Book Reviews Island of Guanyin: Mount Putuo and Its

International Journal of Chinese Studies/Revue Internationale de Sinologie

T’oung Pao 103-4-5 (2017) 498-501

498 Book Reviews

Island of Guanyin: Mount Putuo and Its Gazetteers. By Marcus Bingenheimer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. xiv + 283 pp., illus.

In recent years, there has been a significant increase in studies of local textual tra- ditions in China, focusing on gazetteers. Within the Chinese academic sphere, this has resulted in the reprinting of many rare gazetteers, as well as the production of thematic collections, and numerous books and academic papers on the subject, which has in turn further facilitated international research. Although gazetteers are often by their very nature highly politicized documents, they can prove a real treasure-trove of information, much of which is impossible to find elsewhere. They record the way in which individual geographical locations have developed over time, as well as documenting changing interpretations of the locale by both local residents and visitors. At the same time as we have seen this increased interest in gazetteers, in a related development, there have also been a number of English- language monographs published which focus specifically on the history of religious sites: Buddhist, Daoist, Confucian, popular religion, and mixed use. These include such outstanding studies as James Hargett, Stairway to Heaven: A Journey to the Summit of Mount Emei (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 2006); Amy Mc- Nair, Donors of Longmen: Faith, Politics, and Patronage in Medieval Chinese Buddhist Sculpture (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai‘i Press, 2007); James Robson, Power of Place: The Religious Landscape of the Southern Sacred Peak (Nanyue) in Medieval China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Asia Center, 2009); and James A. Flath, Traces of the Sage: Monument, Materiality, and the First Temple of Confucius (Honolulu: Univ. of Hawai‘i Press, 2016). Gazetteers form an important source of information for monographs of this kind, because many important religious sites have been recorded through a series of mountain or temple gazetteers going back centuries. An appreciation of the topics considered appropriate to this literary genre (which are therefore well-recorded), and the constraints that this format imposes, are therefore crucial for research on the history of religion in China. Since the Song dynasty, Mount Putuo, an island located off the coast of Zhejiang province, has been one of the most significant sites of Buddhist pilgrimage in Chi- na. The early history of this island is obscure, but it seems that the patronage of Japanese and Korean merchants was crucial for the establishment of the first temples to be founded here; subsequently, a series of miraculous manifestations of Guanyin—which have continued right up to the present day—have ensured an ongoing tradition of pilgrimage by the devout. At the same time, running alongside the usual narrative of accidental damage and loss followed by rebuilding and im- provement, Mount Putuo has an unusual history of experiencing state repression due to its location. As an island, strongly associated with international trade, religious activities at Mount Putuo were affected not only by government-enforced controls and prohibitions imposed on Buddhist worship, but also by the coastal clearances of the Ming and early Qing dynasties, when seafaring was criminalized and overseas trade classified as “piracy.” The pressures created by the central

ISSN 0082-5433 (print version) ISSN 1568-5322 (online version)Downloaded TPAO from Brill.com09/30/2021 07:28:59AM via free access Book Reviews 499 government’s determination to prevent pilgrimage to Mount Putuo (seeing this as a cover for illegal activities), and the demand of Buddhists from across China to be allowed to visit one of the most important sites of miracles for their faith ensured considerable tensions, which were in turn extensively documented in texts produced by those on both sides of the argument. Interestingly, throughout Island of Guanyin, Marcus Bingenheimer argues that periodic suppressions of Buddhism by the late imperial-era government were not the most destructive situation for the temple complexes and religious sites around Mount Putuo; instead, it was the loss of official control, and the concomitant rise of banditry and lawlessness that proved the most intensely damaging. His conclusions, drawn from this one case study, may be more widely applicable to sites of worship located across China: official disapproval (or even outright bans) can be mediated, but anarchy cannot. Island of Guanyin describes the development of a range of temples, grottos, and views on Mount Putuo over the course of one thousand years to the end of the imperial era, although thanks to the temporal distribution of the surviving gazetteers for this site, the situation during the Ming and Qing dynasties is most signifi- cantly documented. To analyze this locale, Bingenheimer has chosen to arrange his book as a Buddhist temple gazetteer—this has the effect of limiting the interest in his work primarily to those studying the history of Buddhism in China. This book features eight chapters: prefaces and postscripts; maps; miracle tales; temple sites; biographies of abbots and important lay patrons of Mount Putuo; inscriptions; po- ems; and finally accounts by famous visitors—in each case Bingenheimer has included a large number of fine translations of original texts. This structure follows the standard format for such gazetteers, and hence allows the reader to appreciate what information is well-documented within this genre of writing and what has been omitted. The author consistently emphasizes that gazetteers prioritize the perspectives of elite men, particularly government officials trained in the Confu- cian tradition, over women and individuals belonging to other socio-economic groups. This has the somewhat bizarre effect of highlighting the writings of these men (at best carefully neutral and at worst openly hostile to Buddhism), while ne- glecting the importance of the clergy in the history of this site—to the point where for some periods even the names of abbots at the major temples at Mount Putuo are not documented. Furthermore, the majority of visitors to Mount Putuo (that is, non-elites and women) do not appear in the record, and their experiences are en- tirely ignored until modern times. Although the gazetteer-style format of this book is successful for what the author is trying to achieve, there are some concerns with the arrangement of the text. In particular, Bingenheimer has divided each of his chapters into exhibits: accord- ing to the introduction “readers are invited to walk through the chapters of the book as they would through the rooms in a museum” (p. 2). By implying that each of the sections has been “museumized,” it suggests that the information presented in this book is being decontextualized—as objects are by being removed from their original locations to be placed in glass cases, and implies that Mount Putuo is to

