second characteristic is its open nature. Traditional ancestral halls that emphasize the lineage heir system usually have the eldest son of the main descent line officiating, and the side branches don’t take part. But worship at the present ancestral halls is geared toward and open to all lineage members; its main purpose is to bring lineage members together, not to honor and thus respect the patrilineal line and the role of the lineage heir. This feature of the offerings is the main function of worship at ancestral halls, which has evolved into using the common ancestor to create a sense of togetherness and create bonds among lineage members. Those taking part in worship in the ancestral hall see displayed the honors that emperors throughout history have conferred on the most prominent of their ancestors, and the various engraved stones, etc., in the ancestral hall cause them to recall the history of their ancestors and their lineage, and to establish a sense of belonging through the shared memory of this history. When I was surveying ancestral

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halls in 2012, I asked one Xiao lineage member what effect the rebuilding of the ancestral hall had had on him, and he replied: The effect differs from person to person, but to me, the ancestral hall beckons me like my ancient home. Furthermore, it’s given me a better understanding of my lineage and a stronger feeling of identification. It can be said that worship in modern urban ancestral halls focused on a portion of urban residents with shared ancestors revives the concept of a “lineage” in a society made up of scattered atomized small families. It leads the individual to not only become acquainted with his family in a practical, everyday sense, but also, through worshiping ancestors, to know his origins and better understand his family and lineage. Furthermore, the founding local ancestors and forebears in the ancestral hall are prominent people in the city’s history; getting to know these eminences means learning about this history of the city. Consequently, the rebuilding of urban ancestral halls and the performance of worship activities, while not restoring ancient sacrificial rites—in fact, ancient sacrificial rites of course also evolved over time—or the patrilineal system’s Law of Primogeniture, has successfully revived consciousness of the “lineage” in urban life. 3

Temple Worship among Ordinary People

The Book of Rites: Wang Zhi states, “The common people presented their offerings in their (principal) apartment.”19 The Kong commentary states, “This offering is recommended if there is no temple.”20 Ordinary people did not build ancestral shrines, so they could only make offerings to their ancestors in the privacy of their homes. In worship at ancestral halls from the Song dynasty onward, the practice of primogeniture allowed only the eldest son in the primary descent line to make offerings to the four generations at the ancestral hall. Great lineages that didn’t practice primogeniture only accepted ancestral tablets of the founding local ancestor and of some other ancestors at the ancestral hall, and ordinary people could go to the ancestral hall to worship the founding local ancestor and other ancestors, but they could only worship their own

19  TN: As translated by James Legge. 20  Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (annotated), Kong Yingda 孔穎達 (commentary), “Liji Zhengyi” 禮記 正義, in Shisanjing zhushu 十三經注疏 (Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1987), 242.

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direct ancestors in their own homes. That is to say, from ancient times through to the present, ordinary people didn’t worship in temples. The Chaoyang-Shantou region was an outlying area, and when the Central Plains discontinued traditional rites, the outlying area retained remnants of them. It is a pervasive practice in the Chaoyang-Shantou region for ordinary people to make offerings in home shrines and at tombs. Offerings are made at home every year during the “eight festivals”: the Spring Festival, 15th day of the First Lunar Month, Qing Ming, Dragon Boat Festival, 15th day of the Seventh Lunar Month (Zhongyuan), the Mid-Autumn Festival, the Winter Solstice, and Lunar New Year’s Eve, as well as the death anniversaries of the three most recent generations of ancestors. At these times, ordinary people make offering to their ancestors at home, using incense burners in place of ancestor tablets, along with cooked food and joss paper (“paper money”). Worship at tombs occurs every year at the Qing Ming festival, when people go to village burial grounds to worship their own ancestors. However, in urban life, worship at home and at gravesites presents great challenges. In the case of worship at tombs and graves, for example, reforms relating to funerals and burials have resulted in some places not having enough burial space, and it can be anticipated that actual worship at graves will become increasingly difficult in the urban areas. Likewise, it is becoming increasingly difficult to worship at home in accordance with traditional methods. In the past 30 years, urban residents in the Chaoyang-Shantou region have tenaciously persisted in the customs of home worship. For example, in the region’s urban neighborhoods it is common to have special furnaces for burning joss paper, and local people who go elsewhere to work or live also purchase joss sticks, candles and joss paper so they can continue the practice of worshiping their ancestors in their new place of residence. With this in mind, the major ancestral halls of Chaoyang City have all opened new shrines where lineage members can leave the ancestral tablets of their own ancestors. The classic example is the Xiao lineage’s Sixu Hall: After it was reopened, the lineage association quickly set about opening several new halls in the ancestral hall’s side wings, known as Hongde Hall, Duben Hall, Yongmu Hall, Huaize Hall, Yiyuan Hall, Lianfang Hall, etc. The Huaize Hall appears in the figure 8.7.

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figure 8.7 One of the newly opened halls of the Xiao lineage’s Sixu hall © Chen Bisheng

Each of these new halls has three shrines, and each shrine has seven levels where ancestral tablets can be placed according to the order of the generations. Lineage members pay a set fee to place the ancestral tablets of their ancestors in the ancestral hall for worship. This is an innovation in the historical development of China’s ancestral halls: i.e., ordinary people can also worship in the ancestral hall. The reason for setting up this system was explained to me by Xiao Binghao and Xiao Zhihui from the lineage’s board of directors: In the past, the ancestral halls didn’t have side halls where people could place ancestral tablets, because in the past this wasn’t necessary; lineage members lived in the same locality, and each branch had its own ancestral hall. Now there are small neighborhoods all around the Sixu Hall, and most of their residents aren’t members of our lineage, so we needed to find a way to strengthen lineage members’ ties with the ancestral hall. The method of installing ancestral tablets actually allows lineage members to identify more strongly with the ancestral hall. Furthermore, having one main hall with eight side halls under it is like an eight-carrier sedan chair holding our common ancestors, and this also has a very good meaning.

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They made a point of telling me that placing ancestral tablets in side halls was a great departure from the past; formerly, concubines could not enter an ancestral temple, but with male-female equality, and with some lineage members descending from a concubine rather than a primary spouse and wishing the concubine’s descent to be allowed to enter the ancestral temple, this is now being allowed. An inspection of the ancestral tablets left in the care of the ancestral hall indicates that the majority are for the 25th, 26th or 27th generation of the Xiao clan, which means they are the most recent four generations of forbears of living lineage members. Furthermore, quite a few ancestral tablets are inscribed with names and have red cloth wrapped around them, and these are tablets that living individuals have prepared for themselves. The “Sixu Hall Multi-generation Remote Descendents and Ancestors Ancestral Niche Contract,” which the Sixu Hall signs with lineage members who leave ancestral tablets in the care of the ancestral hall, includes this clause: After an ancestor is enshrined, a memorial ceremony will be carried out in the ancestral temple four times every year: on the first day of the Lunar Year, on the 15th day of the first lunar month, at the Spring Equinox and at the Autumnal Equinox. [Note: Lunar New Year’s Eve was subsequently added for a fifth day of worship.] Those who desire additional offerings can make them on the public memorial days, but offerings cannot be made at the tablet niches at other times. The staff of the ancestral hall are responsible for coordinating the additional offerings. That is to say, lineage members first pay a set fee, and after the ancestral tablets are enshrined in the ancestral hall, the ancestral hall makes offerings to the ancestors five times per year, and also opens the wing shrines for offerings. On those open-shrine days, lineage members can bring their own offerings from home to worship their ancestors at the ancestral hall. In my survey, I found that whenever the ancestral hall opened the shrines, most lineage members who had left ancestral tablets in the care of the ancestral hall came to present additional offerings. In my survey carried out in 2012, I interviewed a Xiao lineage member who had recently enshrined his paternal grandfather’s ancestral tablet at the ancestral hall, and his response was quite representative: Q: Did your family enshrine an ancestral tablet in the ancestral hall? A: Yes, my grandfather’s ancestral tablet was enshrined in the temple several months ago.

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Q: After being enshrined in the temple, will the ancestral tablet be kept in the ancestral hall in perpetuity? A: Yes. But they first took a 20-year preservation fee. The ancestral hall will be responsible for performing worship rites four times a year. Q: People in the Chaoyang-Shantou region also worship their ancestors at home, so why did your family place an ancestral tablet in the ancestral hall? A: Because the ancestral hall is the best final resting place for relatives after they pass away. Placing the ancestral tablet in the ancestral hall is like returning the deceased ancestor to his big family. Also, there is limited space for placing ancestral tablets in the ancestral hall, and if we don’t do it now, there may not be space later. Q: So, now that the ancestral tablet is placed in the ancestral hall, do you still carry out worship during the “eight annual festivals” at home? A: Some people still have incense burners for making offerings to ancestors at home, so they worship at the ancestral hall and also at home. Some people worship less at home after enshrining their ancestral tablets, but I don’t think this is right. In fact, may people enshrine ancestral tablets at an ancestral hall but also continue worshiping at home. In the dialog above, the remark that “placing the ancestral tablet in the ancestral hall is like returning the deceased ancestor to a big family” is a very common viewpoint. In the customary conceptions of the Chaoyang-Shantou region, this kind of family-style worship allows children and grandchildren to sense that their forbears, although no longer present in this world, still exist in another world, and still exist in the life of their own lineage. In particular, the fact that many lineage members reserve a space for their memorial tablet in the ancestral hall is an even clearer indication that in an increasingly modern and rational society, the re-establishment of ancestral halls still tenaciously safeguards the traditional and customary understanding or imagination of the afterlife. At the same time, the fees the Xiao clan members pay for enshrining memorial tablets is the main source of income for the ancestral hall. There are three main sources of income for “urban ancestral halls.” One is contributions from lineage members; at the beginning of every year, the ancestral hall will call a meeting of the lineage association and appeal for donations from lineage members. The second is rent that the ancestral hall collects from commercial space it purchases, similar to the “sacrificial fields” ( jitian 祭田) owned by ancestral halls in ancient times. The third is from the sale of spaces for memorial tablets

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and the associated management fees. In terms of the income the Sixu Hall has drawn over the past three years for memorial tablet spaces, in 2010 it was 2,387,5000 yuan, in 2011 it was 2,439,400 yuan, and in 2012 it was 2,813,000 yuan. These funds constitute the main portion of the Sixu Hall’s income, and effectively cover the ancestral hall’s daily management expenses. 4

Epilogue: Ancestor Worship in Modern Society

In modern society, the question of whether ancestor worship can or should continue and how it can or should do so is an extremely important one. For ordinary people, worship activities directly determine the individual’s understanding of his relationship with his ancestors, as well as the individual’s imagination of the afterlife. The constant repetition of worship rites causes an individual to continuously affirm the relationship between his life and his departed ancestors; this is “repayment of a debt of gratitude.” Worship activities also cause a person to acknowledge his own mode of “existence” after death; related to ancestor worship is the worshipper’s acknowledgment and imagination of the afterlife. In the former instance, the individual regards himself in terms of his ancestors, and in the latter, the individual regards his life in terms of death; both aspects are crucial in molding the individual’s understanding of his own life. That’s why the sages placed particular emphasis on offerings when they established rites and ceremonies. However, the conditions required for sacrificial rites have made it difficult for rites to be carried out in the present as in the past. Changes in the social environment have led to the loss of space for worship activities. The present possible forms of worship consist of the following types: 1. Worship at graves. But because of reforms to funerals and burials, graves and tombs are gradually disappearing, and the grave worship that was carried out for more than a millennium has almost completely disappeared in the last century. Especially as cities have expanded into the countryside, there is no space for worship at graves and tombs. 2. Worship at temples. In the southeastern coastal region, the rebuilding of ancestral halls over the past ten years has led to a revival of temple worship to a certain extent, but temple worship is limited to ancestors. Furthermore, many regions that didn’t have lineages living together in one locality never had ancestral halls in the first place, so there is no possibility of the practice of temple worship becoming prevalent there. 3. Worship at home. The so-called “common people presenting their offerings in their (principal) apartment” is still carried out in some places,

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such as the Chaoyang-Shantou region, but the practice will never become popular in an urban setting. 4. Placing an ancestral tablet in a temple. In Guangzhou, Chaoyang and other such places, quite a few temples have opened special rooms providing space for local people to place ancestral tablets, and the temple recites classical scriptures and prayers on their behalf. However, this method is only a makeshift arrangement and is not related to offerings. Of the four rites of capping, marriage, funerals and ancestral sacrifices in traditional society, sacrifice is the most important and has the deepest connection to social morality, and once it disappears, it’s very difficult to revive. Over the past decade or so, the rebuilding of ancestral halls in the Chaoyang region is the best example of the “modernization” of worship activities, especially by allowing ordinary people to enter the temple, and it reflects the innovativeness of the private sector. Offerings to ancestors in these ancestral halls can be considered “rites bridging the ancient and modern,” having the ancient connotation of rites but carried out in a practical modern context. If it is said that the task of classical learning today is to create a new living method for the future on the foundation of history and reality, then the question of how to reestablish sacrificial ceremonies in urban life is all the more pressing and critical. Translated by Stacy Mosher

chapter 9

An Adventure Called “Sishu”: The Tensions and Vagaries of a “Holistic” Educational Experience (zhengti jiaoyu) in Today’s Rural China Guillaume Dutournier and Wang Yuchen This chapter is an inquiry into the “sishu” (私塾) experience in China today.1 Until the 1990s, the term “sishu” would probably have been overwhelmingly perceived as nothing but a verbal relic of an old-fashioned, backward form of education, dating back to imperial times but quickly swept away, in the Republican era, by the triumphant assaults of Chinese modernity. Typical of this vision would have been Lu Xun (魯迅)’s semi-ironical, semi-nostalgic evocation of the writer’s early years of uninspiring study, in his autobiographic novella “From the Hundred-Plant Garden to the Three-Flavor Study” where he reminisces about the austere teachings he received from his “master” Shou Jingwu (壽鏡吾) at the end of the Qing.2 But from the 2000s on, quite surprisingly, the term sishu began to re-emerge in the educational discourse— sometimes as a frame of reference for actual practices, sometimes as a focus of scholarly discussion or as a topic on social networks. This re-emergence has been mostly described as part of the “Confucian revival,” against the backdrop of the Classics (ancient textual traditions ascribed to pre-imperial thinkers and adopted, in a fixed form, as the ideological foundation of the empire from the Han dynasty on) being increasingly brought back to public attention. At the same time, the sishu issue has attracted the attention of the authorities, in the context of a steadily increasing demand for improvements in the

1  The inquiry resulting in this chapter has also been a sort of adventure, and a somewhat trying one for those who would have preferred to see its results earlier. Appreciative acknowledgements are due to Sébastien Billioud for his patience and precious support, and also to the other contributors to this volume. We also thank Adeline Herrou and the “SHIFU” ANRprogram for the financial support granted for the final stage of this work. 2  See Lu Xun 魯迅, “Cong Baicaoyuan dao Sanwei shuwu” 從百草園到三味書屋, in Lu Xun quanji 魯迅全集 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2005), 2: 289–293; and Lee Leo Ou-fan, “Genesis of a Writer: Notes on Lu Xun’s Educational Experience,” in Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era, ed. Merle Goldman (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1977), 163–64.

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educational system and of a growing interest in cultural issues (including their ideological uses and their political repercussions).3 Here the sishu experience will be mainly addressed through the perspective of the adults involved.4 What is meant by “sishu”, as a notion and as a practice, in the context of contemporary China? What has made possible the “reappearance” of such a long-disused educational practice in present-day society? In what terms are its relation to the traditional world, as well as its alleged relevance to current preoccupations, to be formulated? To these questions, promoters and practitioners alike have plenty of answers. As will be shown in this study, not all of these answers are driven by historical accuracy. Nevertheless, a basic methodological assumption requires us to take the motivations of the protagonists into account. Irrespective of the diversity of the situations involved, those motivations can be summed up by the purely functional words “outside of the institution” (tizhi wai 體制外). Concretely, this means that, regardless of its form, dimension or trajectory, a “sishu” will be recognized as such, in so far as it results from the initiative of private individuals, and not from any officially recognized organization—a feature which, in the context of the PRC where education is supposed to be compulsory, implies a strong sense of personal commitment and a willingness to take risks.5 Typically, the founder of a sishu is a parent, not necessarily belonging to the well-off strata of society, who has worked for some time and who decides to devote himself to a 3  Sébastien Billioud, “Confucianism, Cultural Tradition and Official Discourses in China at the Start of the New Century,” China Perspectives (3) (2007): 50–67; and, for a comparison with the situation in the 80s, see Joël Thoraval, “La tradition rêvée,” L’Infini 30 (1990): 146–169. 4  Sishu (私塾) are mainly described here from the perspective of the adults who founded and run them, including their hopes and expectations about such an educational form. The question of the place and status of the children involved in sishu would deserve a study in itself. 5  The law establishing compulsory education dates from 1986, but was not promulgated until 1992. See Thierry Pairault, “Emploi et formation en Chine: un état des lieux,” Mondes en développement 134 (2) (34) (2006): 24. It has been reinforced recently. In the “Notice on the Implementation of the Tasks Related to Compulsory Education Enrolling in 2017” issued in February 2017 by the Education Bureau of the Ministry of Education, it is required to “pay high attention to students attending sishu (私塾) (…) classes,” and it is specified that school-age children “are not allowed to take the liberty of self-studying at home, rather than receiving the prescriptive 9-year-compulsory education” (see the Ministry of Education website at http://www.moe.edu.cn/srcsite/A06/s3321/201702/t20170222_297025.html, visited on March 17th 2017). In a more recent notice issued on September 5th from General Office of the State Council, it is stressed that schools should take the responsibility of convincing dropout students to return, and guardians who withdraw children from school without legitimate reason will be liable to different levels of penalties (see the state council website at http:// www.gov.cn/zhengce/content/2017-09/05/content_5222718.htm, visited on September 21th 2017).

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new kind of activity, qualitatively different from the previous one and mostly understood as an “endeavour” or a “task” (shiye 事業). This decision derives from a personal reflection on the teaching and assessment models prevailing in “mainstream education” (zhuliu jiaoyu 主流教育), which are criticized by the persons involved for being harmful to their children, and to which they prefer alternative methods. Most often (but not only), it may be a former teacher who, after having practiced for years in the official school system, decides to resign from his position in order to “set up a separate kitchen” (ling qi luzao 另 起爐灶). In its most committed form, this attempt starts at home, that is, with one’s own offspring—as is the case with homeschooling in the West. However, unlike their Western counterparts, the Chinese practitioners of “family education” (jiating jiaoyu 家庭教育) have at their disposal, in order to identify this practice, a term whose origin is said to go back to ancient times. This claim of the sishu protagonists to be the heirs of a long-neglected tradition deserves our close attention. It puts the Chinese version of homeschooling in a special category among the wide array of alternative educations existing in the modern world. Highly significant here is the mix of a strong personal involvement and a supposedly venerable tradition. In a previous study, we proposed a tri-focused survey of this phenomenon.6 The present chapter will propose a complementary, case-study oriented approach. At the legal level, we have shown that in today’s mainland China, the running of a sishu, or the fact of resorting to a sishu-teacher for one’s children, is generally seen as belonging to the grey area of the “minjian” (民間)—this “space of the people” deriving from a certain sense of legitimacy independent from officiality (in its formulation if not in its essential content), which enables virtually any individual to exemplify diffuse and immemorial collective vitality. This aspect makes mainland China’s case noticeably different from that of Taiwan (which will largely remain beyond the scope of this study). In Taiwan, the institutionalization of society is much more advanced than in mainland China, and in this context, the only path towards developing an educational method separate from the official system is to accommodate the various regulations pertaining to “self-education at home” (zaijia zixue 在家自學).7 That is why the main promoter of sishu in the Chinese culture area, Wang Tsai-kui, a Taiwanese academic, can loosely be described as a sort of lobbyist devoted to educational issues. While “sishu” is not used as a key term within his discourse, it does in fact represent the most ideal form—i.e., “on a full-time basis” (quanri 6  Guillaume Dutournier, “Les ‘écoles familiales’ en Chine continentale et à Taiwan: triple regard sur un traditionalisme éducatif,” Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident 33 (2011): 171–210. 7  Ibid., 181–84.

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zhi 全日制)—of the education he advocates. For two decades, his organization, the “Huashan academy” (Huashan shuyuan 華山書院), has been active both in Taiwan and mainland China in advocating the “reading of the Classics” (dujing 讀經) as an invaluable legacy of Chinese tradition, able to provide radical solutions to the intrinsic flaws of Western-inspired modern education.8 Wang Tsai-kui (王財貴) himself is strongly influenced by the Neo-Confucian philosopher Mou Zongsan (牟宗三), having been his disciple, and has endeavored to transpose his teachings to a practical level. But, despite these putative affiliations, one may say that Wang and his supporters are mostly striving for acknowledgement in competition with other social forces, which is the normal expression of a “civil society” at work.9 This is the situation in Taiwan. In comparison, mainland China’s sishu do not enjoy such an arena for promoting themselves: a number of them are bound to “discretion” (didiao 低調), and the few victories or advances obtained regarding their legal standing through some landmark cases (such as the “Mengmutang [孟母堂] affair,” which involved a sishu and the Shanghai local Bureau of Education10) seem generally precarious. All in all, the transnational aspect of Chinese homeschooling— which not only extends to Taiwan, but also to the Chinese overseas, and even appears to present some similarities with certain radical forms of religious education in some Jewish or Christian communities—should be highlighted not only as an objective feature of the dynamics considered, but also as a factor 8  In his book, Jiaoyu zhi zhihuixue, he points out that people could find numerous possible locations for dujing 讀經 (reading of the Classics), they could be as casual as on a bed, under a tree, or it could be in a school or at the office: see Wang Tsai-kui 王財貴, Jiaoyu zhi zhihuixue 教育之智慧學 (Nanjing: Nanjing daxue chubanshe, 2009), 27. On the other hand, he advocates both old and new sishu, putting them on a parity with full time dujing. He felt pity for the Republic of China having banned sishu, and applauded the “modern sishu (私塾)” as revival of the past sishu. See Wang Tsai-kui 王財貴, Dujing ershi nian 讀經二十年 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2016), 22–23. In his picture of dujing education, there are two types of dujing practice: one is half-time dujing and half-time modern curriculum—this is on a nationwide basic level—and the other is full-time dujing in sishu, in order to educate the top “cultural talents.” 9  By way of example the visit to Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou 馬英九 obtained by Wang Tsai-kui’s organization in 2009 can be mentioned. For a clear-cut definition of the concept of civil society, see Ding Xueliang, “Institutional Amphibiousness and the Transition from Communism: The Case of China,” British Journal of Political Sciences 24 (3) (1994): 293–318. 10  For a presentation of the facts, see Feng Yonggang 馮永剛, “Mengmutang: jiating he xuexiao de jiaoyu boyi” 孟母堂家庭和學校的教育博弈, Jiaoyu qianyan 教育前線 2 (2007): 14–15; and for a preliminary analysis, Guillaume Dutournier, “Les ‘écoles familiales’ en Chine continentale et à Taiwan: triple regard sur un traditionalisme éducatif,” Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident 33 (2011): 185–186.

