East Asian History NUMBER 41 • AUGUST 2017 www.eastasianhistory.org CONTENTS 1–2 Guest Editor’s Preface Shih-Wen Sue Chen 3–14 ‘Aspiring to Enlightenment’: Buddhism and Atheism in 1980s China Scott Pacey 15–24 Activist Practitioners in the Qigong Boom of the 1980s Utiraruto Otehode and Benjamin Penny 25–40 Displaced Fantasy: Pulp Science Fiction in the Early Reform Era of the People’s Republic Of China Rui Kunze 王瑞 41–48 The Emergence of Independent Minds in the 1980s Liu Qing 刘擎 49–56 1984: What’s Been Lost and What’s Been Gained Sang Ye 桑晔 57–71 Intellectual Men and Women in the 1980s Fiction of Huang Beijia 黄蓓佳 Li Meng 李萌 online Chinese Magazines of the 1980s: An Online Exhibition only Curated by Shih-Wen Sue Chen Editor Benjamin Penny, The Australian National University Guest Editor Shih-Wen Sue Chen, Deakin University Editorial Assistant Lindy Allen Editorial Board Geremie R. Barmé (Founding Editor) Katarzyna Cwiertka (Leiden) Roald Maliangkay (ANU) Ivo Smits (Leiden) Tessa Morris-Suzuki (ANU) Design and production Lindy Allen and Katie Hayne Print PDFs based on an original design by Maureen MacKenzie-Taylor This is the forty-first issue of East Asian History, the fourth published in electronic form, August 2017. It continues the series previously entitled Papers on Far Eastern History. Contributions to www.eastasianhistory.org/contribute Back issues www.eastasianhistory.org/archive To cite this journal, use page numbers from PDF versions ISSN (electronic) 1839-9010 Copyright notice Copyright for the intellectual content of each paper is retained by its author. Reasonable effort has been made to identify the rightful copyright owners of images and audiovisual elements appearing in this publication. The editors welcome correspondence seeking to correct the record. Contact [email protected] Banner calligraphy Huai Su 懷素 (737–799), Tang calligrapher and Buddhist monk Published by The Australian National University GUEST EDITOR’S PREFACE Shih-Wen Sue Chen The death of Mao Zedong in 1976 and the rise of Deng Xiaoping in 1978 1 Cheng Kuangwei 程光炜, ed., Chongfan bashi with his policy of Reform and Opening Up led to a series of major changes in niandai 重返八十年代 (Beijing: Beijing da xue chu ban she, 2009); Ma Guochuan 馬國川, Chinese society in the decade that followed. The 1980s has been characterised ed., Wo he bashi niandai 我和八十年代 (Hong as a decade of transition, of various ‘fevers’ (re 热 in Chinese), of discos, kara- Kong: Sanlian shudian, 2010). Zha Jian- oke, pop music, fashion, Flying Pigeon bikes, radios, and wristwatches. This ying, ed., Bashi Niandai Fangtanlu 八十年代访 period has been frequently overlooked by researchers who focus either on the 谈录 (Beijing: SDX Joint Publishing Company, 2006). S. Wang, ‘The Politics of Private Time: Cultural Revolution or the rise of commercialisation and commodity culture Changing Leisure Patterns in Urban China,’ in in the 1990s and beyond. The few English-language studies conducted on the ed. D.S. Davis, R. Kraus, B. Naughton and E.J. 1980s have concentrated on topics such as intellectual culture, high politics, or Perry, Urban Spaces in Contemporary China: The reform economics, and have mostly viewed this period through the lens of the Potential for Autonomy and Community in Post- Mao China (Cambridge: Cambridge University June Fourth Incident at Tiananmen Square. Publications focusing on the 1980s, Press, 1995), pp.149–72 (at p.166). such as Returning to the 1980s (Chongfan bashi niandai 重返八十年代), 1980s and I (Wo he bashi niandai 我和八十年代), and The Eighties: Interviews (Bashi Niandai Fangtanlu 八十年代访谈录), reflect a sense of nostalgia for the decade which has been characterised as ‘full of potential and freedom’, ‘an age of innocence, ide- alism, and enthusiasm’, and an era where the cultural aspirations of the Chinese people were widened as a result of the ‘open door’ policy.1 Deng’s new economic policies and guidelines provided people with more access to material goods and services, more opportunities to acquire knowl- edge of the outside world, and more leisure time. It is worth reconsidering this early reform period by focusing on the everyday and examining how the lives of ordinary people were transformed during this time. The many aspects of changes to everyday life and how they influenced the outlooks and experiences of people living in the 1980s have largely been ignored because daily life is often dismissed as mundane, trivial, repetitive, or depoliticised. However, as Henri Lefebvre and others have argued, the political cannot be divorced from the everyday and the political is often hidden in the everyday. Ben Highmore, interpreting Lefebvre, states, ‘the singularity of the everyday event (a woman 1 2 SUE CHEN 2 Ben Highmore, Everyday Life and Cultural buying sugar, for example) reverberates with social and psychic desire as well Theory (New York: Routledge, 2001), p.25. as with the structures of national and global exchange’.2 The papers in this issue illuminate the