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 07:28:59AM via free access 500 Book Reviews some extent a “dead” site—something that is certainly not the case. Given that Bingenheimer consistently argues that Mount Putuo has gone through numerous cycles of florescence and decline over the last thousand years (and that the neglect and destruction of the early PRC period is merely the most recent and not neces- sarily the most severe of these low points), presenting his information as a series of museum exhibits suggests a closure of this important pilgrimage site that has in fact not occurred. It should also be said that the least successful section of this book is the second chapter, which is concerned with visual representations of Mount Putuo—maps, depictions of scenic locations, and illustrations of miracle tales. This is likely not the fault of the author, but of the publisher. Given that this chapter is concerned with illustrations, and the discussion focuses on the details of specific pictures, these should have been reproduced in such a way as to enhance the argument and not detract from it. However, for reasons that are not at all clear, some of the maps are presented at a ninety-degree angle to the text, forcing the reader to repeatedly turn the book on its side to look at them; all of the illustrations are given in a format that is too small to appreciate the detail that is discussed in the associated argument; and in addition, some of the illustrations—arranged four to a page—are off-set from the others or placed at a slight angle (pp. 69, 72). This seriously detracts from the reading experience of what is otherwise an extremely interesting account of the visual material included in gazetteers, an aspect which has often been neglected in other academic studies on the subject. Bingenheimer is to be commended for the close readings he provides of his sources, and for the detailed discussion of exactly how gazetteers were produced. Although scholars working with these texts are used to the cut-and-paste tech- niques used by many compilers, it is useful to have an exact comparison: this is what the original text says; that is how it appears in the gazetteer. For example, Hou Jigao’s “Postscript to the Gazetteer of Mount Potalaka” was edited for publication in such a way that it was reduced by about one-quarter in length and shorn of any overtly pro-Buddhist sentiments. This kind of reworking needs to be documented with a line-by-line analysis. However, out of all of the individual texts translated and incorporated into Island of Guanyin, to the non-specialist reader the account of the journey made by Sun Yat-sen in 1916 will prove the most interesting: it is a miracle story, but the person experiencing the vision identifies himself not as a pilgrim, but as a tourist who happens to be a Christian. Although Bingenheimer suggests that this miraculous apparition “closes the cycle”—it might be argued that what it actually does is to provide a textual model for documenting future miracles at Mount Putuo which will not be predicated upon religious faith. Throughout Is- land of Guanyin, Bingenheimer suggests repeatedly that gazetteer production is in decline: “the textualization of Mount Putuo—the common weave of the site and text—continues mainly in the relatively less constrained realm of cyberspace” (p. 16), and that the kind of texts that late imperial gazetteers included as standard are disappearing: “visitors to the site today are more likely to record their journey in a blog entry or a Weibo tweet than in a poem” (p. 147). While it may be true that

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Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 07:28:59AM via free access Book Reviews 501 a new audience is reporting its experiences of pilgrimage to Mount Putuo using electronic media not available to earlier generations, there are nevertheless considerable continuities that should not be ignored. Important government officials and cultural celebrities are still invited to produce inscriptions to commemorate their visit; if there has been any change here, it is that now these people are un- likely to be ashamed of their hideous handwriting, and hence do not bother to find someone else to produce elegant calligraphy on their behalf. The gift of vulgar or banal words was always a risk, and there is no reason to believe that this has be- come worse in modern times. Anyone who has read gazetteers for important temples will be aware of stories about how some distinguished but dull visitor has had to be flattered, cajoled, or sometimes downright tricked into producing an accept- able line to carve into stone or hang up on a plaque, those present suffering agonies lest they be obliged to give prominent display to some trite phrase for the rest of time. It is likely that Bingenheimer will also prove to have underestimated the weight of tradition, which will ensure that text will retain its authority. While pre- paring this review, I happened to visit the Tianhou Temple in Taitung, Taiwan. Founded in 1888 after the goddess Mazu miraculously provided water for the be- sieged Qing garrison, the inscription in the main hall of the temple documents a succession of quarrels between the government of the day and the authorities in charge of the temple, culminating in an ongoing fight over the illegal appropriation of the original site by the Kuomintang and the removal of this foundation to its present location. The history of this particular temple—though much shorter— bears certain similarities with that of Mount Putuo: all too often religious sites have found themselves in conflict with central governments. However, what is more interesting is the use of text here—inscribed on black marble and painted in gold, the account of the original founding miracle followed by a detailed description of the efforts of individual patrons to make good the financial depredations imposed by the government under martial law have an authority which no post on social media is ever going to achieve. The visits of ordinary pilgrims are today slightly less ephemeral than they were in the past, while miracles, patronage, donations, and religious leadership continue to need to be documented on paper and stone.

Olivia Milburn, Seoul National University

T’oung Pao 103-4-5 (2017) 498-501

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