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of comparison between different models for the actors involved, and as one of the actual forms of their reflexivity about what a good education should be. Beyond this institutional issue and its various implications in terms of negotiating a legal status, another aspect brought out in this first study was the sociological one. Indeed, the sishu phenomenon can also be described as a “field” in the Bourdieusian sense: a microcosm regulated by certain particular rules that cannot be assimilated to the rules prevailing in other fields, which unequally distributes its specific capital between various agents struggling to appropriate it or to redefine it to their advantage.11 The issues at stake may be whether one sishu is ancient, whether it can provide evidence of having been recognized by Wang Tsai-kui, whether it implements specific methods, how it draws on the “reading of the Classics,” etc. From this perspective, the affinity in spirit and goals ascribed by the protagonists to the numerous sishu they see around them—and sometimes enter into contact with through meetings specifically dedicated to sishu or unofficial education—constitutes an undeniable collective force with actual effects at the institutional level; but this cohesiveness is counterbalanced by dynamics of contrastive affirmation, which make it irrelevant to conceive of the sishu phenomenon as a mere “movement” (yundong 運動)—a term often invoked, along with “alliance” (lianmeng 聯盟), to justify individual inscription within a preexisting, idealoriented group. This somewhat competitive dimension of the sishu network also prevents us from exaggerating the importance of Wang Tsai-kui’s activism in its emergence in mainland China.12 Of course, initiatives such as recorded conferences (Wang has given brilliant ones, some of them circulating widely in DVD format) or meetings organized on both sides of the Taiwan Strait may play a significant role in triggering or supporting individual commitments to sishu. But those commitments have their own dynamic. And a mere causalist or diffusionist approach, centered on the channels of influence or on the set of theories mobilized by promoters, will fall short in helping us understand in depth the radical nature of the sishu experience for a Chinese individual today. The task is to properly describe the way this experience arranges a variety of issues and ingredients—the schooling of one’s children, decisions engaging life trajectories, abstract debates about the merits and flaws of different 11  See Pierre Bourdieu, Méditations pascaliennes (Paris: Seuil, 1997). The concept of the “field” is prominent in many books of Bourdieu. 12  This view is in line with the cognitivist paradigm, notably illustrated in anthropology by Dan Sperber, which envisions transmission as being more a horizontal than a vertical phenomenon: see Dan Sperber, Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach (Oxford and Maiden: Blackwell, 1996); Olivier Morin, Comment les traditions naissent et meurent (Paris: Odile Jacob, 2011), 189–197.

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educational models, assessments of Chinese identity and the modern fate of Confucianism—into a somehow coherent whole. For the individuals involved, be they teachers, parents or children, “sishu” is the name of a significant adventure, and the meaning of this adventure has to be considered in its own right. In line with those considerations, a last approach was outlined in this preliminary work, which will be developed in the present study. Generally speaking, claims of “cultural revival” expose observers dealing with supposed continuity to the risk of slipping into a vicious circle—a double rut that has to be avoided. One pitfall is a naive continuism, which lets the assertiveness of the protagonists color the scientific description; in the present case, this would lead to the assessment that contemporary and ancient forms of unofficial education narrate the same story. The other danger would be a purely disruptive approach, drawing on the homologies between Chinese homeschooling and other socio-cultural configurations—an argument for undermining the importance of some specific, recurring patterns of action. The focus proposed here on a single, specific case of sishu is intended to overcome this difficulty. Our inquiry, situated in rural Hunan, has been carried out in a discontinuous manner, over almost a decade, through a succession of four distinct fieldworks, none of them exceeding ten days.13 Our main interviewee is Zhang Zhiyong, a former teacher born in Fujian province, who graduated in 1988 and first worked in Shanghai for a number of years. In 2004 he decided to set aside his activities in Shanghai in order to take over a sishu in a hillside village in Hunan province, Yueyang municipality, which had been run for decades by a man born in the 1920s (Zhu Zhizhong 朱執中, now deceased). By moving to this remote county of north-east Hunan with his young son, Zhang Zhiyong explicitly intended to develop his own educational model both in reference to the previous sishu and in a spirit of innovation. Deliberately rural in nature but run by a Shanghainese teacher, at the crossroads of different influences,—both traditional and modern, Chinese and Western, local and digital—this long-running experiment of the “New Sishu of Wufeng” moved in 2008 to Zhangguying, a touristic village also situated in Yueyang municipality, in a county adjacent to its previous setting. Since then, the sishu has become one of the places presented to tourists who visit the village. The hybrid and evolutional aspect of Zhang Zhiyong’s experience provides interesting insights into the making of educational legitimacy at the margins of officiality in the PRC. It brings together different elements in a specific trajectory, not free of 13  The fieldwork was carried out in Hunan 湖南 province in October 2007 in Pingjiang county, and in November-December 2010, September-October 2011 and May 2017 in Yueyang (岳陽) county in the village of Zhangguying (張谷英).

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hardship and doubt, which allows us to reconsider the question of continuity and discontinuity regarding education and knowledge in contemporary society—and perhaps, at the same time, to shed new light on the “Confucian issue” in China today. 1

“The Last Sishu of China”

This sishu received significant media attention in 2003–2004 when its founder, Zhu Zhizhong, then over 80, was preparing to bring his activity to an end. In certain articles published both in the national and local press, and in online discussions, the old man was presented as the last representative of the “traditional schools” that “mushroomed in the 1980s […] in Pingjiang” and which were sometimes “as many as five” in many villages of this district, as stated by a local educational administrator in an English-language article of the China Daily (intended for a foreign readership) of February 2004.14 Zhu Zhizhong was apparently the first to reopen a sishu in Pingjiang county in 1982, at the age of around 60. But in doing so, he was restarting an activity he had exercised from the age of 19 up until the advent of the communist regime—the 1950s being the time “when the traditional schools were absorbed into the newly built schools,” according to the same article. The setting for this 1980s reopening was apparently unchanged: a modest three-room house made of sun-dried mud bricks with a low roof, located to the east of his own dwelling house, in the Wufeng (“Five Summits” 五峰) hamlet of the remote Wujiao village, in the southern part of Nanjiang town.15 When we went there in 2007, accompanied by Zhang Zhiyong (張志勇) who wanted to present the old man to us, the site had probably changed little. With a strong Hunanese accent—which rendered almost unrecognizable to us the sentence from the beginning of the Analects he quoted when he discovered a friendly foreigner “coming from afar”—he enthusiastically described the teaching activities carried out over the course of decades in this humble setting. Apparently, the surroundings had remained entirely unaffected by the recent media promotion of Zhu Zhizhong’s place as “the last sishu of China.”

14  The article is available below: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/cndy/2004-02/23/ content_308285.htm (visited on July 16, 2017). 15  The description of the place given in the above-mentioned article fits what we saw in October 2007, when we visited Zhu Zhizhong (朱執中) accompanied by Zhang Zhiyong (張志勇).

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figure 9.1 Zhu Zhizhong on the doorstep of his sishu in 2007 © Guillaume Dutournier

Unlike the hundreds of local children and teenagers Zhu Zhizhong is reputed to have taught in Wufeng over the years, Zhang Zhiyong, strictly speaking, never received Zhu Zhizhong’s teachings. It was the online circulation of an article published in the 2003, April 11th edition of the weekly journal Hunan ribao (湖南日報) that aroused his interest in the figure of the old man.

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Entitled “Rediscovering sishu” (You jian sishu 又見私塾), this article was signed by Peng Yida, a Pingjiang native who had retired from public service and, in addition to having worked in secondary education and in the Forestry Bureau, had also published numerous articles pertaining to “local culture and history” (difang wenshi 地方文史).16 In the aforementioned piece, Peng Yida first sets up the background of Pingjiang as a county where the “teaching of old books” (jiao lao shu 教老書) has been preserved in a remarkable number of places. Then, presenting Zhu Zhizhong as one of those perpetuators, he provides a short description of his activity. The old man is described as having spent decades teaching students of different learning levels, usually using textbooks such as Youxue Qionglin (幼學瓊林 Children’s Knowledge Treasury), the Shijing (詩經 Classic of the Odes) and the Si Shu (四書 the Four Books edited by Zhu Xi, 1130–1200). A typical day would unfold in the following way: reviewing previous lessons, learning new ones, practicing calligraphy and composition. Each student had to recite in turn the passage learnt the day before directly to Zhu, and those who had done so could return to their own seats until each of the students had finished the review phase. Learning a new lesson began with a simple explanation of the new text, followed by a reading of the passage directly to Zhu. The one-by-one reading session would end at around half past ten, when the calligraphy lesson began, lasting till noon. The afternoon began with Zhu again summoning the students and giving a writing lesson. In Peng’s article, Zhu Zhizhong is described in the following terms: Zhu Zhizhong, from the village of Wujiao, in the town of Nanjiang, is a teacher who enjoys great affection and respect among the local population. During interviews in this village, some friends told me that his family was a model of honesty handed down from generation to generation. Born into a family of poor peasants, Zhu Zhizhong followed the teachings of four old-book masters between the ages of 7 and 18, before himself beginning to teach these same books when he was 19—and thereby won much praise among the local people. The number of students who have passed through his hands can be counted in the thousands and instances of his disciples spanning three generations are not rare […]. Today Zhu Zhizhong is over 80, his son, who graduated from the Institute of Geology in Chengdu, has already retired, while one of his 16  Born in 1939 in Chengguan (城關), he graduated from Ningxiang Normal University. He retired in 1998. His collected articles are published under the title Peng Yida 彭以達. Gu Luo congtan 古羅叢談, 2 vols. (Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe, 2005).

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grandsons teaches at a university in Beijing and two of his grandchildren are university graduates […]. In this mountainous region, incomes and living standards are low, and when he is asked about how he is paid, Zhu Zhizhong laughs calmly: “Don’t talk about money, these people are simple villagers … Even when the price is 40 yuan a month, I often give credit.” It was through reading this article that Zhang Zhiyong first came into contact with something called “sishu.” This is more significant than it may seem. Zhang Zhiyong regularly evokes and pays tribute to “Old Master Zhu” as the fundamental inspiration for his own endeavour, stressing the debt the “New Sishu” he initiated owes to the “old sishu” he discovered through the newspaper article. To us, this kind of narrative link has methodological implications. The phenomenon we are dealing with has to be understood in two ways: as an actual, potentially evolutional practice, and, simultaneously, as a matter of narration or a mode of appearing in the discourse. As we will see, the way Zhang Zhiyong narrates his progressive realization of the importance of “sishu” in his own life is part of the significance—or even the aura—this term has for him, and for those inclined to trust him. The credibility of such an engagement in the context of contemporary China is what we must seek ultimately to understand. Throughout Peng Yida’s article, “sishu” fundamentally appears as something that most people may talk about, but in a superfluous and erroneous way. It also appears, though more latently, as a practice which is able to change— which even is in the process of changing. On this basis, the article aims to rectify the ongoing clichés by turning the spotlight on some neglected facts. “Sishu,” it is said, is often assimilated to an out-of-date practice, to “old masters of the ancient times, with the hanging braid, the mouth full of zhi hu zhi ye (之乎者也)”—those terms (function words devoid of concrete meaning in old Chinese) being typical of the ancient Classics which were essential to traditional education. Now, it is asserted, the case of Pingjiang invalidates this view of sishu as belonging to the past: in fact, the tradition survives to the present day, and is precisely exemplified by Zhu Zhizhong’s case. In this marked contrast with the current opinion about sishu lies the alleged informative value of the whole article. But there is another value, pertaining to a more performative dimension, that is, to the medium conveying the news. While the local newspaper “rediscovers,” as the article’s title puts it, the upholding of sishu practices in the locality of Pingjiang, this local reality is turned into something else by the new visibility it acquires through such a channel. This point appears clearly in the identifying terms used. In the words of Peng Yida,

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In Pingjiang, “sishu” was commonly called “teaching of the old books,” which implies both the content of a teaching and the difference between this teaching and the normal form of education. After the sishu have completely disappeared elsewhere, in Pingjiang they are still a very common thing: in almost every locality there are people who teach old books; the more you are in remote, hilly regions, the more numerous are those people. By establishing an equivalence between sishu and the local expression “teaching of the old books”, assumed to have been formerly the most common way in Pingjiang of referring to unofficial education, the text actually operates a shift in the very significance of the phenomenon it draws attention to. Here, “sishu” as a word appears much more as an etic label, superimposed on local realities, than as an identifying term stemming from the protagonists themselves. This terminological gap is evidenced by the fact that Zhu Zhizhong does not seem to have originally used such a generic designation to refer to his place: the China Daily report of Zhang Zhiyong’s first arrival at Wufeng states that the “metal sign on the wooden gate [of Zhu’s place] read: Wujiao village, No. 274” and that “it didn’t even bear the name of the school.” This passage suggests that, before the external observers arrived in Wufeng, Zhu Zhizhong’s place was not conceived locally as an exemplification of a larger method called “sishu.” But simultaneously, the genericity of the term is precisely what allows the author to valorize Wufeng and, more generally, the whole Pingjiang county as a locality preserving cultural features supposed to have disappeared elsewhere. In other terms, Peng makes the county representative of what was allegedly constitutive of every locality in former times. Viewed in this light, the figure of Zhu Zhizhong in the article embodies both continuity and change: as a transmitter of Pingjiang’s “old books teaching” practice, he illustrates skills which used to exist on a nationwide scale in former times and were regarded everywhere as eminently normal; but as the focus of a Hunanese gazette, the practice he exemplifies is now confined to the reduced scale of a single, so far largely unnoticed locality. And the article’s function is precisely to counterbalance this reduction by making “Wufeng sishu” a cultural legacy—that is, by making it significant for everyone in the country, as a matter for surprise and praise. Considered in this way, it is easier to understand why such an article may have captured the attention of a certain number of people, among them Zhang Zhiyong. Being fundamentally an appeal to consider a renewed conception of “sishu” through Zhu Zhizhong’s example, it triggered Zhang Zhiyong’s decision to go to Pingjiang. The fact is that Zhang eventually found in Peng Yida an invaluable supporter of his own project. Around one year later, another article

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was published by Peng in the same weekly journal to report Zhang’s visit to Zhu’s place. And this second publication contributed even further, together with other articles published elsewhere on the “last sishu,” to modifying the practice initially ascribed to the “Old Zhu.” The fact is that all the media assessments of Zhu Zhizhong rely on the latent assumption that the project of obtaining a wider audience for his activity does not originate from himself. In an article entitled “How shall we consider the end of the last sishu?” published in 2004 in the Renmin ribao, the closing of Wufeng sishu becomes the pretext for asking the following question: “Does the sishu education merit that we continuously search after new ways of inheriting it and carrying it forward?”17 The article presents the differing opinions of academics and other experts in this matter—some advocating the historical obsolescence of this educational form, others promoting it as a valuable inspiration for proposing new forms of teaching, etc. But common to all these scholarly, well-argued viewpoints is the relegation of the main individual implied in the debated case—Zhu Zhizhong himself—to a position outside the circle of stakeholders. Zhu Zhizhong appears here as a purely paradigmatic illustration of a highly questionable educational form, which he seems himself unable to address from a generic viewpoint. Even in Peng Yida’s extremely laudatory article, the figure of Zhu is presented in the same way: a pure expression of a traditional education, but without for all that being a true educationalist, he appears as being deprived of any proactive ability. In sharp contrast with Zhang Zhiyong as described in the later article, the “Old Master” is presented as a mere emanation of local continuities: he has “taught ancient books,” in just the same way as he was himself “taught ancient books” by local people in his youth; his family has constantly been praised by the locals; he himself has taught members of the same families for three generations; and his own interactions with the locals, especially in the matter of being paid a wage, seem to be essentially oriented by a native sense of obligation towards them. The issue here is not whether Zhu Zhizhong, who died in 2009, had opinions regarding the queries raised by the journalists and scholars looking at this sishu; he certainly did. The question is why, in a case characterized as “the last sishu” by some observers, is it considered acceptable to conflate two very different perspectives on it: from an internal perspective, local interactions leading to specific arrangements and assessments including, among others, those pertaining to education issues (but also local appraisal of the morality of Zhu’s family, or considerations of the low standard of living of the villagers); and, from an external perspective, a public discussion which tends to “rise in 17  Cf. Renmin ribao, January 15th, 2004.

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generality,” to put it in Boltanski and Thévenot’s terms,18 and to consider those arrangements and assessments exclusively through the prism of a generic educational model? This latent distortion between locality and genericity, between longunquestioned traditional practices and debated educational methods, relates to another basic dimension: the “private” aspect of sishu. The typological sketch drawn in our introduction stressed that sishu were run by private individuals. From that perspective, a seemingly accurate translation of the term into English would be “private school,” as in the case of the China Daily article on the sishu in Wujiao village entitled: “Private Schools Teach Respect.” But the fact that “private school” in English would most spontaneously be translated into Chinese by “sili xuexiao” (私立學校), and not by “sishu,” should make us cautious. This is another example of the biases at work in the modern perception of traditional education in general, and correlatively of its alleged “revival” in contemporary China. A further inquiry into the meaning of the terms will be helpful to make this point clearer. Historically, the term “shu” which is part of “sishu” used to refer to a building belonging to a house (a lodge or cell) dedicated to the learning of reading and writing. By extension it could mean a village study, in the sense of a place of learning destined for use by a larger group than just the children of the household. But even in this enlarged form, the traditional “shu” remained a neighbourhood facility in as much as it was part of, or attached to, a house. It remained also a place of unity, with no division into “classes” or “levels” and where everything was centred around the figure of a tutor usually called “xiansheng” (先生)—which may be simply translated as “master.” The xiansheng could be a member of the family or a cultivated person from some locality— but never a teacher appointed by an official institution. Now, can this historical “shu” be conceived as a “school”? The answer depends on the extension of the meaning ascribed to the latter. But the difference between the two devices, which appears to be functional (who is doing what in each context?) but also pragmatic (the modes of referentiality, with a stronger proximity to everyday life in the case of “shu”), has to be kept in mind when we are faced with hybrid phenomena such as the connection between an “old” and a “new” sishu. What about “private”? Historically speaking, it has been asserted—for example by the historian Thomas Lee—that a certain “search for an independent sphere of personal educational initiatives” has existed for a long time in China 18  For a presentation of this notion, and more generally a pragmatist approach to public discussions, see Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot, De la justification. Les économies de la grandeur (Paris: Gallimard, 1991).

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(at least since the 9th century) alongside officially endorsed institutions.19 If this long-standing trend can be called “private,” it is partly in the sense that it was consistently sustained by local community organizations, such as families and clans; but also because it embodied, notably from the Song dynasty onwards for the literati who would come to be known as “Neo-Confucians,” some enduring conceptions about education as an activity fundamentally rooted in a personal, self-oriented involvement with knowledge.20 Pervasive within the many learned groups who embodied all or part of such conceptions, the “private education” thus defined would appear in various forms throughout history: from the Han dynasty’s “lecture halls” (jingshe 精舍), where masters practiced learning and sometimes attracted disciples from all over the empire, to Buddhist monasteries or “sangha,” often situated in remote mountains but open to secular students, to later “academies” (shuyuan), inspired by the latter and whose flourishing, from the Song on, engaged the “localist turn” characteristic of this period.21 These are just some of the many practices which might be considered close to our conception of “private schools.” In all such manifestations, the “private” dimension is understood as the counterpart of the governmental stress on “public” service and on the system of selection and promotion, appearing in the Han dynasty and further developed in later dynasties, which aimed at the recruitment of staff for the bureaucracy (chaju 察舉 or xuanju 選舉).22 However, it has to be stressed that this traditional dichotomy between “public” and “private” was much less clear-cut than in the modern world. Firstly, private academies were not legally sanctioned, they were “private” in the traditional sense of corresponding much more to a less-official organization, which might potentially become more official under favorable circumstances.23 Secondly, private and public forms of education shared common goals and functional similarities.24 This traditionally blurred frontier between both 19  Thomas H. C. Lee, Education in Traditional China: A History (Leiden/Boston/Köln: Brill, 2000), 14. 20   Ibid., 14. Ibid., 54–55, 69–70, 76–77. 21   22   Ibid., 11–22, 139–140, 126. 23  A good example here is the way Confucian “academies” (shuyuan 書院), originally founded during the second part of the Song dynasty (1127–1276) by local literati, were progressively acknowledged by the court as legitimate institutions, shaping what historians have called a “middle space between what was private and what was official.” See Linda Walton, Academies and Society in Southern Sung China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999), 9; also see Peter K. Bol, Neo-Confucianism in History (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Asia Center, 2008), 232–233. 24  See ibid., 229.