plurality of relationships and net- works of new voices that emerged in this decade. Focusing on a changing religious landscape, Scott Pacey discusses the re-emergence of Buddhism and its relationship with atheism in 1980s China, examining articles published in the Chinese Buddhist Association’s journal Voice of Dharma (Fayin 法音), Li Ping’s novel When the Sunset Clouds Disappear (Wanxia xiaoshi de shihou 晚霞 消失的时候 ), and other examples from popular culture to delineate how they aspired to enlightenment. Utiraruto Otehode and Benjamin Penny examine the role of activist practitioners in the Qigong boom of the 1980s, focusing on the case of Soaring Crane Qigong (Hexiangzhuang Qigong 鹤翔庄气功) activ- ists in Luoyang municipality. Turning to literature, Rui Kunze analyses pulp science fiction published in the early reform era, using sociocultural and psy- choanalytical approaches to dissect the texts. She argues that these stories reflect concerns about the national project of modernisation, the control of the Chinese Communist Party, and the reading publics’ anxieties and desires as they engage with a new economy. The two invited papers present recollections of the authors’ personal experiences of 1980s China. Liu Qing 刘擎, who was hailed as a model student by the Shanghai-based newspaper Wenhui Daily (Wenhui bao 文汇报) in 1983 while studying for a masters degree in chemical engineering, reflects on the new campus culture that emerged in this period. He characterises the various activities happening across campuses as an ‘independent cultural movement’ and places them in the historical context of 1980s China, pointing out how they challenged and questioned the dominant official ideology. Sang Ye桑晔 writes on what was lost and gained in the 1980s, using diverse examples such as the ‘Four Gentlemen’ of the 1980s (Weng Yongxi 翁永曦, Huang Jiangnan 黄江南, Zhu Jiaming 朱嘉明, and Wang Qishan 王岐山), the changes to public toilets, and the 1984 survey of a county in Heilongjiang province to illustrate the changes that occurred in this decade. Shih-Wen Sue Chen The seemingly singular or fragmented nature of the ‘snapshots’ of every- School of Communication and Creative Arts day life described can be combined to provide a multifaceted portrait of how Deakin University people lived and dealt with transitions in society as a result of Reform and [email protected] Opening Up. EAST ASIAN HISTORY 41 (2017) ‘ASPIRING TO ENLIGHTENMENT’: BUDDHISM AND ATHEISM IN 1980S CHINA Scott Pacey With its theoretical foundations in Marx, the Chinese Communist Party 1 Christopher Marsh, Religion and the State (CCP) has always been officially atheist, and members of the party are not sup- in Russia and China (New York: Continuum, 2011), p.162. For Mao’s original comments, posed to be religious adherents. In practice, since coming to power in 1949, see Mao Tse-Tung, Report on an Investigation the CCP’s approach to managing religious activity has been much more com- of the Peasant Movement in Hunan (Peking: For- plex. In the 1950s, the party expected religious beliefs to disappear as society eign Languages Press, 1967), p.46. <http:// progressed ideologically, but the 1954 constitution of the People’s Republic marx2mao.com/Mao/HP27.html>. of China (PRC) granted freedom of religious belief nonetheless. This policy 2 Fenggang Yang, ‘Between Secularist Ideol- ogy and Desecularizing Reality: The Birth and reflected Mao’s early, comparatively relaxed approach to dealing with religion. Growth of Religious Research in Communist In his 1927 ‘Report of an Investigation into the Peasant Movement in Hunan’, China,’ Sociology of Religion 65.2 (2004): 101–19, Mao explained that ‘it is the peasants who made the idols, and when the time at p.103. comes they will cast the idols aside with their own hands; there is no need for anyone else to do it for them prematurely’.1 According to the sociologist of religion in China, Fenggang Yang: In the ideological lexicon of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), atheism is a basic doctrine, which manifests in two major forms: scientific atheism and mili- tant atheism. Scientific atheism, as the offspring of the European Enlightenment Movement, regards religion as illusory or false consciousness, non-scientific and backward; thus atheist propaganda is necessary to expunge religion. In contrast, militant atheism, as advocated by Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks, treats reli- gion as the dangerous opium and narcotic of the people, a wrong political ideol- ogy serving the interests of the anti-revolutionary forces; thus forces may be necessary to control or eliminate religion. Scientific atheism is the theoretical basis for tolerating religion while carrying out atheist propaganda, whereas mili- tant atheism leads to antireligious measures.2 However, although atheism is a central tenet of the party’s ideological plat- form, its approach to dealing with religion has not been rooted only in these sources.