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dimensions oriented the way “private education” was finally conceived in modern times. As a matter of fact, one has often neglected that “sishu,” as a current term, seems to have emerged at a rather late period in the twentieth century. In 1935, an anthropologist doing fieldwork in Wenshang, Shangdong province, observed such a “broad spectrum” and “variety” of unofficial education, that a clear criterion or umbrella term could not be found to identify them.25 Even though the modernization policies widely impacted the schooling practices, the previous educational models remained latently influential at the local level for some time.26 In the end, it was only once the ideal of a public school system became largely accepted not only in the government agenda, but also among the population, that a clear concept of “sishu” became obvious and useful, most of the time as a contested device to be overcome. At the time of its emergence, “sishu” was therefore a negative concept. In the first decades of the 20th century, educational institutions underwent radical transformation, inspired both by the permeating of Western models and by the will of an “assertive elite” to provide the country with educational tools meeting the challenges of nation building.27 The process began with the reforms launched by the Qing Ministry of Education during the Xinzheng era (1902– 1911) and continued throughout the Republican era. Described, henceforth, as “traditional” methods, and reckoned to still exert a powerful hold on local populations, all the unofficial forms of education were designated as backward, and progressively transformed into more legitimate devices. Elizabeth VanderVen shows that this movement was very gradual, and that in many parts of the country it was not completely successful, especially in the remote areas.28 Considered from this angle, Zhu Zhizhong’s place in Wujiao appears very much as an example of those recalcitrant “sishu” that have managed up until now to escape from the turmoil and vagaries of post-imperial modernization policies. Paradoxically enough, its qualification as “the last sishu” would not have been 25  Liao Taichu 廖泰初, Biandong zhong de Zhongguo nongcun jiaoyu 變動中的中國農村 教育 (self-published, 1936), 18. Liao Taichu, born in 1910, received anthropological training from Wu Wenzao (吳文藻) in Yenching University and carried out this research from 1935 to 1936 after getting a Master’s degree in education. His fieldwork, which later became one of the classics in China educational anthropology, lasted 4 months and covered more than 150 sishu and 200 villages in the county of Wenshang. 26  Zuo Songtao 左松濤, “Xinci yu guwu: Qing ji yilai suo wei ‘sishu’ wenti de zairenshi” 新詞與故物：清季以來所謂“私塾”問題的再認識, Zhongshan daxue xuebao 中山 大學學報 3 (2008). 27  Stephen C. Averill, “The Cultural Politics of Local Education in Early Twentieth-Century China,” Twentieth-Century China 32 (2) (2007): 8. 28  Elizabeth R. VanderVen, A School in Every Village: Educational Reform in a Northeast China County, 1904–1931 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2012), 38.

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possible without the recent emergence of a notion—“sishu” itself—which was nothing other than an expression, among others, of the radical change that has occurred in modern Chinese society regarding conceptions of knowledge and education. 2

Trajectory of a “Master”

When Zhang Zhiyong first arrived in early 2004 in Wujiao village, he already had several years of professional experience in different areas. After graduating from Fujian Normal University, he had first worked in a top-rank high school in Fujian, from which he soon resigned due to his dissatisfaction with the methods implemented in the public education system. After this initial period of disappointment, he “entered society” (zoujin shehui 走進社會) for some years, working in the production departments of companies in Xiamen and then Hong Kong, where he later became a futures broker.29 But his former interest in education issues seems to have never disappeared, and it was actually aroused again by a teaching training session he followed in Shanghai in 1997. This training encouraged him to turn back to teaching activities by establishing a private institute, providing tutoring classes in the Yangpu district of Shanghai. Still running today, this institute is called “Kaoting kejiao” (考亭科教), “Scientific education of Kaoting”, a name expressing both Zhang’s concern for developing a reflexive educational method, and the filiation he acknowledges to a certain tradition of educational commitment. As a matter of fact, Kaoting, a locality not far from Jianyang county where Zhang was born, happens to be the place where Zhu Xi (朱熹), the great Song dynasty thinker, grew up and died, and where an “academy” (shuyuan 書院) was built in his honor several decades later.30 In Zhang’s discourse, his birthplace is associated with this famous Confucian figure, and sometimes with the local culture of book printing and paper production. All this background is evoked by Zhang when he mentions the destiny of his family, which was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. Several of his ascendants (including his mother, and his maternal grandfather, who, he claims, founded a high school in Jianyang) seem to have been involved in education, paving the way for his own interest in this activity. In this respect, the Shanghainese institute, which has apparently 29  Interview in Pingjiang, December 6th, 2010. 30  The Kaoting shuyuan (書院) was officially recognized in 1244: see Linda Walton, Academies and Society in Southern Sung China (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999), 41.

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allowed Zhang and his wife (a computer technology specialist) to enjoy a certain level of economic comfort, could easily have been the climax of his life trajectory. But the “rediscovering of sishu” led him to embark on another task that, in some ways, would prove far more challenging. We stressed above that actual itineraries are inseparable from how they are reflected in the discourses of the actors involved: a “thick description” of the facts cannot exclude their narrative and self-narrative resonance, or the pragmatic dimension of the utterances concerned. Zhang Zhiyong’s way of narrating his life is impressive. We witnessed him reminiscing about his experience with sishu on different occasions: several times for the needs of our interviews, but also in front of local officials, during a discussion with the director of a high school, with other teachers running an “academy” in the North-West part of Hunan … Unsurprisingly, each time those self-narrations were selective. But in all of those contexts, the sharing of Zhang’s own experience regularly allowed him to present himself as a teacher significantly different from the average. A principle has been established in Zhang’s interactions with the children he takes on, as well as with their parents: he wants to be called “master” (xiansheng) and not “teacher” (laoshi 老師). This requirement is made acceptable through various means. Most strikingly, when you enter the “New Sishu of Wufeng” in Zhangguying village, which is the two-story house where Zhang has lived and taught for almost a decade now, the correct names to be used inside are proudly declared on a wall-mounted wooden board on the ground floor. Two lines of characters remind the 2–6-year old children coming in every day, as well as the visitors, that “[here] one is only called master, not teacher; one is only called disciple, not student” (zhi cheng xiansheng bu jiao laoshi, zhi cheng dizi bu jiao xuesheng 只稱先生不叫老師，只稱弟子不叫學 生). Zhangguying is a beautiful village founded in the Ming dynasty by the eponymous official Zhang Guying; it nestles in verdant mountains in southern Yueyang county, and is now visited every day by tourists coming mostly from other parts of Hunan; but had the “New Sishu of Wufeng” been situated anywhere else, the rule about the terms of address would doubtless have been the same. The fact is that it was already valid from 2004 to 2008, when Zhang Zhiyong first settled down in a small one-story house in Dawan village in Pingjiang county (to the south of Yueyang county), on the southern road to Nanjiang town, in order to start his sishu activity near Zhu Zhizhong’s place. When we visited him there in autumn 2007, almost everyone coming to interact regularly with Zhang in the neighborhood was addressing him properly as “Zhang xiansheng.” This habit has been adopted again in Zhangguying since Zhang moved there in 2009, the year of Zhu Zhizhong’s death: whereas the tourists remain probably uninformed about such a principle, virtually all of

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the parents who have, from then on, entrusted their children to Zhang Zhiyong are accustomed to respecting the norm laid down by him. Of course, this explicit demarcation is not a mere terminological one. Zhang Zhiyong’s relative success in imposing it locally has to do with the ability he displays, as do countless people in many sectors of Chinese society today, in taking initiatives on his own and playing with his environment (including the authorities) a legitimating game based on the protagonist’s agency.31 But there is even more at work here. The identification of a specific teaching figure is not only conceptual, it is relational: it implies a capacity of knowing how to name, and this capacity relies on the confirmation (be it active or implicit) of many interlocutors.32 It is in this light that the relationships Zhang Zhiyong has striven to cultivate with Pingjiang county’s official authorities and, beyond, in Yueyang and sometimes at the provincial level, have to be understood. Zhang Zhiyong is not a local and his visit to Zhu Zhizhong in January 2004 was probably his first time in Hunan. But from the very beginning of his enterprise, he made many efforts to appear in line with the local culture, and to be validated as such by its representatives. This can be illustrated by the following quote of Mr. Zhang speaking during a discussion in the presence of a director of a high school in the town of Nanjiang, to which belongs the village of Dawan, the first site of Zhang Zhiyong’s sishu:33 I rely particularly on what is to be found in the local culture in Pingjiang [...] In 2004 I arrived from Shanghai to settle here. It is extraordinary that sishu practices have been able to keep going for such a long time: this proves that it really has something, a sort of inner strength. With all the talents that have come out of Pingjiang, care has always been taken from top to bottom to keep the people’s habits alive. Here the tone is very much the same as in Peng Yida’s article quoted above. Pingjiang is seen as a place which, for some unexplained reason, has kept alive what used to be the mission of every locality in traditional China, namely to provide staff for the central official service. Such a particularity is ascribed both to local “minjian” vitality and to the alleged care and concern of the local 31  See Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval, The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 10, 236. 32  The expression is borrowed from the anthropologist Brigitte Baptandier’s reflection on Chinese religious specialists. 33  October 26th, 2007. Quoted in Guillaume Dutournier, “Les ‘écoles familiales’ en Chine continentale et à Taiwan: triple regard sur un traditionalisme éducatif,” Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident 33 (2011): 189.

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officials. In this overall picture, “sishu” is what enables the encapsulation of the whole past along with the present potentialities in a generic, enduring entity. We have shown in the analysis above that such a categorization was largely retrospective; but in Zhang Zhiyong’s case, this descriptive bias becomes the mainspring of a deliberate action of transformation. This transformative aspect is one of the main differences between the “New Sishu” and that of Zhu Zhizhong. Zhang Zhiyong claims frequently and proudly that he has “taken over the last sishu of China,” and by doing so, he acknowledges a considerable debt to Zhu Zhizhong and to the educational device Zhu devoted his life to. But at the same time, he puts forward the innovative aspects of his own project. Of course, we have to distinguish changes which are actively sought, or displayed as such, and those which are more passive or unconscious. For example, the “New Sishu” concentrates on pre-school children, whereas Zhu Zhizhong’s sishu was training young children and teenagers. To some extent, this difference is related to Zhang Zhiyong’s precarious status, administratively speaking: it lies in his inability (or unwillingness) to maintain his sishu as a “school run by the people” (minban xuexiao 民辦學校), which was the case from 2007 to 2011, but not later.34 As a matter of fact, in Zhangguying the “New Sishu” is mostly perceived by locals as providing a service of the same nature as the numerous kindergartens of the town, and is not at all considered as an alternative school competing with the local primary and secondary school (training children over the age of compulsory education) which are situated only a few hundred meters from Zhang’s place. Nevertheless, what could appear here to be a mere compromise with institutional constraints is presented by Zhang Zhiyong as the result of a deliberate initiative, the form of which, he says, is provisional. To him, the “New Sishu” remains exploratory and, even after years of existence, is still likely to be improved; and it may well be that, in the future, the new educational model he is working on will come to influence official education, or even to be commercialized. Zhang’s efforts at shaping this new method, which might be eventually valid outside of the sishu itself, leads him to test different teaching formats. The fact is reflected in the changing numbers of the children entrusted to the care of Zhang Zhiyong over the years. In 2007, there were around ten children who came every day to the first place of the sishu, in Dawan, some of them arriving 34  When the “Wufeng xin sishu (五峰新私塾)” was still in Dawan village in the town of Nanjiang, it was given a “Permit for a school run by the people” (minban xuexiao banxue xukezheng 民辦學校辦學許可證) by the Bureau of Education of Pingjiang county, being then qualified as an “other institution of education” (qita jiaoyu jigou 其他教育 機構). The permit was supposed to remain valid until August 2011, but was not updated when Zhang Zhiyong moved to Zhangguying.

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from other villages and consequently staying overnight. Afterwards, when he first arrived in Zhangguying in 2009, a lot of the parents in the village sought to send their children to this newly established “kindergarten,” and in 2013, the children enrolled there were around one hundred, maybe three quarters coming from the other villages of Zhangguying town by a school bus specially laid on for that purpose. This first period in Zhangguying was exhausting for Zhang Zhiyong, who was assisted at the time by at most two people, whom he hired for a low wage. But these assistant teachers—they were women and like him were called “masters”—apparently failed to gain parents’ trust when Zhang was away taking pupils touring across China. According to Zhang, this resulted in a decrease of the number of enrolled children from one hundred to around a dozen. During our last field trip, Zhang was giving evening classes for 13 junior school students, making up to some extent for the economic loss. Finally, Zhang Zhiyong’s institutional precariousness is balanced by his ability to adapt himself to new contexts: each time changes happen in the working organization, he ends up by presenting them as a necessary step in a maturing process. Borrowing Deng Xiaoping’s famous formula regarding the transition induced by the Reform and opening policy, “crossing the river by feeling for stones” (mozhe shitou guohe 摸著石頭過河), Zhang Zhiyong displays his concern about passing from one stone to another as a distinctive feature of the new educational device he is striving to invent. Overall, this invention process can be described as an adventure, inasmuch as it implies a great part of risk and uncertainty. But at the same time, the name “sishu” provides a framework delineating minimal stability, through an explicit link to some alleged traditional roots. The dynamic engaged is, thus, read in the light of the resources accumulated throughout the past: The search is ongoing: things are not yet completely established, but at least I consider that we are going in the right direction. As to knowing when we will arrive at a good result, this will be a long process, 20 or 30 years without doubt. Sishu education has such a long history in China. Through successive generations an enormous amount of experience has been accumulated. It would be wonderful if we managed to combine this with modern science and it really is a pity that this was interrupted for a whole century.35 Here a parallel is drawn between the supposed antiquity and cumulative dimension of historical “sishu education,” and the necessity, for today’s 35  Interview, October 26th, 2007.

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self-proclaimed continuators, of devoting a lot of time and tenacious study to forging its modern equivalents. In this respect, the search, as Zhang says, for a “scientific” use of sishu ought not to be misunderstood: though apparently oriented by a concern for rationalization, it opens a path to long term selfexperimentation and self-corrections—to the point where the value of the whole process seems, for Zhang himself, to be placed much more on the search itself than on its potential results. There might be something surprising in such a combination between, on the one hand, admitted methodological uncertainty and, on the other hand, unwavering personal assurance of having found, as in the words quoted above, a right “direction” (fangxiang 方向) in the enterprise he has undertaken. This paradox has to be understood by considering Zhang Zhiyong’s relation to Zhu Zhizhong. The fact is that the undefined aspect of the “New Sishu” has not prevented Zhang Zhiyong from abiding by some fundamental principles he ascribes to Zhu Zhizhong’s inspiration. Apart from the designation terms mentioned above, those principles pertain mostly to the methodological level. Zhang often admits he was very impressed by the way Zhu Zhizhong used to interact with his disciples on the basis of a one-to-one relationship. That is why, in his sishu as in the previous one, studying time is not arranged in a standardized manner with separate levels: rather, it is open to the specific and even temporary interests of the children. On this basis Zhang Zhiyong displays his various educational tools, which range from books including traditional reading primers such as Qianziwen (千字文 The Writing of Thousand Characters) and Sanzijing (三字經 Classic of the Three Characters), posters on diverse topics including scientific matters, and even electronic devices. Walks in the village or along pathways in the surrounding hills are organized to make the children exert themselves (basic martial arts movements are also practiced inside the sishu) and discover natural phenomena. Older children are often involved in guiding younger ones. This flexibility is supposed to benefit each child by awakening his/her curiosity and thirst for knowledge. Beyond those methodological aspects, Zhang Zhiyong also claims an intimate connection with Zhu Zhizhong. We have seen how the latter tended to be perceived, at least in articles referring to him, as a pure emanation of local normativity. But Zhang Zhiyong has another vision of Zhu, who died in 2009: He already knew where he belonged; just as, at this point of time, I too know where I belong.36 36  Interview 2010, October 15th.

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figure 9.2 Zhang Zhiyong teaching basic martial arts movements to children in his sishu (2010). © Guillaume Dutournier

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This vision of Zhu Zhizhong is specific to Zhang Zhiyong and, in one sense, irreducible to the media perception of the former. However, just like the media perception, it is not exempt from biases which must be taken into account if we are to understand properly what characterizes the shift from one “sishu” to another—the new one belonging both to the world of media visibility and of subjective projection, as in Zhang’s analogy quoted above. Here the English expression “knowing/feeling where I(he) belong(s)” translates the word guishugan (歸屬感), which may be elaborated by Zhang Zhiyong as the manner in which “one is worthy of oneself” (duideqi ziji 對得起自己), or as the “value of one’s life” (ziji shenghuo de jiazhi 自己生活的價值). All of those terms are not only qualitative evaluations of one’s life trajectory; by proclaiming an inner sense of accomplishment independent from its external manifestations, they embody a strong self-assertiveness, which, in itself, plays a crucial role in the credibility of the speaker. Here the difference with the figure of Zhu Zhizhong can be formulated as follows: what was occurring without words with the “old master,” leading, in a natural and unostentatious manner, to expected outcomes, becomes, in Zhang Zhiyong’s case, a matter of reflection and expression, something which deserves time to be cultivated as well as the capacity to be highlighted in speech and which is hoped, ultimately, to lead to outstanding, remarkable results. The importance of narrations we have insisted on earlier finds a telling illustration here. In the case of the “New Sishu,” self-narrations constitute channels through which, apart from actual results in teaching activities, the figure of a “sishu master” is likely to take shape. To give an example of this, let us look at how Zhang Zhiyong presented himself the first time we met him in 2007 in Pingjiang: Today I have a lively interest in traditional culture, but this has not always been the case. I first came into contact with the Daodejing (道德經) in 1990 […] At the time I was fascinated to read it. The way of thought and the philosophy to be found in this book caused me to quit urban life and brought me to live, for a while, in the mountains, in a temple which I found difficult to leave. It is necessary, I have found, to be surrounded by calm in order to reflect deeply on such vast subjects. Since then, my ways of acting have been imperceptibly influenced by this reading […] But it was only in 2003 that I had a more or less general vision of ancient culture; […] Since university, while spending ten years trying to find my place in society and having started to teach, I had never ceased to reflect. And to me many of our current theories did not seem very well founded. When I stood at the lectern to teach, I was aware of not being very satisfied with

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what I was doing: so how could my students be satisfied with it? […] In 1990 I resigned from my teaching post. At the time, nobody understood why. But what I wanted at that moment was to take care of my own life, of what was precious about it. I began to ask myself what I really wanted to do with my life in this world. However, it was clear to me that, within the school, I would find nothing which would allow me to make use of what was precious in my life. […] It was only after functioning for 10 years in society that I could find a direction, a feeling of belonging (guishugan). It was like locating the pole star: all I had to do was to follow it. No one, not even Confucius, reaches the pole star, but we follow its direction. Whatever the place we are aiming for, the very process of trying to get there is a source of deep joy. […] Many people act today by pretending to be happy, while in reality they are constantly preoccupied by the opinion of others and therefore never realise personal goals. Or, if they do achieve them, they never have the impression of having done what they wanted to do, and suffer accordingly. I like to read the biographies of famous people to know the road they followed, what was their vision of the world and what was the direction they fixed on. […] For someone who wants to teach, the first thing to do is to fix a direction. Then, make sure that the children wish to follow this of their own accord, without forcing them, because if not they will become simply passive learners.37 This life story, which was told to us as if in one breath, provides good matter for finding a balance between the continuist and the disruptive approaches mentioned in the introduction. At first glance, in its overall design it could be seen as a typical example of the Neo-Confucian self-narrations of the late imperial period, which were notably analyzed by the historian Wu Pei-yi: it seems to perpetuate the motif of the journey as a path toward enlightenment, which is a recurring topic of self-expression among literati from the Ming onwards.38 Other features, such as the inspiring figure of an ever self-improving Confucius, the imperceptible influence of the Daodejing, or even the role played by biographies of historical figures in Zhang Zhiyong’s nurturing of his own “feeling of belonging” seem to coincide with some persistent narrative schemes. However, as has been suggested before, the very act of narration here is integral to the construction of a significant difference, the motivation for which is 37  Interview (October 26th, 2007). 38  See Pei-yi Wu, The Confucian Progress: Autobiographical Writings in Traditional China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 95–99.

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fundamentally modern. By recalling the manner in which he eventually realized the faults of mainstream education (the illuminating readings, the stay in the mountains and in the temple), Zhang Zhiyong distinguishes himself from other teachers, as being a man devoted body and soul to education, and seeking self-accomplishment by means of this dedication. He also addresses an objectivizing look both at the educational system, and at the “ancient culture,” displaying thereby a capacity to balance the merits and flaws of each. And by emphasizing the value this personal journey and realization have given to his own life, he justifies his alleged ability to address the characteristics of each child, and to implement an individualized method of teaching. The determining role ascribed here to personal experience as a lever both for being an efficient teacher, and for drawing benefit from one’s education, can hardly be recognized as a traditional feature. Rather, it is a typical expression of modernity where the individual matters—including the individual who is a child—not only as a fact but as a value which has to be defended, and where, as Giddens says, “reflexive ordering and reordering of social relations in the light of continual inputs of knowledge affecting the actions of individuals and groups.”39 Indeed, historically the emergence of a valorized figure of the individual never happens alone: it is necessarily accompanied by parallel phenomena pertaining to knowledge.40 In the case of Zhang Zhiyong, reflexivity is not only conveyed through what he gleaned in reading the Daoist or Confucian Classics; Laozi and Confucius are not the only mirrors through which the teacher envisions himself and his attitude toward education. It is the whole configuration he belongs to, which is modeled by reflexivity devices and by institutions.41 The media is obviously one of them, and we have stressed above the decisive role the media played in Zhang Zhiyong’s enterprise. But more fundamentally, the “set of discontinuities” which characterizes modernity according to Giddens implies the fact that “knowledge spirals in and out of the universe of social life,” constantly reworking both the realm of knowledge and the various dimensions of social life.42 Zhang Zhiyong illustrates this dynamic when, for example, he justifies the suitability of different educational practices—in this case, Chinese sishu and the “western classroom”—by the 39  See Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 17. 40  For a synthetic characterization of the main epistemic features of modernity with regard to its differences with tradition, see the proposition of the French anthropologist Louis Dumont in Homo Aequalis II. L’idéologie allemande. France-Allemagne et retour (Paris: Gallimard, 2013), 20. 41  See Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, 38. 42   Ibid., 4, 15–16.

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cultural context in which each of those devices has appeared. By doing so, he mobilizes intellectual tools (such as general notions about cultural diversity, and the necessity to resort to educational devices adapted to the supposed cultural traits of different audiences) which derive from a reflexive comparison applied to societies: When China abandoned the examination system and introduced Western natural sciences, we also appropriated directly the Western style classroom. […] Now, the Western style classroom is a product of the larger context of Western culture. The character of Western people consists of expressing oneself and giving one’s own opinion: therefore a classroom setting is necessary in order to restrain students. However, Confucian culture is very introverted. And if the students are restrained even further, they will no longer dare to even speak! Whereas in pre-modern worlds, reflexivity is “largely limited to the reinterpretation and clarification of tradition,” in modern societies, as is shown in the words above, “tradition can be justified, but only in the light of knowledge which is not itself authenticated by tradition.”43 Here the concern for efficiency in educational methods—and not the loyalty to tradition itself— provides an objective standard to evaluate the potentiality of both teaching traditions to adapt to specific contexts. Another example of this comparative, relativistic approach can be found in the way Zhang Zhiyong conceives of the particular utility of sishu education in the countryside, in contrast with urban contexts. Here one goes back to a typical feature of modernity according to Giddens, that is the “reconfiguration [of time and space] in forms which permit the precise time-space ‘zoning’ of social life.”44 The egalitarian mission ascribed here to education is underpinned by a sociological reflexivity which allows voluntarism in struggling against the educational gap between urban and rural areas: In the countryside, the cultural environment is virtually non-existent. Today, wherever we go in the cities we see Chinese characters everywhere. But in the countryside, apart from “Heaven, Earth, Ruler, Ancestor, Master”,45 we see nothing. There is no comparison between the cultural atmospheres of one and the other. I find it really cruel, therefore, that 43   Ibid., 37–38. 44   Ibid., 17. 45  Five handwritten characters often displayed in the main room of peasants’ houses.

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the same models are used to evaluate the level of intelligence of children from the countryside and children from the cities: it means that the children in the countryside can lose all confidence in themselves. It is here that we should use the sishu model, because to summarise, this type of teaching uses unequal methods to treat unequal individuals, in order to arrive at a result approaching equality. On the other hand, classroom teaching uses equal means to treat unequal individuals, which leads to an unequal result: only the best are selected and drawn towards the top, while the rest are cast aside. We are now in a better position to see what characterises the transition from one “sishu” to another, from one “master” to another, from the “teaching of old books” (jiao laoshu) still being exemplified by Zhu Zhizhong to the “running of a sishu” (ban sishu 辦私塾) assumed by Zhang Zhiyong. We have seen that, in moving from one structure to the other, there is a development from a traditional practice seen as something immemorial (even if nowadays it is confined to a rural area) to a pedagogical method which is presented as a prototype (even if it is continually being refined through trial and error.) The proclaimed link between the practice and the method authorises both of them to be identified by the same term “sishu”. In the transition from the “old” to the “new” sishu there are three aspects that emerge clearly. Firstly, that of a greater reflexivity, wrought in institutions such as the media but also in places of learning (we have noted that Zhang Zhiyong is a university graduate) and nourished by comparative perspectives on the different existing educational models: from the Chinese school system to its foreign counterparts, and also including the whole range of alternative methods, from Montessori schools to other sishu in mainland China and in Taiwan where intensive reading of the Confucian classics is common practice. The second aspect is that of a very pronounced mutability. Not only is the sishu of Zhang Zhiyong peripatetic, likely to move from one locality to another, but also it becomes a sort of educational laboratory which is constantly in renewal, where a method is being developed which is at one and the same time anchored in a local particularism and oriented towards a larger dissemination, with the ultimate aim of constructing digital pedagogical tools and of acquiring a commercial visibility on the Internet. This deterritorialization of a method which originally claimed its origin in inter-personal transmission bestows on the “New Sishu of Wufeng” and its immediate environment the dimension of “a globalized locality”—that is, a community characterized, as has been said regarding contemporary transformations in Chinese local identities, by “distinct patterns of social activities

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belonging to networks of social relations of very different intensity.”46 The third and last aspect is the remarkable intensity of personal commitment. To be a “sishu master” in the sense exemplified by Zhang Zhiyong goes well beyond the merely professional dimension, and that is why we have stressed the pragmatic importance of self-narrations in establishing credibility for this new, magisterial figure. But Zhang Zhiyong’s involvement reaches dimensions that are still more personal, namely, the familial and the economic. These two aspects allow us to complete the depiction of an individual trajectory which is fundamentally marked by hybridity.47 The familial aspect was already alluded to in the China Daily article mentioned above. In it Zhang Zhiyong is described arriving in Wujiao in 2004 accompanied by his son, then aged 6, who had just finished his first year in primary school in Shanghai. The child resumed his schooling the following year in Pingjiang, according to a specially adapted format which his father managed to negotiate with the directors of the local schools: this involved the boy spending only half of the day in the classroom, the rest of the time being devoted to the “sishu method.” According to what Zhang Zhiyong told us in the autumn of 2007, the results of this combination were astonishing: at only 8 years old, his son had already jumped several classes and was now attending the local junior high school. And, also, in the absence of his mother who had remained in Shanghai (she would not arrive to assist Zhang Zhiyong until a few years later) he was capable of assuming responsibility for a part of the day-to-day chores. What is striking here is the magnitude of the risk taken by the father of a family. The method was still in the making and yet his son was the first to be tested by it in a radical form. However, the awareness of the potential risks of this experiment presumably led Zhang Zhiyong to bring it to an end. A few years later his son was sent to Shanghai where he resumed normal secondary schooling. And by the time of our last interview in 2017, he was studying biology in a major university. Here again, the comparison with Zhu Zhizhong allows us to discern significant differences. The “old master” had, as we have seen, also enrolled his son in his own sishu and if the article of Peng Yida (彭以達) is to be believed, this appears to have had a successful outcome (the son was accepted for a university place). But in this case, the involvement of the child in the transmission of 46  This notion is coined by Albrow Martin, quoted in Bettina Gransow, “China: New Faces of Ethnography: Introductory Remarks,” in China: New Faces of Ethnography, eds. Bettina Gransow, Pál Nyiry and Shiaw-Chian Fong (Münster: Lit, 2005), 4. 47  On this notion, see Joel Robbins and Jukka Siikala, “Hierarchy and Hybridity: Toward a Dumontian Approach to Contemporary Cultural Change,” Anthropological Theory 14 (2) (2014): 121–132.

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a particular form of learning—that which can be cultivated by “reading the old books”—presented no characteristics of visibility nor any particular affirmation. It is completely otherwise in the case of Zhang Zhiyong, whose situation of “rediscovering” and renewing an ancient practice, dramatizes his personal choices. This dramatization (with all that it implies in terms of auto-narration, even of self-display) is apparent also in the way in which Zhang Zhiyong approaches the question of money. The fees he asks of the parents who entrust their children to him are higher than at the local kindergartens, but remain rather low in relation to what would be the norm for a similar establishment in a city. In any case the amounts involved, taking account of the limited number of children who are in his charge, do not permit him to turn his sishu into a lucrative venture. Now, if Zhu Zhizhong, in his time, sometimes offered his services on a credit basis, indeed, to the extent of not being paid at all at times, this was especially due to the rules and constraints attached to social relations in a locality marked by the poverty typical of remote rural regions. In contrast, the remarkable, even, in some respects, almost sacrificial, devotion of Zhang Zhiyong, was perceived locally as being somewhat bizarre, as an attitude of over-investment out of proportion to the expectations of the neighbours: what were they to think of a distinguished gentleman, a man who was written about in the newspapers, a “teacher from Shanghai”, being ready to give so much of himself to the children of a little village? 3

Vagaries of Educational Holism in the Hardships of “Rural Education”

We have already examined the motives of Zhang Zhiyong in coming to Wujiao, and the role played by Peng Yida’s article in making such a decision. In the present section we will first reverse this perspective and show how this arrival was perceived by the locals. Peng Yida’s second article, published in the Hunan Ribao, provides us with our starting point. This follow-up article, not initially envisaged, was published about one year after the first one.48 The writer speaks of the fortunate consequences of the earlier report, in that one reader of it, a “Shanghainese teacher,” decided to begin “running a sishu in Pingjiang,” as the article’s title proclaims. A new world of references opens up here. In this enthusiastic text, Zhang Zhiyong is not yet identified as a “xiansheng,” but rather as a “young man wearing glasses,” with the “appearance of a refined literatus,” while the stress is put on the Western clothes of the teacher. His arrival is presented 48  This second article was published on February 27th, 2004.

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as bringing with it modern educational devices, such as computers and scientific books for children.49 What this document brings out is, firstly, the adjustment of different initiatives around the word “sishu.” In effect, the idea of a “new sishu” did not originate exclusively in the mind of one person. Zhang Zhiyong’s project, having taken shape during the course of a long personal reflection on the shortcomings of the school system, and then further nourished in the 2000s through the debates about the “reading of the Classics,” finally emerged due to a local impulsion: the focus placed on Pingjiang sishu by the abovementioned Peng Yida, who was then a retired member of the local Consultative Conference. In turn, Zhang’s project aroused a certain amount of media and political interest, principally at a local level where Peng Yida continually supported him until the latter’s recent death. This supportive environment proved to be of great value during decisive periods such as his establishment in Pingjiang, and later in Yueyang counties. In other words, the stabilisation of the “New Sishu of Wufeng” in the local context was accomplished at the juncture of a life trajectory and a local dynamic. It was this dynamic that took for Zhang Zhiyong, at a given moment, the form of a call to action. In terms of his convergence with the locals, a certain threshold was reached at the second stage of Zhang Zhiyong’s experiment in Hunan: his relocation to the touristic village of Zhangguying. This village has some particular features worth noting here. Nestling in a sort of hilly bowl, it is dominated by the Zhang clan, whose genealogy, duly recorded in written form, presents Zhang Guying

49  Here are the first lines of the article: “Because of his interest in the culture of Pingjiang, the present writer last year wrote an enquiry entitled “Rediscovering sishu” […] which aroused attention in certain parts of the media. With the New Year barely upon us, we received some news: the arrival of a young teacher from Shanghai in the village of Wujiao […]. On the 10th of last February, I went to Wujiao to the house of Zhu Zhizhong, of the Zhu clan. Master Zhu greeted me with laughter, saying: “I have to thank you yet again! Your interest has brought Professor Zhang from Shanghai to us!” Professor Zhang’s full name is Zhang Zhiyong. A graduate from the Normal University of Fujian […], he worked in education in Shanghai for several years. In 2003, having read the article about the sishu in Pingjiang, he decided to go there and see it for himself. Last year, on the 26th day of the 12th month of the lunar calendar, he arrived at the house of Zhu in the village of Wujiao […] where, as well as talking directly to the aged Zhu, he also went from home to home gathering opinions from the peasants and from Zhu’s pupils. He shared a meal with Master Zhu and only went back to Shanghai at the beginning of the new year. Zhu and the others did not expect to see him again. However, he did return, on the 8th day of the 1st month. Among the items he brought with him in his car, along with a large pile of books, were some computers and a camera.”

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as its first ancestor.50 The clan’s cohesiveness is apparently very strong, with ongoing practices such as a clan committee dealing, notably, with applications from alleged descendants who want to be reintegrated into the clan. The buildings of the village, often well preserved and remarkably homogenous in their appearance, are today the object of a concerted communication campaign. Originally, in 1991, a documentary made by an admirer of the village, Zhang Guying Mansion, attracted the attention of the county authorities. The development of tourism started in the following years, with an increasing number of visitors from Changsha and Yueyang. On this basis, in 2001, the Organization Office of Yueyang County decided to invest 2 million yuan in Zhangguying, a decision which greatly improved the infrastructure of the village. However, local authorities say, the influx of tourists is somewhat restricted because of the mountainous setting and the fact that only a single road links the village to the neighbouring towns and cities. It was, therefore, to a place in transformation that Zhang Zhiyong decided to move his “New Sishu of Wufeng,” thereby distancing himself from the eponymous hamlet of Wufeng to which he had been, until then, geographically linked. In doing so, he bestowed on his sishu a decisive orientation towards an exploration of methodology detached from its source of interpersonal inspiration. The homage paid to Zhu Zhizhong is certainly maintained by the presence of the toponym Wufeng in the name of the “New Sishu,” but the dynamic of deterritorialization of the “sishu method” is now more clearly affirmed. At the same time, Zhang Zhiyong’s activity is becoming part of a local patrimonializing process, in a village which is presented in certain local publications, intended for tourists, as being “the first village under heaven.” As a building that forms a part of the local landscape, the sishu itself becomes one component among others of a place which claims to be representative, and finds in this new item an additional source of visual and functional coherence. Let us now give a sense of all this from the tourist’s point of view. Each day in Zhangguying, visitors get off the bus and, cameras at the ready, follow the path through the village. Going through the large gate that marks the beginning of the historic centre, then crossing a recently constructed esplanade flanked with stalls selling souvenirs and local delicacies, they find themselves in a succession of courtyards and little streets, where the houses are so densely packed that sometimes the rooftops crowd together and block out the sky. Perhaps some would like to lose themselves in this labyrinth, but the guide’s 50  It is speculated that he was a Ming regional commander who chose to retreat back to Yueyang. According to a later record, he was born in 1335 and died in 1407. It has not been possible so far to consult the jiapu (家譜) (genealogy) of the clan.

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loudspeaker leaves little room for straying from the itinerary: one must listen to the explanations, the anecdotes, the mysteries that surround the place. The sishu of Zhang Zhiyong has become a step in this informative tour. The tourists discover it on the other edge of the small stream they are following, near a set of wooden agricultural tools which has been put on display for their benefit. Above the door they can see a sign that reads “Scientific education of Kaoting. New Sishu of Wufeng.” On the same wall, there is another sign with a picture showing a severe looking man, wearing glasses and traditional robes. Just next to the introductory sentences of the Analects of Confucius, an inscription tells us who he is: “Zhang Zhiyong, transmitter of the last sishu in China.” Beneath the image is a website address. During the day the door is closed, but if one crosses the little bridge that separates the house from the tourist pathway, there is a good chance of getting a glimpse, through the door panes of dozens of children and of their jovial teacher—bespectacled but dressed simply and in Western style. In this description of the sishu as discovered by the tourists,51 a dissonance is deliberately suggested. We have two versions of Zhang Zhiyong here: the one is represented in traditional robes on the wall of the building, conveying a message of cultural continuity to the passing tourists (“the transmitter of the last sishu”); the other is working inside the house and believes—one only has to ask him to find out—that the signs he has mounted on the wall are of no use, that they are merely display, with no bearing on the success or the failure of his endeavour. This admission of disappointment not only betrays Zhang Zhiyong’s resigned attitude towards the limits of communication with these temporary visitors; more fundamentally, it also reveals the tensions likely to beset the career of a “sishu master” in today’s China. Here we must recall, as Durkheim pointed out, that no educative marginality can escape the “regulating education type” of a given society.52 Applied to the present case, this idea means that beyond his undeniable idiosyncrasies, Zhang Zhiyong’s trajectory presents an aspect of representativeness and, in one sense, of necessity. Though marked by the chance aspects of opportunities missed or taken, his involvement in sishu allows a glimpse of an overall configuration which encompasses it and confers on it its principles of intelligibility. It is through comparison that we can become aware of this. In effect, 51  This description corresponds to the situation in October 2011. As said above, the number of the children taken on has decreased since then. Moreover, the signs mentioned here have been taken down. 52  Emile Durkheim, Éducation et Sociologie (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1999), 45–46 (the French expression is “le type régulateur d’éducation”).

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Figure 9.3 Zhangguying’s sishu in 2011, with a sign showing Zhang Zhiyong in traditional robe. © Guillaume Dutournier

if we see contemporary Chinese sishu only as one form of unofficial education among others existing at the global level, or, on the contrary, if we reduce it to an “invention of tradition” similar to other well-known cases,53 we risk missing what renders this phenomenon distinct: the close interlinking of two dimensions—a more or less radical rupture with official education and the supposed antiquity of the practices involved—which everywhere else would tend to be far more separated. But comparison is also instructive on another scale: that of the national level and its variety of sishu. The fact is that, in addition to their obvious diversity and, notably, the differences in method we have already cited (including those relative to the use made, or not, of the Classics), most of them share a common feature: the homology between a certain educational format and a certain mode of insertion in the social space. Here the “New Sishu of Wufeng” is particularly revealing because it relies on everyday interactions with the neighbourhood, which in other cases, where greater discretion is frequently 53  See Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

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required, are most often avoided. Zhang Zhiyong’s situation therefore makes more visible something that is more latent in other cases. To make this point clearer, let us go back to the Zhang’s critical remarks on the subject of the gaokao (高考). These would be echoed by many parents involved to a greater or lesser extent in the sishu phenomenon: Those who prepare for the gaokao spend all day competing with each other over scraps of learning: this is perverse! I don’t agree with the notion that mastering these slender pieces of knowledge will help them much in their future lives. I believe that raising children should be an adventure; it should be something joyous. A way of satisfying their curiosity. Really like a journey, where we are happy whether we are travelling in the front or at the back. Fundamentally, Zhang Zhiyong’s “new” sishu and the other ones adopt the same attitude towards what they call “exam-oriented education” (yingshi jiaoyu 應試教育). All of these establishments, regardless of their size, reject the idea of pressure. Instead, they take their time, cultivating their own rhythm in a space where they try to escape from the obligations of the official system. Ultimately, the aims of official education are not necessarily contested—and Zhang Zhiyong himself, who ended up putting his own child back into the school system after his son was home-schooled for several years, is an eloquent example of this non-exclusivity. But in all cases, the format of official education is strongly criticized, inasmuch as it compartmentalizes knowledge into different subjects, levels and classes according to age. Contrary to this separating approach, the protected space of the sishu tends to install a different relationship with learning. Both unitary and multiple, this relationship is based on personal contact and patience, and is conceived as being the only way to fully realise the indissoluble nature of all knowledge. Depending on the type of sishu, this overall approach will be based on the use of different devices (with a greater or lesser importance ascribed to the Classics), and it will be enunciated in terms that are more or less moral (with emphasis on the idea that the sishu will teach its attendees how “to be a man,” zuo ren 做人) or, on the contrary, in terms of an increased capacity for knowledge (as is the case with the “New Sishu of Wufeng”). But in all cases, there is the idea of a holism of knowledge which itself calls for a certain relational arrangement. Here the quality of the master-disciple relation is the essential criterion, and from this point of view, the space of sishu is not a mere vehicle for heterogenous learning content: the new relational framework it creates is, beyond the educational devices it displays, at the heart of the method implemented.

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It is from this perspective that we should understand the importance of the familial component of sishu. Of course, it may seem a truism that a dedicated teacher should consider his pupils to be like his own children. It is nevertheless vital to keep this image in mind if one wants to understand properly the particularity of contemporary Chinese homeschooling. This importance of family may be symbolic or provisional—the masters of the sishu do not always have their own children among their charges—but is no less crucial in imposing the idea of a certain modality of the transmission of knowledge. What is suggested by the topic of the family is a relational quality, at the heart of which certain behavioural traits are supposed to blossom spontaneously, thus reinforcing the sense of their origin, namely the family itself. In some cases, this conception leads to a sort of overlap, the family being seen both as an operator of cultural transmission and as the very content of the transmission. Conceived of as an extension of the family, the sishu takes up these ideals of spontaneity and of self-perpetuation, but converts them into a joyful path to learning. In Zhang Zhiyong’s eyes, once the sishu has succeeded in creating a climate of pleasure for the learners, the process of knowledge will unfold almost naturally: In a sishu we start from the sense of hearing, of touch, of life, of all that constitutes life. Our children read the Sanzijing, the Qianziwen […], but they don’t learn them character by character: they treat them as a totality to be retained as such, beginning with the sense of hearing. After a year of practice they are capable of reading half of the Qianziwen without one mistake. This is the first stage. Then, they continue with writing exercises, a great number of them, based on sight and touch. In the modern way of learning characters, the pinyin is necessary but in the past the sishu did not need the pinyin. […] In the light of what I have seen, people leaving a sishu, at the end of three years, in terms of the mastery of language, know more than I who received my degree 16 years ago! This attitude concerning the best method for helping children acquire knowledge of reading and writing may appear easily reducible, for example, to the dimensions of the ongoing debate in France between upholders of the “syllabic method” and those of the “overall method.” Zhang Zhiyong would then just be reflecting the position held by supporters of the latter, that it is better to familiarise children with the entirety of linguistic signs, rather than their components (whether this means the different strokes, or the alphabetic transcription of each character). However, Zhang Zhiyong’s discourse represents more than a mere technical discussion. His point of view expresses a position

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in the social world. More specifically, here the holistic aspect of the educational method echoes the depth of the individual’s engagement with the educational process. Within this kind of homology lies the holistic dimension—in the anthropological sense—of sishu education in China today (zhengti jiaoyu 整體教育). In speaking of holism we are not asserting that sishu have transplanted whole into our modern world the characteristics of traditional Chinese society—where holism, the organizing feature of all traditional societies, took a particular shape, by means of a remarkable valorisation of knowledge.54 The holism we speak about here tends to be a merely methodological one: it is potentially confined to one particular sphere, that of education, which, as Durkheim clearly demonstrated, tended in every society to have “a life of its own” and a “relatively autonomous development.”55 However, the concern for spontaneity Zhang Zhiyong illustrates through his educational ideas and practice has effects beyond his interactions with the children: it furnishes a more general criterion for guidance in the social space. It is in this light that the numerous justifications given by him for his trial-and-error process when trying to find a location for his sishu should be understood: In 2004, having been here for one month, I went back to Shanghai. At the time, the Xinmin wanbao (新民晚報) interviewed me, asking me a lot of questions. But it proved impossible for them to write their report. As of that moment, I felt that, in Shanghai, they would certainly not be in agreement [with my project]. So I left Shanghai. I also didn’t want to make a lot of noise about this issue, nor waste my energy in polemics. Therefore I returned to the countryside, where so much still needs to be done: education there is really lagging behind. Even if at the beginning the peasants did not understand very well what I was trying to do, it was enough, in order to establish a certain trust between us, for them to see that a university graduate had abandoned Shanghai to come here. We know that after this phase of avoidance in Shanghai, Zhang Zhiyong finally found a suitable setting for his project in Pingjiang. Henceforth, the process of acclimatisation began to bear fruit. But whether it was in Dawan or in 54  For an analysis of the modern disunification process of the epistemic holism which characterizes traditional Chinese world, see Ji, Zhe. “Introduction: le jiao recomposé. L’éducation entre religion et politique dans la modernité chinoise.” Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident 33 (1) (2011), 5–34. 55  Durkheim, Emile. L’évolution pédagogique en France (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1990), 2 (we quote the introduction of Maurice Halbwachs).

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Zhangguying, each time Zhang’s involvement with local society created an echo between the interior and the exterior, where the same scheme of silent, gradual influence was operating. Here Zhang Zhiyong speaks about the first step of his sishu trajectory in Pingjiang: Naturally, at the beginning many parents did not understand and did not dare take the risk [of becoming involved]. Neither did the government support us very actively. […] I was thus obliged to use my child in the beginning but when the other parents saw the result they then approved of what we were doing and it was only at that point that they began to send their own children to us. In this respect, the establishment of the sishu in Zhangguying was even more eloquent. It was not Zhang Zhiyong himself who instigated this project, but the local officials who insisted so much that Zhang eventually agreed to make the move. The process took several months and was not without conflict with the head of the local school, who at first wanted to take advantage of the arrival of this new actor in the local educational field. However, during the negotiations, Zhang stuck resolutely to the principle of an independent educational setting “outside the system”. Although the onomastic analogy with the Zhang clan does not seem to have played any significant role here, Zhang Zhiyong was able to rely on the overt support of the Zhang clan, whose local prominence facilitated the signing of a petition addressed to the town’s Party Secretary. At the practical level, what makes credible such a connection between interior and exterior is the legal vacuum in which a “sishu master” is likely to experience his personal engagement in China today. From this perspective, as unofficial education becomes more institutionalised, the likelihood of such an experience will decrease. For now, lack of legal status means that someone like Zhang Zhiyong inhabits an unclear, intermediary position allowing him to combine elements from different backgrounds when he enters into interaction with others. However, the significance of these elements varies with the context in which they are displayed, and all the tensions a sishu may face in China today actually stem from this moving grey zone. In Zhang Zhiyong’s case, the sishu adventure remains a method in the making, and this evolutional dimension gives credence to its local or personal perception as a holistic experience; but at the same time, we have stressed a certain trend toward deterritorialization, which contradicts this holistic perception by taking the sishu process down a “disembedded” path, with more virtual and depersonalized

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interactions.56 Another tension derives from the necessity of corroborating (yinzheng 印證) the quality of the results through a certified range of evidence, whereas in everyday life, this verification mostly takes the form of interactions with the children and the parents, which remain extremely local. Concretely, it is in the relations with parents and officials that tensions are most evident. At such moments the fundamentally hybrid nature of the sishu appears very clearly. In a discussion with the Secretary of Zhangguying Party committee, Zhang Zhiyong’s sishu was successively presented, by the official, as the “luminous point” (liangdian 亮點) of the village, and then, in a rather different register, as a marvelous kindergarten where the children appear to be more intelligent than the others. From one statement to the next, we move from a holistic depiction in which the sishu is absolutized as the ultimate expression of local culture, to a relativist assessment where it becomes one item on offer among others, in the pre-school education market. Another discussion at which we were present took place between Zhang Zhiyong and the head of Pingjiang county. Zhang had requested this meeting in order to present an educational tool developed in his sishu: an electronic talking pen produced by his company in Shanghai (which was then essentially run by his wife) and designed to help the children discover written characters by themselves. The objective of the meeting was to propose this tool in order to modernise schooling in educational establishments. As it turned out, the meeting was a failure. The official took the view that Zhang Zhiyong was trying to commercialize something which might indeed be of use, but which the public-school system had no reason to sponsor. As for the parents in Zhangguying, their assessment of Zhang Zhiyong is generally extremely positive, to the point where the majority of those we interviewed wanted to send their children to the “New Sishu”. But the criterion for this assessment is based essentially on a comparison with the other educational establishments prominent locally. In the eyes of the inhabitants of the village and more widely those of the town of Zhangguying, “Master Zhang” remains a “teacher from Shanghai”, who speaks Mandarin well and whose work offers an “educational quality” (jiaoyu zhiliang 教育質量) considered greatly superior to that offered by the staff at local kindergartens, and sometimes even that offered at the primary school. For Zhang Zhiyong such expectations cannot be dismissed: while he acknowledges having raised the fees for his sishu in order to limit the number of children taken on, the mode of establishment chosen by him (i.e., spontaneous insertion in the countryside) 56  Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 17.

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forces him to take the demands of the local population into account in order to avoid becoming alienated from them. Caught up in such tensions, the adventure of the “New Sishu” may prove to be both demanding in terms of the daily effort required and sometimes laden with disappointments. 4 Conclusion What, in the end, is “new” about the “New Sishu of Wufeng”? How to characterise the combination, in the figure of Zhang Zhiyong, of both a “transmitter of the last sishu,” durably settled in Hunan on the tracks of an old master, and a creative Shanghainese professor who has spent years elaborating a new method intended for widespread use? Through this study we hope to have shown that a multi-layered process was at work in Zhang Zhiyong’s experience in Hunan. The historical detour we have made into the emergence of “sishu” as a synthetic term to identify the opposite of state-endorsed education during the Republican era has shed light on the shared assumptions that characterize the so-called “sishu revival” in China today. If such a revival relies on a claim for inheritance, which is largely biased, this is not only because it reworks some traditional features in ways which differ from their original settings. More fundamentally, it is because the very conception of knowledge the current sishu phenomenon illustrates is radically different from the conception that used to prevail in traditional times, when unofficial education could flourish outside of any fixed framework and without a clear-cut category to delimitate it generically. The word “sishu” is, in itself, a telling expression of the fixation of knowledge into institutionalised, disciplinarized forms, which now forms the common backdrop for both official and unofficial education. From this perspective, even the critical dimension of sishu towards the official educational system appears nothing but a supplementation of the basic trends of modern education, rather than an inversion of its premises: by advocating a personalised conception of the pedagogical relation, Zhang Zhiyong along with the other sishu promoters does not aim at radically breaking away from official education. He rather proposes a way to improve it through a better integration of individual diversity and a flexibilization of its methods—which in fact represent an increasing concern for Chinese educational institutions. In the end, a certain relationship to the official system remains integral to any sishu adventure, not only because most of the masters and parents end up sending their children to school, but also because such an adventure leads sooner or later to comparisons with official educational standards and results. From this perspective, sishu in China today do not appear as remnants of old

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times, but rather contribute to the increased reflexivity of the modern Chinese trajectory. Nevertheless, it is impossible to do justice to the continuist aspect of the sishu phenomenon without acknowledging the permanence, within its manifest reflexivity, of certain patterns of action that contribute significantly to its particularity. The Confucian component is certainly active here, but more as a way of combining the inner and the outer dimensions of action than as a narrow reference to some specific trend of thought. When Zhang Zhiyong conceives of the Classics as inspiring texts, when he mobilises certain Confucian figures and formulas as models for his own trajectory or for his pedagogical devices, he does not claim any rigid affiliation, but rather integrates these references within a miscellaneous, evolutional method simultaneously able to draw on Western references, or to entrust to technique the role of supplementing teaching relations. This ability to borrow from various sets of resources without concealing their heterogeneity seems typically modern. Consequently, if a traditional element does remain here, it is at another level, one that might be said to be “Confucian” in another sense: the homology between an adaptive educational method (the quintessence of which is expressed in Confucius’s formula: yin cai shi jiao 因材施教, “to teach according to talents”) and an adaptive social practice (which was illustrated historically by countless literati in traditional periods). In China today, this homology can be seen as the source of the qualitative difference of the sishu experience compared to other professional activities that are more inclined to separate their own sphere from their environment. It also allows us to better understand the willingness of the protagonists involved to accept a certain radicalness in their engagement. But finally, their engagement itself remains fundamentally hybrid, inasmuch as, while it tends to encompass different aspects usually separated in modern life (such as spontaneity inside and outside of the classroom), it never in fact gives up the cognitive tools that maintain the whole experience at a secondary level of social reality (such as the evaluative comparison with other educational formats, the calculation of costs and profits, and even the promotional value of the term they use to refer to themselves).57 This hybridity explains why, as personal and collective enterprises, sishu present a range of significant tensions and challenges, which may be certainly the source of excitement, but also of possible disillusion. 57  Hybridity in modern times can be seen as the “recycling of old values,” namely the encompassing and secondarisation of values which used to be overwhelming in more traditional times. See the theoretical proposals, in line with Dumont’s conceptions about modernity, of the anthropologist André Iteanu, “Recycling Values: Perspectives from Melanesia,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 5 (1) (2015): 139.

chapter 10

Confucian Revival and the Media: The CCTV “Lecture Room” Program Fabrice Dulery Broadcasted since 2001 on CCTV 10, “Lecture Room” (百家講壇 Baijia jiangtan, thereafter BJJT) is still a social phenomenon in today’s China. At its very beginning, the program was meant to be purely academic in terms of content, primarily targeting a learned audience. BJJT was bound to disappear due to low audience rates, until the producer, in 2004, decided to focus on Chinese traditional culture. This was a turning point. In spite of the apparent dull and solemn decorum in which each show is performed (a scholar standing before a pulpit gives a lecture about some historical character or classical opus during forty-five minutes), the program and its by-products1 have attracted millions of people and encountered an overwhelming success between 2006 to 2009, featuring scholars like Yu Dan 於丹 (lectures dedicated to the Analects of Confucius2) or Yi Zhongtian3 易中天 (the Three Kingdoms). The reasons of such a success are well known: an efficient narrative structure, the insertion of lively anecdotes, a constant interaction between past and present. According to the program slogan, the narrator has to serve the people. In a way that is not without reminding of the Maoist understanding of the ideological role of the intellectuals, it undertakes a mission of popularization of the “Chinese excellent traditional culture.” This mission needs to be understood within a larger narrative of national rejuvenation that builds on a variety of different resources and clearly includes, along with references to the socialist heritage, numerous references to Chinese traditional culture (see the introduction to this volume). Lots of speculations take place on the concrete role that traditional culture in general and Confucianism in particular could play in today’s China. By providing detailed information and analysis of a very 1  Regular publication of books, DVDs and videos on the Internet complement the TV broadcast. Videos can be found on BJJT official website: http://tv.cctv.com/lm/bjjt/. 2  Yu Dan, a Professor of media studies at Beijing Normal University, became famous with her program dedicated to the Analects of Confucius broadcasted on 2006. Five million copies of her book Confucius from the Heart (論語心得 Lunyu xinde) were sold within two years following BJJT program. 3  A Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Xiamen University.

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concrete case, this chapter emphasizes its function of jiaohua (education/ transformation) in a “mediatic age.” By the end of the 1990s, television in China had expanded to an extent that it had become the hegemonic medium of communications prior to the Internet boom. By 2005, television networks covered 94.4% of the Chinese population with a daily audience of 650 million people.4 The central TV network (CCTV) kept an organic function as voice of the party in a context where mass-media propaganda replaced the permanent exercise of symbolical violence in the name of class struggle by more efficient domination patterns staging forms of popular consent.5 This position was reinforced with the implementation of Hu Jintao’s doctrine of harmonious society. In a circular movement, television was supposed to perform correct guidance of public opinion while channeling ordinary people’s concerns. As a major cultural and communication medium, television is considered by the Chinese authorities as a battlefield for the propagation of governmentsupported traditional Chinese culture. Thorough study of the CCP’s doctrinal corpus6 in the 2000s indicates that political use of traditional culture was officially designated as a major task, alongside with the building of a spiritual civilization (Jiang Zemin) and the construction of harmonious society (Hu Jintao, 2005). The 2006 cultural development program (in the 11th 5-years plan) celebrated five thousand years of national culture as a source of inspiration and fighting spirit in a context where Chinese people face an even more complex and challenging environment. Within this theoretical framework, exaltation of Chinese traditional culture as an instrument of state-building was endorsed by the educational system and the media through a government-driven restructuration of the cultural industry (改造文化產業 gaizao wenhua chanye). By September 2011, the 6th Plenum of the 17th Congress reaffirmed in the most explicitly way the prominence of the CCP for the exaltation of Chinese traditional culture: Since its creation, Chinese Communist Party has been the heir and the faithful propagator of Chinese excellent traditional culture, while in the same time developing and actively propagating socialist advanced culture.7 The Central television network (CCTV) was to play a key role in the mission of

4  Zhu Ying, Two Billion Eyes: The Story of Central Television (New York: The New Press, 2012), 47. 5  Ibid., 15 6  See Sébastien Billioud, “Confucianism, Cultural Tradition and Official Discourses in 2000’s China,” China Perspectives (3) (2007): 53–68. 7  This text can be found at: http://china.huanqiu.com/roll/2011-10/2095239.html, browsed on January 29, 2013.

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disseminating selected elements of traditional culture by “bringing Confucius to the masses.”8 Under the CCP media guideline, cultural programs such as “Lecture Room” (百家講壇 Baijia jiangtan) are supposed to reflect the correct guidance of public opinion9 by upholding an ethical and moral edification process10 and by elevating the so-called “cultural quality” (文化素質 wenhua suzhi) of Chinese citizens. This traditional mission of television is reinforced by the exaltation of socialist values. Programs launched in the mid-2000s were in line with campaigns of promotion of harmonious society and “Eight Honors and Eight Disgraces.” By the 2000s, Chinese television central network was challenged by increasing market pressures. Audience measurement11 became a central criterion for assessing the viability of a TV program. Due to the competition coming from satellite regional channels, the CCTV network had to develop self-financing schemes in order to maximize profits. From then on, CCTV became involved into a huge process of industrialization and branding, having to cope with audience, Party and market. Advertisement became the main source of income during this period, which allowed CCTV to carry out its great transformation, evolving from two to sixteen channels between 1986 and 2004 and reaching a worldwide audience. Meanwhile, the importance of its traditional function of a mere Party’s mouthpiece diminished. Television gradually became an instrument aiming at guiding public opinion, channeling popular consent, and building popular support for public policies (see Li Changchun’s 2003 “Three Closeness Theory”: 三貼近 san tiejin and the importance of being close to reality, the masses and life12). In sum, television turned into an instrument 8  Guo Yingjie and Baogang He, Cultural Nationalism in Contemporary China (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 90. 9  Correct guidance of public opinion is good for both the Party and the people, and incorrect guidance potentially calamitous for both: 輿論導向正確是黨和人民之福，輿論 導向錯誤是黨和人民之禍. Jiang Zemin’s speech, 1996/09/26, quoted in “Guidance of Public Opinion,” Media dictionary. Center Media Project, Journalism and Media Studies Center, University of Hong Kong, http://cmp.hku.hk/2011/10/05/423/. 10  Zhu Ying, Two Billion Eyes: The Story of Central Television (New York: The New Press, 2012), 14. 11  On audience measure in China, see Zhang Tongdao, “Chinese Television Audience Research,” in TV China, eds. Ying Zhu and Chris Berry (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 168–179. 12  In 2003, Li Changchun said that the role of the media is to be closer to reality, closer to the public’s life and closer to the masses (“the Three Closenesses: san tiejin [三貼近]”), in Media dictionary. Center Media Project, Journalism and Media Studies Center, University of Hong Kong, http://cmp.hku.hk/2007/03/20/212/.

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supposed to channel the Party’s official line while closely reflecting popular concerns. This chapter explores how the TV program Lecture Room contributes to a deep trend of exaltation of traditional culture in general and Confucianism in particular. The main focus is on the way public intellectuals and “media gurus” introduce classical texts and promote some sort of jiaohua (educationtransformation) orthopraxy welcomed by the audience. 1

Baijia jiangtan (BJJT): From Elitism to Traditional Culture Popularization

BJJT is one of the very first programs broadcasted on CCTV 10, a thematic channel created in July 2001 and dedicated to education with a mission of raising the quality (suzhi) of the population.13 Although BJJT was not scheduled on primetime (lunchtime), its audience rose rapidly and was big enough by 2004: the viability of the program was secured and it was subsequently labeled one of CCTV 10’s “key programs” (品牌欄目 pinpai lanmu). So far, BJJT has never been interrupted. The first producers of BJJT, Li Wei 李偉 (2001) and Nie Congcong 聶叢叢 (2001–2004) chose an elitist approach. Bai jia 百家 (hundred schools) refers to pre-Qin’s schools of thought and is associated in modern Chinese with the possibility of contradictory discussion of ideas and expression of opinions in the academic sphere. The entire term baijia jiangtan also echoes the traditional asymmetric master-disciple relationships14 and implies that the audience is already learned enough to understand and appropriate the knowledge introduced by the scholar (xuezhe 學者) delivering the talk. At the beginning, the program covered a wide range of academic topics, from astronomy to biology, literature, history, economics and so on. The editorial policy of CCTV 10 was to respond to the expectation of an audience in the realms of science, culture and education (三品 san pin). In terms of positioning (定位 dingwei), the program targeted the educated middle class. World-known personalities or foreign and Chinese top-notch scholars were invited (among them Bill Gates, Stephen Hawking, physics Nobel Prize Yang Zhenning, Confucianism specialists Chen Lai and Zheng Jiadong). 13  CCTV10 website, http://www.cctv.com/homepage/profile/10/index.shtml visited on January 03, 2013. 14  講壇 jiangtan originally points to the platform from which the teacher delivers his lessons. By extension, it became a forum for academic exchange (Xinhua cidian).

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Despite its great ambition to cover every branch of knowledge, audience rates remained low until the arrival in May 2004 of Yan Chongnian 閻崇年, a specialist of Manchu studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who proposed a series of conferences titled “Pending mysteries of twelve Qing Emperors” (清十二帝疑案 Qing shi’er di yi’an). The series was highly successful and the audience increased almost fivefold. Previously, audience rates remained below 0.1%, Yan managed to reach 0.57%!15 In September 2004, a new producer, Wan Wei 萬偉, launched a public opinion survey in order to redefine the positioning of BJJT. It resulted in a decision to refocus the program on traditional culture. The rationale was to answer the demand of the public in this realm while meeting the goals set by the authorities in terms of correct guidance of public opinion and promotion of morals in society. Regarding audience expectations, Wan Wei declared:16 With economic development, thought continues to emancipate people. Everyone in China has now the opportunity to familiarize with foreign culture. But recently, lots of people felt the urge of being fed with traditional culture and to learn more about national history. This aspiration emanates from collective subconsciousness (潛意識 qian yishi). […] We already felt this urge with the enthusiastic reactions aroused by Yan Chongnian. We immediately had a correct perception of this need. Within the audience, Wan Wei identified17 several specific targets supposed to be representative of such a crave for traditional culture: forty years old housewives eager to acquire some cultural knowledge in order to increase their own “cultural quality” and offer a better education to their child18 as well as elderly and rural citizens keeping more vivid memories of the past than young urbanites. To those categories, Wan Wei added haigui19 that is, students returning 15  According to CSM (a major audience measure company in China). This percentage is measured on all Chinese channels. For a cultural TV show like BJJT, 0.5% is considered an excellent score. 16  Wan Wei’s interview in baike baidu: http://baike.baidu.com/view/2439364.htm, source: Beijing Qingnianbao Zhoukan, 2007. Visited on January 03, 2013. 17  Interview in 北京青年報 Beijing Qingnianbao on 22 Jan. 2007, art. 學術明星順利成章 xueshu mingxing shunli chengzhang. 18  See Tamara Jacka, “Cultivating Citizens: Suzhi (Quality) Discourse in the PRC,” Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 17 (3) (Winter 2009): 524 “among families from all walks of life, a passionate competition for social status is expressed in efforts to improve one’s own and one’s children’s suzhi through consumption of all manner of goods and services.” 19  Quoted by Zhu Ying, Two Billion Eyes: The Story of Central Television (New York: The New Press, 2012), 156.

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from abroad. By referring to these extremely different categories (both rural citizens from inner provinces and haigui), Wan Wei amalgamates two extremely different segments of the Chinese population that end up sharing a similar horizon of expectations via their TV screens. On the one hand we have an under-qualified and poorly educated group that nevertheless inherits from some sort of grassroots (caogen 草根) knowledge, wisdom and culture. On the other hand, Wan points to the Chinese nation prodigal sons, a modern and highly-educated group of people who experienced “the pollution of Western society” and finally decided to get back on the “right tracks,” rediscover and embrace traditional values. In this perspective, the craze for traditional culture is organic by nature and understood by Wan as deeply rooted in some sort of collective subconsciousness. Such a postulate legitimizes BJJT’s new mission: Scholars and specialists have to serve the people (為百姓服務 wei baixing fuwu) rather than a socalled cultural elite. It is in the scope of their mission to display and advocate a whole set of values enabling people to differentiate between good and evil, the civilized and the non-civilized.20 And even though traditional culture is commodified, it is also demanding: spectators watching the program are encouraged to improve their moral conduct and raise their own suzhi. A cultural program such as the BJJT is considered by its producers to be part of a self-cultivation process that has to benefit the whole Nation. Wan Wei’s conclusion is that the mission of those scholars is to raise the “quality” of the whole Nation. Once the repositioning of the program was completed Wan Wei insisted that invited scholars had to adapt the level of their speech so that content could be understood by a fifteen-year-old junior high school pupil.21 Therefore, by 2006, the program motto became “A Bridge between scholars and the people” (一座讓專家通向老百姓的橋樑  yi zuo rang zhuanjia tongxiang laobaixing de qiaoliang22) and the scholars involved were thus supposed to serve the popularization of the “excellent Chinese traditional culture.” Thanks to a clever storytelling and a branding process (品牌化 pinpaihua) maximizing the narrator’s visibility, BJJT turned both into a logo and a trademark. Between 2006 and 2009, it became the first CCTV network program in terms of Internet impact. The visibility of guest-speakers was enhanced by tie-in products; DVDs and books happened to be important assets of BJJT’s 20  Ann Anagnost, “The Corporeal Politics of Quality,” Public Culture 16(2) (April 2004): 195. 21  Even though most of BJJT guest-scholars are university professors, some are high school teachers, a “grassroots” status which is highly praised by the producers of the program. 22  BJJT website, http://tv.cctv.com/lm/bjjt/ browsed on December 17, 2017.

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branding strategy. Those tie-ins allowed scholars to build up their own singularity by appearing for instance in rankings of bestsellers. Scholars’ media impact was also measured by the frequency of their participation in talk shows, press articles, books signing sessions, speeches at Party School symposiums or propaganda meetings aimed at exalting traditional culture and invitations to managers training sessions. Internet search rates, blogs popularity, dedicated forums or fan clubs were also good indicators for assessing BJJT scholars’ impact on popular culture. Disconnected from the quality of their research, the authority of these public intellectuals and academic stars directly stemmed from their transformation into “image-persons.”23 In brief, it is visibility that generates “academic stars” (xueshu mingxing 學術明星) and not merely academic skills. 2

The Promotion of the Classics in the Baijia jiangtan

After 2007 and following the striking success of its historical programs, BJJT started to promote classical texts. Throughout Chinese history, classics were constantly compiled and commented upon and the BJJT was supposed to perpetuate this tradition. In this chapter, I consider Confucian classical texts as self-constituting discourses24 subject to interpretation by legitimate speakers within the enunciation framework constituted by BJJT. As self-constituting discourses, classics are foundational texts: they provide a framework and are supposed to delineate a value system shared by a community.25 Interpretations thus constitute a secondary discourse produced by a group of authoritative speakers (énonciateurs consacrés26) acting as mediators. Since the 1990s another type of texts—“minor classics” or compendia such as the 三字經 Sanzijing (Three Characters Classics) or the 弟子規 Dizigui (Rules of the Disciple)—have become increasingly important in China, whether in private schools or in all kinds of traditional culture-related events and now tend to be ascribed the very virtues of self-constituting discourses. Their prominence stems from their supposed simplicity (those texts were originally created for children education) and the “purity” of their content. Commentaries about those minor classics 23  Nathalie Heinich, De la visibilité: excellence et singularité en régime médiatique (Paris: Gallimard, 2012), 28. 24  Dominique Maingueneau, “Analyzing Self-Constituting Discourses,” Discourse Studies 1 (2) (1999): 183–199. 25  Thierry Guilbert, Le Discours idéologique: Ou La force de l’évidence (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007), 51. 26  From D. Maingueneau, quoted by Guilbert, Ibid., 53.

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emanating from renowned public scholars are added to this discursive chain. They act as inscriptions27 included into a tight network made up of a multitude of texts that are constantly quoted, repeated, updated to the point where, in the end, they constitute a doxa or the crystallization of traditional culture. Thus, the discourses of BJJT’s scholars are elevated to the rank of models. With success, they, in turn, gain the attributes of self-constituting discourses and are subjects to laudatory or negative statements, as well as a huge amount of derived inscriptions in the medias or on the Internet. Within the broadcasting process, scenography has a persuasive effect on spectators by turning discourses into acts of authority. The solemnity of the stage, the elocution of the speakers and the choice of the anecdotes introduced to the public are all elements that contribute to mold an authoritative discourse. Television is no longer a mere broadcasting instrument but a mean to transform reality. As “image-persons,” scholars become incarnations of the Classics; Thus, Yu Dan feels obliged to remind the audience, during books signing sessions, that she considers herself only an interpreter of the thought of the Masters and not an enunciator of a new self-constituting discourse. The following BJJT quotations confirm the monumental status ascribed to the Classics from the point of view of the scholars involved in the program: Classical texts are the cultural quintessence of humanity, the most valuable and significant works for a Nation. Yi Zhongtian, “I read the Classics,” 2007 Yi also reminds the audience that Chinese classical texts appeared during the pre-imperial period that was part of the axial age defined by Karl Jaspers, which saw the birth of Greek philosophy and Buddhism. According to Kong Qingdong (“I read the Classics”): Those works embody the psychological quality (心理素質 xinli suzhi) of the Chinese Nation and the moral behavior of the Chinese people. Kong also emphasizes that Classical text study was mandatory at school before the May 4th Movement (1919) For Li Bo (“Zeng Guofan”): Classical texts contain the thought of former generations, accumulated over time and practice. 27   Ibid., 56.

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According to Ma Ruifang (“I read the Classics”): They include the simplest and purest principles foundational for our existence. All these discourses posit the authority of axiological principles that have an effect on the audience. The value system they promote is considered a set of authoritative and unquestionable shared beliefs.28 2.1 Yu Dan, “The Strength of the Obvious” The obvious authority of Classical texts and the performative impact of these texts on people’s lives can be observed in Yu Dan speeches. I comment here upon three excerpts of Yu’s Confucius from the Heart (論語心得 Lunyu xinde29). a You should not think that the wisdom of Confucius is lofty and out of reach, or something that people today can only look up to with reverence. The truths (真理 zhenli) of this world are forever plain and simple (樸素 pusu), in the same way that the sun rises every day in the east, just as spring is the time for sowing and autumn is the time to harvest. The truths that Confucius gives us are always the easiest of truths (簡單 jiandan). They tell us all how we can live the kind of happy life (快樂的生活 kuaile de shenghuo) that our spirit needs. The wisdom of Confucius can help us to obtain spiritual happiness (心靈快樂 xinling kuaile) in the modern world, to get used to the daily routine (日常秩序 richang zhixu) of our lives, and to find the personal bearings (個人座標 geren zuobiao) that tell us where we are.30 b I would never have presumed to entertain the hope that I would ever dare to stand up and talk about The Analects of Confucius on television. I have always respected this book rather than fearing it, and my feelings towards it have always been plain, simple and warm. Once, in a small town in north China, famous for its hot spring, I saw something called the “Ask Sickness Spring.” It is said that anybody who takes a comfortable soak in

28  Thierry Guilbert, Le Discours idéologique: Ou La force de l’évidence (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2007), 73. 29  We use here Chinese original edition Yu Dan, Lunyu xinde (論語心得), zhonghua shuju, 2006 and the American edition, Confucius from the Heart, Ancient Wisdom for Today’s Heart (Macmillan, 2009). As a BJJT’s tie-in product, Lunyu Xinde was published following BJJT’s series featuring Yu Dan in 2006, which still remains one of the most successful series of the program. 30  Chinese edition, 5.

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its water will at once understand the source of their illness […] For me, the wisdom of Confucius is just such a spring of warming living water.31 c Chinese people traditionally approach learning in two ways: one we call “I explain the Six Classics” (我注六經 wo zhu liu jing), the other “the Six Classics explain me” (六經注我 liu jing zhu wo). The first method requires a lifelong study of the classics, lasting well into old age; by the time your hair is white and you have finished reading all books, you will be fit to make commentaries on the classics. But the second method, “the Six Classics explain me,” is on an altogether higher plan. It involves using the spirit of the Classics to explain and inform your whole life.32 The illocutionary force33 of Yu Dan’s discourse is infused with a ritual efficacy and relies on the repetition of universal truths. Classics are “plain and simple,” they point to “truths,” they are “simple and warm.” Confucian Classics are considered self-constituting discourses delivering a truth as unquestionable as physical laws driving the material world (sowing and the changing of the seasons are introduced here as analogies). Such a truth is eternal and a-historical. In those excerpts, we notice the accumulation of qualifiers linked to benevolence, warmth and simplicity (樸素 pusu, 溫暖 wennuan), supposed to depict this truth and celebrate the link between individual happiness and the Classics. These terms are repeatedly used in an incantatory way in the first text that can be considered an exordium since it points to the very first lines of Yu Dan’s book. Moreover, Confucian Classics are considered endowed with pragmatic efficacy. We notice an accumulation of action verbs (告訴 gaosu, indicate; 注 zhu, explain; 幫助 bangzhu, help; 連接 lianjie, link; 詮釋 quanshi, explain and inform). This accumulation reflects the performative dimension of the Classics. Thus, a particularly efficient illocutionary power crystallizes on the monosyllabic verb 注 zhu (here: explain): It is a fact that Classics “explain us,” that is, inform our lives. The illocutionary and modal verbs (“obtain,” “get used to,” “find”; our spirit “needs”) used in these excerpts emphasize that the message encapsulated in the Classics is an evidence that imposes itself on the reader. The latter is invited to a real “conversion” in order to give a direction to his/her life in the context of an overall value crisis. Implicit, ironical or stigmatizing allusions (“lofty and out of reach”, “look up to with reverence,” “a lifelong study”) point to a wrong approach of the Classics only considered the objects of academic exegesis and speculation. 31  Foreword to the American edition, 8. 32  Yu Dan, Lunyu xinde, 107. Confucius from the Heart, 173. 33  According to J. L. Austin, quoted in Guilbert, 166.

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On the contrary, Yu Dan’s approach to the Classics is based on feelings (感悟 ganwu), on what “the heart can get” (心得 xinde), and not only on analysis and close reading of the texts. She claims to be a non-specialist, only wishing to share her personal experience with people. Yu Dan’s method has been compared to Gadamer’s hermeneutical experience,34 in so far as she lets herself absorb by tradition (be “explained by the Classics”) but does not relate to tradition as an exterior object of investigation. Absorbed by tradition she enters without prejudice into a field of experience shaped by the past and attempts to introduce it to the audience. 3

Storytelling and Cathartic Dimension: An Analysis of the Series “I Read the Classics”

Building on the “Yu Dan phenomenon” BJJT producers decided to replicate this successful approach. In 2007 they launched a highly apologetic series entitled “I read the Classics” (我讀經典 Wo du jingdian). This series became a core element of the program. Sixteen “scholarly stars” were hired, each of them in charge of introducing to the audience a classic that was especially meaningful to him or her and constituted a lively source of inspiration. Such a narrative process was the result of a precise storytelling35 arranged by the production team of the program. Illustrated by all sorts of stories, told by the scholars involved, Classics became embodied by flesh-and-blood characters. 3.1

錢文忠 Qian Wenzhong:36 A Particular Initiation (獨特的啟蒙 dute de qimeng) “Classics,” this sacred word … When did they appear into my personal life? When did it begin? Which paths did they follow to burst into my small life? I was born in 1966, in a decaying literati family. We used to live

34  於丹動了孔子，還是讓孔子動了？Yu Dan dong le Kongzi, haishi rang Kongzi dong le?, Zhongguo qingnianbao, April 04, 2007, visited on http://www.china.com.cn/culture/ txt/2007-04/04/content_8064623_3.htm, March 15, 2013. 35  Christian Salmon, Storytelling, la machine à fabriquer des histoires et à formater les esprits (Paris: La Découverte, 2007), 9–10. Storytelling has been developed as a communication technique in order to promote trade marks or political discourses. It is not simply a narrative mode but also a political control tool that recreates reality, and wipes out contradictions and complexity. 36  Qian Wenzhong, a Professor at Fudan University’s Department of History is one of the most successful BJJT scholars.

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in an old dark alley. Our house walls were covered with a thick moss. As a child, I lived with my mother and my grandma. My father was not at home. In the courtyard, there used to be an old well and an Acacia tree that I still remember. Life was quiet if we stayed inside the house. When we crossed the threshold, we could see a square, right into the center of the city, which recently reclaimed its original name: Five Loves Square. At that time, this place was called worker-peasants-soldiers square. We could hear everywhere revolutionary songs, quotes and shouted slogans. As far as I could see, the square was covered with dazibaos. Red color was everywhere. Children love having fun, but I was reluctant to get out of the house. Was my childhood a happy one? It is hard to tell. When my son asks me this question, I am unable to answer. I remember that I once went to the train station with my mum to say goodbye to my dad. We ran into men with threatening faces. They wore red armbands. They took my dad’s suitcase and searched it thoroughly. What I want to say here is that Classics came very late into my life. It is very different from the way it was in literati families. According to tradition, I should have been initiated since the age of four to the Classics, and I should have learned them by rote. In addition, Classics entered in my life in a very particular way. That was in 1976. Guided by our teachers, we shifted from anti-rightist songs to anti-Gang of Four slogans. Our teacher taught us in bad English: “smash the four men.” After going back home, I wanted to show my knowledge and I started to recite what I had learned in front of my dad, like a parrot. However, much to my surprise, he started to shout at me. My father had graduated in English literature before the Cultural Revolution. He did not react in this way because he was a supporter of Gang of Four, which was absolutely not the case. Being an educated intellectual, he was certainly struck by my English level. How could teachers have taught me such a bad English? He was certainly outraged. However, because he had been shaped since childhood by the Classics, criticizing teachers in front of me was out of the question. At that time, we lived in a house built by English people. Inside, we could find a great deal of piled up books and sometimes I made great discoveries. One afternoon, I found a very old book, in poor condition. It was an annotated commentary of Zhu Xi’s Four Books. This book accompanied me for a long time, until I entered Beijing University, and it was still with me when I went studying in Germany. Unfortunately, I lost it while relocating. However, I want to believe that it has accomplished its mission, which was to awake to Classics the ignorant boy I was. This book began with two very short texts, the “Great Learning” and the “Doctrine

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of the Mean.” Without the help of anyone, I started reading this old book, printed with vertically non-simplified characters and stuffed with annotations. A lot of words were unknown to me but it stirred up my desire to discover new thoughts. Qian Wenzhong shares his experience during the Cultural Revolution, explaining how the classical education of his father prevented him from openly criticizing his son’s professors. Thus, a personal anecdote somewhat becomes the “teaser” introducing to the audience his discovery of the Classics. In the program, Qian Wenzhong also emphasizes how the Classics were relevant to help him improve his behavior and how they could again be relevant in the value vacuum of contemporary society. In his opinion, the current moral crisis requires the revitalization of a classical ethos based on ancient texts that could be expounded to a wide audience by a pool of scholarly intermediaries. In a similar way, other scholars also emphasize how they discovered the Classics in a period of turmoil. Thus, Yan Chongnian was sent to the countryside to be reeducated and had to read Classics in secret. As for 王立群 Wang Liqun and 紀連海 Ji Lianhai, they explain how reading Mengzi gave them the moral strength to resist to arbitrary and unfair situations. Wang was part of the sacrificed generation and was forced to quit school twice during his childhood. He entered university when he was in his late thirties. Ji, in spite of his results at the gaokao (university entrance examination) had to wait for seven weeks before being admitted in a university. Those testimonies, filled with gravity, stirred up a palpable emotion within the audience of people attending the live broadcasting of the program in the TV studio set. Cameras for instance focused on the emotion of elderly women who could not hold their tears. 孔慶東 Kong Qingdong37 and Classics Rehabilitation in Contemporary Society Beijing University Literature Professor Kong Qingdong’s participation to the program attempts to demonstrate how contemporary China is everywhere rediscovering classical texts. The first part of his talk consists in a dialog with a ten-year-old Beijing boy regularly attending Classics reading classes and now able to recite the Classics in three characters (Sanzijing) and the Analects of Confucius (論語 Lunyu). Kong Qingdong concludes that the whole country is embracing the Classics and that this trend will in the future expand to the whole world.

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37  A Professor of Chinese Studies at Beijing University and a prominent media figure known for his nationalistic views.

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Nowadays, a lot of children study the Lunyu, not only in Beijing but also in other cities, in rural areas, in Taiwan, in the Chinese overseas community and in the entire world. Why should one read the Lunyu? Our contemporaries must know the writings of Confucius and Mengzi, in the same way as they should know other systems of thought. In 1982, a Nobel Prize winners meeting took place in Paris. Laureates considered the following question: “what kind of thought will the world need for the 21st Century?”38 The unanimous answer was: The thought of Confucius, which is an important component of humanity’s thought (pictures of modern buildings are displayed in the background). The thought of Confucius constitutes their spiritual abode or “spiritual garden” (pictures of typical Chinese gardens are displayed on the background). The concept of Harmonious society directly comes from Confucianism. Confucianism touches us in our daily life. This thought is a dynamic one, a tolerant one, which can explain that Chinese civilization is the only one of the five ancient civilizations that has not yet disappeared.39 Kong Qingdong then draws a parallel with his own childhood in the 1970s; During the “criticize Lin Biao and Confucius” campaign, teachers wanted us to write papers and dazibaos. One day, a teacher asked us: “What does the Lunyu’s sentence 克己復禮 mean? (keji fuli, which Kong Qingdong explains later in the program as: to control oneself and to restore Zhou dynasty rituals). The teacher’s answer was: “to restore capitalism.” Kong Qingdong then analyses this period in the following way: A culture that refuses its own past cannot give birth to democracy, rule of law and freedom. Where does our contemporary thought come from? Is the past necessarily equivalent to despotism? Once, we thought that everything coming from the past was good. Today, we are facing the other extreme. In conclusion of his talk, Kong Qingdong continues his conversation with the boy: 38  This anecdote could be heard in several BJJT shows. 39  The continuity of Chinese civilization is also reaffirmed by numerous BJJT orators. The repetition effect reinforces BJJT performative efficacy and contributes to turn the show in a self-constituted discourse.

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– – – –

Do you find the Analects of Confucius useful? Yes. Now, I understand everything in my Chinese class. Is it relevant to improve your relationship with your classmates? It is also very useful. Whenever I promise something, I keep my word (言而 有信 yan er you xin). – And what about your behavior? – Before, I used to be impulsive. Now, when I think about the Lunyu, I am quieter. – This is what we call self-cultivation and the culture of the Heart (修身養心 xiu shen yang xin), self-control and respect of rites (ke ji fu li). In this series, invited scholars exalt the rehabilitation of Classics in contemporary China. Explicit parallels drawn with the Maoist period reinforce the performative dimension of their discourses. These discourses have in fact a cathartic dimension that is reminiscent of the “speeches of bitterness” (憶苦 思甜 yi ku si tian) imposed at the beginning of the 1960s in order to condemn the old society and make the population forget about the calamities of the Great Leap Forward. In this program, the Maoist period is ascribed the same function as the one that was once ascribed to feudal society. In fact, it is striking that in BJJT speeches dark ages often seem to be traced back to the May 4th period. To the contrary, post-reform China is celebrated for having rehabilitated traditional culture. This reversal of discourse reflects the emergence of a new horizon of expectations: Contemporary China will be regenerated thanks to a correct study of Classics considered endowed with a universal value. 4

Recourse to the Classics to Serve Vulnerable Populations

During the 2009 New Year Special Program dedicated to Classics reading (大 年初一說經典 Danian chuyi shuo jingdian), BJJT gave voice to ordinary people and emphasized the importance of the Classics in the daily life of Chinese people: New Year traditions have never changed in thousands of years. What has shaped those traditions that are now at the core of our way of life? What has forged our national character and influenced generations of Chinese people? The answer is simple: The masters of the pre-Imperial schools of thought. Today, as we are following the path of reforms and opening, our society is threatened by multiculturalism. Does the thought of pre-Qin masters still have an influence on our contemporaries? According to Yi Zhongtian, their ways of thinking still infuse the hearts of the Chinese (voice-over: introduction of the program).

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Yi Zhongtian hosted the program and engaged in a discussion with a man named Yang Zhiguo 楊治國. The talk took place on a stage meticulously decorated for the New Year and the participants wore traditional suits. Yang Zhiguo was introduced as a “grassroots scholar” (草根學者 caogen xuezhe). Once a peasant, he worked hard to become vice-secretary of a mountain district in Shanxi. Initially a self-taught scholar, he ended up graduating from university and wrote a book dedicated to Mengzi titled Mengzi Seen by a Commoner (小人物評孟子 xiao renwu ping Mengzi). Clearly, for Yi Zhongtian, it is Yang’s knowledge of the Classics and his deep roots in traditional culture that had been instrumental in the way he climbed the social ladder. They increased his “general level” (suzhi) and provided him with a valuable worldview. At first, the discussion focused on local customs. Yi Zhongtian noted that in Yang’s village (和順 Heshun, Shanxi province) cultural traditions were still alive. Films shot in the village illustrated this assertion by displaying antithetical couplets written on scrolls for the New Year as well as the preparation of dumplings. The audience could also watch a whole family kneeling before an ancestor’s altar. Yang Zhiguo confirmed that Heshun remained a very traditional district and that some rituals and ceremonies were inspired by the Classics. In addition, every single fellow countryman who had moved to coastal cities had to come back home during the New Year in order to fulfill his filial piety duties. Only members of the Army were exempted since commitment to the motherland stood above everything. The word 孝 xiao (filial piety) was emphasized and this value was said to permeate individual behaviors and actions: Because of the weather, one of my relatives who is working in the south couldn’t make it back home. While giving a call to his mother, he knelt down on the snow in the phone box saying: “I am bowing down right at the place where I am” (applause from the audience). Yang Zhiguo adds that New Year is propitious to the harmonization of conflicts within the community. According to him, Classics reading is a vital need in rural areas. Yi Zhongtian notes that although rural citizens do not all read the Classics, most of the people put them in practice. Rural solidarities allow local communities to care of the five vulnerable categories (widows, widowers, orphans, singles and disabled). Yang Zhiguo highlights the importance of Mengzi’s principles: while caring for our elderlies, we shall not forget isolated ones. While caring for children, we shall not forget orphans (老吾老以及人之 老，幼吾幼以及人之幼 lao wu lao yi ji ren zhi lao, you wu you yi ji ren zhi you). In the same vein, he and Yi Zhongtian agreed on the fact that if every Chinese performed its filial duty and maintained a level of family stability and

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cohesion as high as the one observable in Heshun district, this would avoid governmental efforts to build a pension system. Yang Zhiguo seized the opportunity to emphasize the success of the show in his district, positing by the same token that Classics reading remained important in rural areas and would still continue to be so in the future. More practically, the impact of the Classics at the local level is said to follow the way of ruling by rites and music (禮樂之鄉 liyue zhi xiang). This consists in the teaching of “correct names”, that is, elementary norms of politeness, to the youngest in accordance with the Mencian idea that aspiration towards the Good has to be nurtured through education (養 yang). As for music, it is transmitted through the performance of local operas, themselves derived from the Classics. According to Yang Zhiguo, the rural knowledge about the Classics is by nature eclectic and their practical use is based on some sort of intuitive syncretism building on various traditions. However, the influence of Confucianism remains central through the enduring influence of filial piety (nobody in Heshun applied for government support for the care of his/her old parents) and patriotism (lots of young people eager to serve the country join the Army). The audience attending the program was also given the opportunity to intervene: A fellow countryman: The fact that ordinary people use the Classics is natural. This is the result of thousands of years of sedimentation. Nowadays, the Classics are deeply rooted in rural areas. They contribute to build the new socialist countryside, to uplift people and to develop civilization. A young urbanite: I am not from the countryside, but I think that grassroots scholars like Yang should be entrusted with leadership functions. A student addressing himself respectfully to Yang, calling him Professor: Studying the Classics is not the most important. To put them in practice (實踐 shijian) is by far the most essential thing to do. A young woman: we can find solutions in the Classics to solve problems faced by rural areas. An old man, with university education: Yang Zhiguo represents a new generation of peasants. Chinese cultural roots are still alive in spite of modern changes. The authenticity of the people and traditions inherited from our fathers cannot disappear. A young man: we have entered the age of globalization. The foundation of a Nation is its own culture. But Chinese culture has not yet fully

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blossomed. Traditional culture is still to be rejuvenated. You can see that the United States worldwide strategy is a cultural one. Hollywood movies can be seen in every country. China is still far behind. Our experts’ task is to promote our culture. By broadcasting this special show, the producers of BJJT intend to demonstrate the multifaceted efficacy of Classics. The countryside is depicted as the sanctuary of traditional culture while cities are unable to resist to the assaults of multiculturalism. Yang Zhiguo’s district appears as an idealized place where traditional cultural principles can unconsciously be put in practice because peasants are “by nature” incapable of duplicity. This a-intellectual approach is supposed to serve as an example for urban citizens. In Heshun, filial piety and patriotism are introduced as the norm. Mass incidents caused by pollution or expropriations and conflicts between population and local officials seem to have never existed. Their deep roots in traditional culture allow Heshun people to benefit from the fruits of economic growth. This propaganda program provides answers to crucial contemporary issues such as the problem of elderly care or migrants and peasants integration into harmonious society. Interventions from the audience, clearly prepared in advance (some of them had difficulties reciting the speeches they had learnt off by heart), had a tautological effect by confirming the very content of the message promoted by the program. 5

Jiaohua and Orthopraxy in BJJT

BJJT’s objective is not only to promote a set of values, but also an orthopraxy. Erika Evasdottir defines orthopraxy as “the express formulation of action to conform to commonly held standards.” This demands a deep understanding of “the audience that matters” so that manipulated structures, rules, categories and norms be commonly shared and understood by all within a stable order.40 In BJJT and in accordance with the Confucian tradition, the audience that matters is first to be found in the sphere of the family. Family is the primary field of application of Confucian “education-transformation” (教化 jiaohua), followed by schools, work units and finally the nation. In this context, jiaohua can be considered a process by which one incorporates the orthopraxy. In order 40  David Palmer, “Erika E. S. Evasdottir, Obedient Autonomy: Chinese Intellectuals and the Achievement of Orderly Life,” China Perspectives 62 (2005), visited on March 1, 2014: http://chinaperspectives.revues.org/561.

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to reach this goal, children education is the crux of the matter. In fact, the current Classics reading movements promoted, among others, by Taiwanese activist and scholar 王財貴 Wang Caigui and targeting children (shao’er dujing yundong 少兒讀經運動) but also adults largely echoes Qian Wenzhong’s presentation of children education compendia (啟蒙讀物 qimeng duwu) in the program.41 5.1 Qian Wenzhong and his Series about Education Compendia According to Qian Wenzhong, the contents of the Classics in Three characters (Sanzijing 三字經) and of the Rules of the Disciple (Dizigui 弟子規) complement each other. Whereas the Sanzijing introduces history and some general knowledge (geography, material life, astronomy etc.), the Dizigui more specifically teaches rules of good behavior (規矩 guiju) in society and provides standards reflecting the prevailing orthopraxy.42 In his introduction to the Dizigui,43 Qian Wenzhong underscores the humble dimension of this small book written by Li Yuxiu 李毓秀, a 17th century unknown teacher who had successfully passed the imperial examination at the county level (秀才 xiucai) but repeatedly failed to pass superior exams. Although the text is extremely short, Qian nevertheless insists on its pedagogical efficacy. The Dizigui was indeed written by a countryside private school teacher, who could claim to have a solid experience with children education. Qian highlights the relevance of the Dizigui for modern times: Today, this kind of book responds to an urgent need (迫切需要 poqie xuyao) expressed by society. Dizigui can be useful for the education of children by inculcating those excellent rules of conduct and instructing how to follow them. Dizigui is an outstanding traditional teaching primer. How wouldn’t we be grateful to our ancestors? How could we refrain from reading Dizigui? Qian Wenzhong redundantly raises rhetorical questions in his lectures as a way to underline the strength of evident truths. But he also immediately uses a concrete example to emphasize Dizigui practical efficiency:

41  Sébastien Billioud and Joël Thoraval. The Sage and the People: The Confucian Revival in China (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 17–106. See also Dutournier’s contribution to this volume. 42  Qian Wenzhong’s interview, “Dangqian, bi renhe shihou geng xuyao jingdian” 當前比 任何時候需要經典 [Our time needs the Classics more than ever], Qianjiang wanbao, 12/01/2011. 43  解讀弟子規 Jiedu Dizigui, (how to read Dizigui), broadcasted on 2010, 22 parts.

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Geng Guoyan 耿國艷 is a Beijing city Pinggu district police officer. He often has to resolve juvenile delinquency cases. During his spare time, he decided to teach law and moral classes in Pinggu primary and secondary schools. Unfortunately, results remained poor. One day, he discovered the Dizigui and realized that everything that he was trying to teach to the children was in this small book. From that day on, he devoted himself to teaching the Dizigui. This was extraordinary. Why? Because the number of children who came to attend his class rapidly reached two thousand each time, to the point that he had to teach outside, on a sports ground. He saw that lots of parents stayed to listen to his lectures. One day, as he was reciting a Dizigui sentence, hundreds of children started to repeat after him. Geng then realized that Dizigui was the best solution to solve delinquency problems, because those problems were generated by inappropriate behaviors. It was necessary to teach children as early as possible about the importance to respect rules and law. Geng efforts were soon rewarded with unexpected results. In a nearby village, two young people of the same neighborhood youths fought continuously. Neither mediation attempts nor sanction proved to be useful. One day, Geng quoted four Dizigui sentences in front of the belligerents: 凡是人，皆需愛， 天同覆，地同載 Fan shi ren, jie xu ai, tian tong fu, di tong zai (All the men, without exception, need love. We all live under the same sky, on the same earth). To his surprise, those sentences were convincing enough to end the feud. These neighbors transformed into model neighbors. Another example involves the same police officer, explaining to children that he was able to distinguish a man’s skeleton from a woman’s skeleton. Women who gave birth to children have grey bones, because a mother gives her entire nutriments to her child during pregnancy. Hearing Geng’s explanation, a girl who was overly spoilt by her parents was suddenly touched by the message. She then decided to show respect to her mother by using the politeness form “您 nin” when addressing to her. After that, the girl entered an excellent secondary school. [Qian Wenzhong comment]: Why did I tell you this true story? I want to say something to each of you. Should we read Dizigui? I think the answer is obvious. How can such a little book have so great an efficiency? Nowadays, parents have only one child and they are worried about education problems. How did a spoilt little girl realize while reading Dizigui that she owed her parents everything?

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Qian Wenzhong thinks that the main concern of the parents is exaggeratedly centered on the results of their children school results and on their physical health, to the point where they easily forget the importance of the proper rules of conduct in society. A child who cannot understand these rules will experience difficulties in the future. Subsequently, and this is a recurrent theme in Qian’s lectures, Chinese civilization would be in danger if its destiny was to be handled by an ignorant generation unable to acquire the set of moral values attached to traditional culture. Before inviting people to delve into the Dizigui, Qian Wenzhong proposes what he thinks to be the correct approach: readers should each day learn by rote four to six sentences and then should revise them during the weekends, in tune with the recommendations of the Lunyu: 溫故而知新 wengu er zhixin (Study again ancient knowledge before learning new things). In the program, Qian first quotes the foreword of the Dizigui before explaining the text: 弟子規，聖人訓，首孝弟，次謹信、泛愛眾、而親仁、有餘 力、則學文 (di zi gui , sheng ren xun, shou xiao di, ci jin xin, fan ai zhong, er qin ren, you yu li, ze xue wen) The rules of the disciple have been taught by Confucius. You must first be filial towards parents and respect the elderly, then speak sincerely and prudently. You should love every man and care for humanity. If you still have some strength, use it to study. [Qian Wenzhong comment]: A person can be illiterate, or never have been to school. This does not prevent him or her from becoming a real human being. According to tradition, moral norms of conducts are above knowledge. A bad man with a great knowledge can be awful! In the US series “Man from Atlantis,” the only concern of the bad guy, Doctor Schubert, is the destruction of humanity. Unfortunately, we reversed priorities. In today’s children education, knowledge is above moral conduct. This is the reason why our children face so many problems. Qian Wenzhong shows reluctance towards scientist rationality, which is supposed to go hand in hand with economic development. For him, what the youngest need above all is moral regeneration. In other lectures, Qian alludes to the urge of broadly popularizing the teachings of the Dizigui at school and criticizes local officials who do not share this view. For instance Shandong

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provincial authorities decided in 2011—thus following the Party’s ancient critical attitude towards traditional culture—to suppress the Dizigui from textbooks. According to Qian Wenzhong, teaching the Classics everywhere in the country is also a matter of justice in order to avoid that those ignoring loyalty and filial piety might dominate those who abide by moral rules. BJJT lectures have a strong impact in the media and lectures by most prominent scholars delivered in all parts of the country and focusing on the needs of vulnerable groups are highly publicized. This phenomenon is part of a deeper propaganda trend that consists in staging harmony in society. The following excerpts provide some examples of the situation: Yu Dan in prison Yesterday, Yu Dan gave a lecture on the Lunyu in front of six thousand inmates at the Beijing Qinghe detention center. The topic was “discover one’s own mind, follow a moral life.” Yu Dan quoted Confucius: “the greatest error is not to rectify one’s errors.” “When I went into the room, she said, I saw words on a banner: ‘Help Qinghe inmates stay away from crime after release.’ Everybody in his life experiences some trials. But the strength of our spirit is endless. If you keep a positive and optimistic attitude while facing those trials, you will be regenerated.” According to the wardens, a lot of inmates bought Yu Dan’s book. The Lunyu fever is as high inside the walls as outside.44 Qian Wenzhong in the coalmine During a book signing session in Nanjing, Qian Wenzhong told journalists that he had been everywhere in the country to disseminate the Dizigui. He even went to the most remote places. Yesterday morning, he was talking to Shanxi miners. “Surprisingly, they were waiting for me in front of the mine-shaft, holding a Dizigui in the hands, asking me to sign autographs. They had left black fingerprints on their books, which testifies that they had brought them along in the shaft. Qian Wenzhong was also particularly moved while visiting a prison in Shanxi. He noted that Dizigui was included in the rules of procedure.45 44  “Yu Dan wei Beijing 6000 fuxingrenyuan jiang ‘Lunyu’” 於丹為北京6000服刑人員 講《論語》 [Yu Dan speaks about the Lunyu to 6000 Beijing inmates], zhongguowang, http://www.china.com.cn/education/zhuanti/jsj/2007-09/05/content_8823584.htm, visited on 13/02/2013. 45  “Qian Wenzhong tuiguang “Dizigui” xia kuangjing jin jianyu” 錢文忠推廣《弟子規》 下礦井進監獄 [Qian Wenzhong goes into the mineshaft and visits a prison to popularize

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Qian Wenzhong and Yi Zhongtian Meet Rural Teachers On July 28, 2012, 135 Gansu and Guizhou rural teachers and sixteen Shanghai teachers of migrant children started a ten days training session at Huadong Normal University. During this session, they met Yi Zhongtian, Qian Wenzhong, Jiang Changjian and Cui Yongyuan. Qian Wenzhong declared that rural areas and inner provinces contribute to city development since lots of rural workers live there to build our living environment. He hoped that training session might contribute to pay back our debt to them.46 5.2 Education-Transformation: Models and Countermodels In 2010 and 2011, a young scholar named Li Bo47 郦波 introduced a 14 episodes series dedicated to Zeng Guofan 曾國藩 (1811–1872). This emblematic figure is known for his role in defeating the Taiping rebellion and for his promotion of the “Self-Strengthening Movement” which marked the beginning of China’s first industrial rise. Nevertheless, Zeng Guofan remained for long a controversial historical figure. During the Maoist era, he was considered a traitor (賣國賊 maiguozei) before being rehabilitated in the 1990s and thus becoming a symbol of revival of the Chinese nation.48 Zeng was broadly considered—including by people like Mao Zedong or Chiang Kai-shek—one of the greatest figures of Chinese history, especially due to moral standards he was able to reach through education and self-cultivation. As a perfect family man and an archetype of the loving father, his exemplarity is reflected in the achievements of his descendants.49 In BJJT, Li Bo introduces the “family book” (Jiashu 家書) in which Zeng gives pieces of advice to his children. At first, Li Bo underlines how a long process of education/transformation (jiaohua) and self-cultivation fashioned Zeng’s life and turned him into a the Dizigui], Zhongguo wenming wang, 05/09/2010, visited on February 13, 2013. 46  “Cui Yongyuan, Yi Zhongtian, Qian Wenzhong gong hua xiangcun jiaoyu” 崔永元、易 中天、錢文忠共話鄉村教育 [Cui Yongyuan, Yi Zhongtian and Qian Wenzhong talk about rural education], Renminwang, 06/08/2012, http://sh.people.com.cn/n/2012/0806/ c340958-17326743.html. 47  Currently a Professor at Nanjing Normal University in the Department of Chinese Literature. 48  Guo Yingjie and Baogang He, “Reimagining the Chinese Nation: The Zeng Guofan phenomenon,” Modern China 25 (2) (1999): 142–170. Bao Zunxin, “A propos de la fièvre de la fin des Qing,” Perspectives chinoises 27 (1995): 12–17. 49  In Zeng Guofan’s house (in Hunan), pictures of his descendants, including Guomingdang members who went to Taiwan, are displayed in a specific room. (field observation, November 2012)

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“perfect man.” As a child, Zeng was dumb to the point that he was not even able to memorize a poem. It was only with strenuous work and perseverance that he passed the successive examinations scholar-literati had to sit for in order to go ahead in their career. Before going to the capital, he asked his father for advice, thus following the tradition. The latter urged him to stay away from carnal desire and superficiality. During his lifetime, Zeng Guofan kept a personal diary, which Li Bo compares to Rousseau’s Confessions. The diary indicates that each day, Zeng observed a silent (静 jing) moment of self-reflection.50 It is also without uttering a word that he assessed candidates applying to join his staff.51 He carefully observed their physiognomy and posture, selecting them primarily because of what he anticipated to be their potentialities. Li Bo relates that Li Hongzhang used to get up late and to appear for breakfast much after Zeng Guofan and his staff. One day, Zeng forced him to wake up. From this day on, Li Hongzhang rectified his attitude. Twenty years later, Zeng Guofan retired as Li Hongzhang took charge of imperial diplomacy. Through the exemplarity of honest officials, scholars presenting the program emphasize that jiaohua and self-cultivation are no empty words: They reflect a process of transformation of the self that is not out of reach but accessible to everyone. In the part of the program dedicated to the Classics of filial piety (Xiaojing 孝經) Zhu Xiangfei 朱翔飛 underscored that Zeng Guofan was worried by the precocious cleverness of his eldest son which confined to arrogance. Zhu’s comment, though indirect, in fact clearly alluded to the current situation in China and to the sons of the wealthy (富二代 fu erdai) and the officials (官二代 guan erdai). Zeng Guofan was presented as a model of tolerance, allowing his two sons not to sit for examinations. The eldest became one of Qing’s first ambassadors and the second a brilliant scientist. In Li Bo’s opinion, Zeng Guofan’s attitude reflects the adaptability of Confucianism to modernity. Education-transformation is an important part of orthopraxy. Li Bo’s message was that everybody has the potentiality to follow Zeng Guofan’s path.

50  The self-cultivation process undertaken by the young Zeng Guofan points to the ambition of the authorities to raise the “suzhi” (level or “quality”) of the people in contemporary China. (Terry Woronov’s Transforming the Future, ‘Quality’ Children and the Chinese Nation, PhD diss., University of Chicago, 2003, quoted by Tamara Jacka, “Cultivating Citizens,” 529) 51  This anecdote is also quoted by Qian Wenzhong.

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5.2.1 The Rise and Fall of Hu Xueyuan: A Counter-model Hu Xueyuan’s 胡雪岩 (1823–1885) fate was introduced by a renowned Taiwanese expert of Yijing, Zeng Shiqiang 曾世強.52 Born in a poor family, Hu Xueyuan became one of the most famous bankers of the 19th century. A Zuo Zongtang (左宗棠)’s protégé,53 he financed China’s first industrialization wave, created a commercial empire and even bought an official title. Following the 1882 financial crisis, his network collapsed and he eventually died in misery. Zeng Shiqiang, who is regularly invited to deliver speeches during corporate training sessions, explained Hu Xueyuan’s fall as a result of his greed. After his fall, Hu regretted not to have taken Fan Li—the honest Prime minister of the kingdom of Wu in ancient China who retired to finish his life in a fishboat—as a model. And Zeng concluded: If you devote your life to earn money, sooner or later, you will die because of money. In our personal development, we must step by step adjust our life. A late success is better than an early success. Quality and Civilization of the Mores: Peng Lin (彭林)’s Practice of the Rites Reinterpreted in modern terms by ideologues or public intellectuals, the ancient ideal of self-cultivation turns into the elevation of one’s “level” or “quality,” that is, into the elevation of one’s suzhi. Suzhi is thus associated with a personal effort and a ritualized behavioral dimension that in the end also generates a certain social status. This concept is particularly thriving in discourses addressed to and emanating from the urban middle-class, a middle-class that is precisely the core target of the BJJT. The acquisition of norms of civility is part of a process of social homogenization that also consists in the identification of “superior citizens.” A low suzhi leads to marginalization in a context strongly shaped by social Darwinism. The rediscovery of a correct approach to rites and behavioral standards is thus an individual as well as a national issue. In his program dedicated to the rites (Peng Lin shuo li 彭林說禮,54 A discussion on rites by Peng Lin), Tsinghua University history Professor Peng Lin starts with ordinary cases of the daily life: How to propose a toast, introduce one’s wife, observe the proper rules of table etiquette? He emphasizes the importance of assessing the conformity of one’s conduct to proper ritual rules and etiquette, themselves the outer expression of moral feelings and inner moral 5.3

52   Hu Xueyan de qishi 胡雪岩的啟示, (15 episodes), broadcasted in 2008. 53  Zuo Zongtang (1812–1885) was one of the most prominent military leaders in the late Qing dynasty and contributed to the Self-Strengthening Movement after 1860. 54  Broadcasted in 2011, seven episodes.

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knowledge. In Peng’s opinion, the value crisis that emerged as the dark face of economic development deeply affected, within society at large, proper ways of behaving and interacting: Chinese society has been through considerable changes. With economic development, many people now have a high opinion of themselves. They refuse constraints and emphasize self-development. But this kind of new freedom can generate difficulties. The relationships we build with our loved ones are no longer harmonious ones (in the background, a picture shows a man in pajamas taking a foot bath. Beside him, another person wearing a suit—maybe a guest—is looking at him severely. The man in pajamas asks in a casual way: “Any problem?”). The problem of the universal disruption of rites is clearly expounded by Peng Lin at the beginning of the program. In his opinion, the problem lies in correct denominations (what Confucius pointed to with the expression zhengming 證名). Students are now reluctant to call a librarian laoshi (Teacher) or shifu (master, used for instance for artisans). But a wrong denomination affects the proper performance of rites. Of this phenomenon, Peng Lin provides numerous examples. Thus, Chinese people should remain humble, respect the person they speak to and use polite terms such as 令尊大人 ling zun daren (your respected father) when inquiring about the health of a friend’s father rather than casually ask how the old dad is doing (你老爸怎麼樣? Ni laoba zenmeyang?). Peng Lin also refers to an excerpt of the Book of Rites to reaffirm the importance of posture and dress in public. Clothing reflects cultural distinction (文 化素養 wenhua suyang), personal energy or loosening of personal discipline. When Zigong went to the king’s palace to request audience, he couldn’t even access to the throne because of his sloppy dress. People from the Antiquity could foresee one man’s future by looking at his garb. Peng Lin strongly insists on the continuity between past and present in this respect: 古今是一個 理 gujin shi yige li (literally: one same principle runs across the past and the present). According to the Book of Rites, even while performing a physical task, one cannot go bare-chested (劳毋袒 lao wu tan).55 Doing so is no more civilized56 55  During the last ten years, Beijingers have been forbidden to walk bare-chested in the streets in summer. 56  About the concept of spiritual civilization, see Thomas Boutonnet, Vers une société harmonieuse de consommation? Discours et spectacle de l’harmonie sociale dans la construction d’une Chine civilisée (Lyon: Ph. D. Dissertation, University Lyon 3), 25.

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(不文明 bu wenming) today than it was in the past. Poverty does not prevent us from keeping our dignity. One has to control oneself in accordance with the rites (約之於禮 yue zhi yu li). Each of us should bear in mind that our behaviors are constrained by civilization and that we cannot do as we want to do.57 Peng Lin (himself energetic and impeccably dressed) explains that one has to pay attention to his or her dress while refusing ostentation and brands cherished by the nouveaux riches. He quotes the Dizigui’s admonition “to dress properly and not wear precious clothes” (衣貴潔，不貴華 yi gui jie, bu gui hua) because proper dress in the end is supposed to reflect one’s self-cultivation (自身修養 zishen xiuyang). The performative orientation of Peng Lin’s discourse echoes the civilizing ambition of the Party-State that crystallized on the suzhi narrative in a broader context of reinvention of tradition. According to Peng Lin, Chinese people have to start from their own heart/minds to rejuvenate both their mores and their country. When the value system seems to collapse, they have to reaffirm and promote the primacy of morals and ethical behaviors that differentiate human beings from animal (禽獸 qinshou). Every aspect of daily life should be infused with rites that make us different from beasts. From Peng’s perspective, rites cannot be properly carried out without a strict observance of both the rules of filial piety rules and master-disciple hierarchy: Chen Yinke studied in the US and in Germany. He mastered eight different kinds of languages, but it is the blood of Chinese culture that flew in his veins (zhongguo wenhua de xueye, an expression that refers to a biological transmission of Chinese culture). One day, a student paid him a visit at home. Chen’s father was there. At home, there was a father and a son, a master and his disciple. Who should sit? Who should stand? If each of them sat, they were equals. In front of a father, a son always will be a son. One could not let the student stand, because he was a guest. The style of the ancient masters is unsurpassed. As for us, we refuse to give our seat to an elderly in the subway. Our contemporaries are too individualistic. To respect old people is a principle that everyone must embrace. According to some anthropological researches, certain people consider the elderly as a burden. When you are too old, one should take you to the

57  Cf. Ann Anagnost, “The Corporeal Politics of Quality (Suzhi),” Public Culture 16(2) (2004): 189–208. According to Anagnost, two categories are targeted by suzhi discourse: rural migrants and middle-class children and youths.

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top of a mountain and let you die.58 This is not Chinese tradition. Since the Antiquity, we respect the elderly. We teach children how to contribute to society and serve their family. Children and all members of society should repay the care they received. As for the relationships between teachers and students I can tell you that, at the beginning and at the end of a class, I bow in front of the students. But they don’t understand and remain voiceless. Then I burst into anger and tell them that for Chinese people rites should be reciprocal. The inner attitude of respect must be reflected in the appearance and in the behavior of the body. It is the same when we are in front of the national banner. Peng Lin’s discourse emphasizes the necessity of a permanent discipline of the body.59 Reinvention of the traditional culture is part of a process of civilization, similar to the one that Norbert Elias analyzed for European countries and that consists in the homogenization of a community by the acquisition of common norms. It also implies a process of domination and pacification. The “less civilized” segments of the population are supposed to be educated and transformed thanks to ancient models borrowed from the Classics in order to facilitate their integration into a homogeneous and “more civilized” community pursuing a common Chinese dream. 6

Conclusion

Since 2007, series dedicated to the Classics have largely contributed to BJJT’s growing success and have been instrumental in targeting a wider audience. On the one hand, the exaltation of historical figures and segments of classical history aims to rejuvenate national myths; on the other hand, programs dedicated to the Classics promote very practical values derived from interpretations of Confucian texts presented as authoritative ones. A number of key historical figures (e.g. Zeng Guofan) are introduced primarily for their own experience of jiaohua and their exemplar self-cultivation practices based on the Classics. By the same token some sort of civilizational orthopraxy is also promoted towards the audience of the program in order to encourage people to try their 58  Perhaps an allusion to the Japanese movie “the Ballad of Narayama,” Shohei Imamura, 1983. 59  This ability of self-discipline is expected from emerging middle-class. Cf. Luigi Tomba, “Of Quality, Harmony, and Community: Civilization and the Middle Class in Urban China,” East Asia Cultures Critique 17 (3) (2009): 592–616.

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best to improve their suzhi. Sometimes, traditional concepts quoted by the guest-speakers—such as li, rites, discussed by Peng Lin—are indeed directly linked to this modern concept of suzhi; contributing to improve the suzhi of its audience is certainly one of the important propaganda missions of CCTV (and, of course, of BJJT). In its endeavor to address the needs of all kinds of different segments of the population (the youth, migrants, countryside teachers, inmates, etc.), scholars presenting the program also invite ordinary people (such as grassroots scholar Yang Zhiguo) whose lives and attitudes constitute role models and provide evidence that the guidance of the Classics is valuable to everyone. But these scholars are themselves invited to deliver lively speeches peppered with personal experiences that may encourage people to enter in some sort of more personal relations with texts supposed to become living resources for their own lives. As self-constituting discourses, the Classics carry a dimension of salvation and endowed with their authority of acknowledged exegetes of the texts, BJJT’s scholars invite the audience to engage into what could be described as a conversion process. The scholars’ own appreciation of (or conversion to) the Classics and their claimed appropriation of the moral values fostered by these texts also turn them into role models for many, especially young urbanites in quests of a moral direction for their lives. Besides, minor texts such as the Dizigui or the Xiaojing are also supposed to be very efficient in delivering simple messages to a wider audience. A prominent message is that moral life should prevail over mere instrumental knowledge and that there is an urgency to rehabilitate and promote traditional culture among segments of the population easily attracted by materialistic Western values. The BJJT’s scholars generally see themselves at the forefront of this civilizing mission and largely serve—even though they might have different personal agendas and an authentic faith in the possibility for Confucianism to save the nation—a set of official discourses promoting a much more instrumental brand of cultural nationalism.

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Index Abbott, Andrew 14, 209 academies. See shuyuan. ancestors 12, 69 ancestral temples. See citang. Anshan si (Anshan Temple) 77, 79, 80, 82, 85–86 atomization 204, 238 Baijia jiangtan (Lecture Room) 15, 302, 304–305, 308 Bellah, Robert 1, 5, 153–154, 173, 175 Bi Guanghui 137, 139 Billioud, Sébastien 1–3, 5, 9, 17, 19, 53, 62, 125, 141, 155, 164, 175, 177, 195, 205, 208, 220, 262–263, 279, 303, 320 Book of Rites 244, 255, 327 Buddhism 8, 9, 11, 17, 21–22, 30–31, 42, 54, 55, 61–62, 65–68, 70–73, 75, 77–79, 84–89, 97, 104, 107, 113, 115, 116, 122–123, 134–135, 137, 139, 143, 158, 192–195, 209, 309, 333 business 21, 23, 25, 50, 53, 59, 95, 139, 141, 159, 160, 196 Cai Lixu 74, 82 Canghai Academy 12, 138–140 Canglu Academy of Classic Culture 138, 151 caogen xuezhe (grassroots scholar) 4, 317–318, 330 Changchun Confucius Temple 13, 176–179, 181–201, 204 Chen Huanzhang 90, 119–120, 197 Chen Na 3, 10, 17, 49, 51, 57 childhood education 63, 192, 194 Chinese medicine 192 Christianity 61, 87, 158, 177, 200, 210 chuantong wenhua luntan (forum of traditional culture) 76–77 citang (ancestral halls) 14, 244, 245 civic/urban life 59, 176, 189–190, 253, 255, 256, 261, 284 civil society 13, 90, 145–146, 148, 153, 174–175, 204, 265 civil spirituality 13, 153–154, 165, 174–175 civil religion 5, 153–154, 173, 175

Classic of Filial Piety. See Xiaojing. classics 3, 4, 8, 10, 12, 15, 20, 26, 28, 31–33, 38, 40, 50, 55, 58, 62, 67–70, 80, 100, 109, 111, 120–121, 125, 136–137, 139, 140–145, 192, 194, 235, 262, 265, 266, 271, 276, 286, 288, 291, 294–295, 301, 308–309, 310–314, 316–320, 323, 325, 329–330 classics-reading classes 12, 141–145, 147, 314 clergy 66, 84–88, 210 Confucian business people. See rushang. Confucian Congregation 10, 17, 18, 20, 23–40, 42–46, 48, 49, 50–59 Confucian piety 1, 9, 13, 114, 153–154, 156–157, 164–165, 171, 174, 175, 188–189, 201, 205 Confucius Cultural Park 13, 179 cultural heritage 18, 19, 39, 40, 57, 125–126, 137, 211, 216–217, 220, 223–224, 228–229, 231 cultural nationalism 304, 330 cultural quality (of the population). See wenhua suzhi. Cultural Revolution 24, 37, 43, 57, 58, 115–118, 120, 165, 176–177, 167, 216–217, 220, 223, 228, 238, 277, 313–314 Dabei gusi (Ancient Dabei Temple) 77, 79, 80–82, 85, 86 dangdai xinrujia (New Confucians)  2 differentiated descent lines. See zongzi fa. Dizigui or Dizi Gui (Rules of/for Disciples)  11, 27, 61–65, 68, 69, 70–78, 80–89, 137, 139–140, 143, 308, 320, 321–324, 328, 330 Dongjing (grotto scripture) 10, 12, 98, 107–110, 112, 116–120, 126, 131, 148 Dongming Ji (Record of Penetrating the Underworld) 101–107 dujing (reading of the classics) 62, 70, 288, 114, 265, 320 education-transformation. See jiaohua. Elias, Norbert 329 ethical cultivation 27

Index

345

ethics 24, 26, 32, 34, 73, 87, 100, 122, 140–142, 154, 156, 158, 187, 197 expressive individualism 203

Kongjiaohui (Confucian Church) 90, 197 Kongzi hui (Confucius Assembly) 12, 128, 130–132, 148

Fairclough, Norman 83–84 Fan Lizhu 3, 10, 17, 29, 41, 44, 51, 55, 57 filial piety. See xiao. Forum of traditional culture. See Chuantong wenhua luntan. Foucault, Michel 83–84 Fuzhi Organization (Bliss and Wisdom Organization) 141–142

laicization 197–198 lay Buddhist 65–66, 79, 80, 82, 84, 85, 86, 88, 114, 143, 208, 209 Lecture Room. See Baijia jiangtan. Levenson, Joseph 2, 57 Li Zhongxiang 137–139 Liang Shuming 194 Lin An-wu 143 lineage 12–15, 22, 34, 57, 86, 116, 157, 190, 210, 232, 235–260 linked ecologies 14, 208–209 Longnü Si (Temple of the Dragon Maiden)  91–94 Lu Xun 262 luantang (phoenix halls) 11, 90–91, 93, 96, 98, 106, 110, 118–120 Lujiang Center (of Cultural Education) 73, 75, 76, 80, 82 Lunyu xinde (Confucius from the Heart)  302, 310, 311

Guandi 43, 92, 94–98, 101, 104, 106, 109–110, 128, 134 guoxue. See national learning. Guoxue zhiyao 88–89 Han Ying 66 Hartog, François 5 He Zhaotian 176 homeschooling 264–267, 296 Hu Jintao 18, 31, 45, 303 Hunan 9, 15, 63, 106, 267, 269, 278–279, 290, 291, 300, 324 individual soul 198, 201, 204 James, William 1, 203, 204 Ji Zhe 8, 10, 11, 61, 62, 65–66, 75, 81, 83, 140, 194–195, 297 jiaohua (education-transformation) 7–10, 93, 124, 166, 303, 305, 319, 324, 325, 329 jiazu zhi (lineage organizations) 244, 248 Jilin Confucius Temple 13, 182–185, 187–188, 196 Jing Kong 140 jitian (sacrificial fields) 259 Kang Youwei 51, 119, 197, 201 karma 29, 73, 74, 79, 84, 87, 93, 104, 110, 135, 138 Kong clan/lineage 12, 13, 157, 181–183, 188 Kongmiao (Confucius temple) 8, 12, 13, 14, 118, 125–128, 135, 126, 153, 155, 158–159, 161–164, 171, 176–201, 204–208, 210–218, 220–233, 264 Kong Qingdong 309, 314–315

Makeham, John 1, 3, 17 Malaysian Academy of Han Studies 89 Manchukuo 13, 165, 181–182, 186, 187, 200 Mao / Mao Zedong 15, 17, 23, 39, 42, 50, 56, 67, 176, 197, 324 Maoism 2, 5, 38, 197–198 market economy 56, 181, 189–190, 197–198 Mazu 21, 91 Mengmutang 265 minjian rujia. See popular Confucianism. mores 5, 175, 326, 328 Mou Zongsan 8, 265 Museum of Changchun Confucius Temple  179 Muslim 199 national learning (guoxue) 8, 13, 14, 62–63, 74, 88–89, 99, 183–185, 190, 192, 194, 200, 204, 235 National Learning Great Lecture Hall  184–185, 192, 194, 200 New Culture Movement 17, 19, 56, 57 nüde (female virtue) 78, 82

346 Opening and Reform Policy 176 orthopraxy 15, 305, 319, 320, 325, 329 Pan Xiao discussion 176 Peng Huilong 115 performative discourse 315–316 phoenix halls. See luantang. Pingjiang 267, 268, 270–272, 277–279, 289–291, 297–299 popular Confucianism (minjian rujia) 6, 9, 11, 62, 65, 75, 88, 91, 107, 140, 203, 340 popularization (of Confucianism) 126, 139, 141, 147, 190, 200, 302, 305, 307 prayer cards 14, 130, 206, 210- 213, 217, 220, 222–224, 225, 232 prison (and Confucian jiaohua) 63, 323 Poggi, Gianfranco 146 Pure Land 11, 65, 67, 70, 74–76, 79, 80, 86, 114–116 Qi Suping 79–80 Qian Wenzhong 312, 314, 320–325 Qianziwen (Thousand-Character Classic)  192, 194, 282, 296 qimeng (educational awakening) 74, 312, 320 Qufu 12, 13, 61, 102, 111, 124–125, 153, 155, 158, 164, 167, 174–175, 182, 207–208, 215–216, 220, 223–224 Qunshu zhiyao (Key Books on Governance)  88–89 redemptive societies 8–10, 19, 33, 98, 101, 114–115 regeneration (of the country and its culture)  322 religiosity 9, 10, 12, 13, 153–157, 163, 171, 173–175, 197 religious ecology 4, 6, 53, 67, 199, 206, 208–210, 213, 217, 231, 232 ritual 3, 6, 8, 9–10, 13, 14, 19, 20, 22, 28–30, 32–35, 37, 40, 42, 44–45, 54, 56, 67, 72–73, 79, 80, 83, 86–87, 94, 100, 105, 108, 115, 126, 156–157, 161–165, 167–169, 171, 175, 205–207, 209–218, 220, 222–234, 242, 245, 311, 315, 317, 326 ritual intensity 232, 289 Rules of/for Disciples. See Dizigui. rushang (Confucian business people) 7

Index sanshi xinian 76, 79, 86 Sanyijiao (“Three in One” Religion) 22, 54, 61 Sanzijing (Three-Character Classic) 27, 31, 32, 64, 142, 192, 194, 282, 296, 308, 314, 320 secularization 13, 153–154, 158, 163–164, 173–176, 197–198, 203 self-cultivation 3, 19, 23, 26–27, 31–32, 38, 47, 54, 73, 89, 92, 307, 316, 324–326, 328–329 self-discipline 329 Shengrenjing (The Classic of the Saints) 27, 31 Shengyu tang (Sacred Edict halls) 10, 107, 90, 110–112, 120 Shennong 24–25, 29, 30, 50–51 Shi shanyedao jing (Discourse on the Ten Wholesome Ways of Action) 68, 71–72, 88 shuyuan (academies) 3, 6, 9, 12, 123, 125, 136–137, 141, 145, 147–148, 221, 265, 275, 277 Shinto 13, 158, 161–162, 187 Shiquan hui (Ten Completions Society) 11, 94–98 sishu (traditional schools) 8, 15, 63, 241, 262–274, 276–301 Sixu Hall (Four Seasons Hall) 236, 238–241, 243–244, 251–254, 256, 257, 258, 260 spirit writing 11, 90–92, 95, 96–97, 103, 106 spiritual civilization 63, 78, 303, 327 spirituality 13, 153–154, 156, 165, 171, 174–175, 203 state-owned enterprise (SOE) reform 181 storytelling 307, 312 Sun, Anna 1, 9, 14, 19, 205, 208–209, 214, 233 supernatural healings 24, 27 suzhi (overall level of the population) 15, 304, 305–307, 309, 317, 325–326, 328, 330 Taishang ganying pian (Treatise of the Exalted One on Action and Response)  68, 80, 82, 88 Tan Fengtao 80 Tangchi 75, 77, 140 Taylor, Charles 153, 203–204, 334 temple economy 212

Index The Analects 63, 65, 142–143, 156, 235, 268, 293, 302, 310, 314, 316 Three-Character Classic. See Sanzijing. Ting Jen-chieh 146–147, 340 Tongshanshe (Tongshan Association/The Fellowship of Goodness) 10–12, 98–102, 115–116, 120 Tu Weiming (Du Weiming) 18 vegetarianism 82, 83, 85, 92–93, 143 volunteer 13, 40, 80, 82, 140, 142, 166, 191–194, 196, 200, 204 vulnerable populations 316 Wang Caigui (Wang Tsai-kui) 8, 70, 143, 264–266, 320 Wang Hongyuan 166, 181, 184, 191–195 Way of Pervading Unity. See Yiguandao. wenhua suzhi (cultural quality). See suzhi. Wenmiao (see also Kongmiao) 8, 13, 125, 127, 155, 158–159, 161–169, 171–174, 179, 181 xiao ( filial piety) 64, 70, 72, 74, 81, 322 Xiaojing (The Classic of Filial Piety) 27, 31, 194, 325, 330 Xi Jinping 18, 58 Xindejiao (The Teaching of Heart and Morality) 24–26, 30–32, 43, 50, 53, 59 Xinjing 165 xuezhe (scholar) 2, 3, 4, 6, 11, 15, 17–18, 49, 50, 57,61, 65, 68–70, 88, 90, 93, 94, 97, 100, 102, 104, 108, 109, 110, 113–117, 120,

347 122–123, 128, 132, 135–136, 139, 143, 148, 156, 161, 165–166, 171–173, 184–185, 188, 198, 203, 224, 234, 236, 240, 242, 245–248, 273, 302, 305–309, 312, 314–318, 320, 323–325, 330 Yang, C.K. 18, 22, 87–88 Yang Fenggang 20, 56, 208 Yang Shufen 74 Yan Yunxiang 6 Yao Xinzhong 18 Yiguan Dao or Yiguandao (The Way of Pervading Unity) 9, 19, 33, 54, 61, 94, 101, 177 Yi Zhongtian 302, 309, 316–317, 324 Yu Dan 155, 302, 309, 310–312, 323 Yu Ying-shih 122, 145 Zeng Guofan 15, 309, 324–325, 329 Zhang Tianwen 95–96 Zhang Zhiyong 267–269, 271–273, 277, 278–301 Zhaojun Si (Kitchen God) 10, 12, 128–129, 131–133, 135, 148 Zhong Maosen 72, 82 Zhongyong (The Golden Mean) 192–194 Zhu Xi 65, 236–237, 242, 245–248, 254, 270, 277, 313 Zhu Zhizhong 267–273, 276, 278, 279–280, 282, 284, 288–292 ziwo xiuyang. See self-cultivation. zongzi fa (differentiated descent lines)  244–245, 248, 250