“In the Eye of the Typhoon” Aspirations of Buddhists and Catholics in Turbulent Hong Kong Mariske Westendorp, MA/MSc A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology Faculty of Arts Macquarie University Sydney, Australia July 2016 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT i STATEMENT OF CANDIDATURE iii PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v INTRODUCTION 1 i. Urban Religion and Urban Aspirations 5 ii. Middle Class Buddhists and Catholics 12 iii. Modern Tradition, Local Universalism, Individual Accountability, and Salvation in the Here and Now 22 CHAPTER 1: Studying Religion in a Chinese Context 29 1.1 Chinese Religion 33 1.1.1 Religion in Hong Kong 37 1.2 Hong Kong Buddhist ‘Grounds’ During the Twentieth Century 43 1.2.1 Hong Kong Buddhism under Colonialism 47 1.2.2 Hong Kong Buddhism Post-Handover 50 1.3 Hong Kong Catholic ‘Grounds’ During the Twentieth Century 53 1.3.1 Hong Kong Catholicism under Colonialism 54 1.3.2 Hong Kong Catholicism Post-Handover 58 1.4 Religious Ties with the Mainland 61 1.5 Conclusion 67 CHAPTER 2: Tradition, Universalism and the Aspiration to Belong 71 2.1 The Buddhist Tradition 73 2.1.1 Tradition as a Modern Construct 77 2.2 Universal Catholicism 80 2.2.1 Universalism as a Local Construct 86 2.3 Political Challenges to the Aspiration of Belonging 89 2.3.1 Hong Kong’s Uniqueness 95 2.3.2 Global Belongings 97 2.4 Belonging to Religious Communities 99 2.5 Conclusion 110 CHAPTER 3: Accountability and Socio-Economic Aspirations 113 3.1 Modern Buddhist Accountability 116 3.2 Local Catholic Accountability 124 3.3 Economic Challenges to the Aspiration to the Hong Kong Dream 129 3.3.1 Home Ownership 138 3.4 Religious Perspectives on the Hong Kong Dream 142 3.5 Conclusion 148 CHAPTER 4: Salvation and Rights to the City 151 4.1 Buddhist and Catholic Presence in the Umbrella Movement 159 4.1.1 Lay Aspirations in the Movement 169 4.2 Buddhist Salvation 174 4.3 Catholic Salvation 180 4.4 Conclusion 187 CHAPTER 5: Conclusion 189 5.1 Analysing Narratives on Religion in the Umbrella Movement 190 5.2 Analysing Narratives of the Other 193 5.3 Urban Religion in Asia 196 APPENDIX: My Informants 203 APPENDIX: Ethics Final Approval 215 BIBLIOGRAPHY 217 ABSTRACT This thesis wishes to contribute to the current scholarly debate on urban religion. This debate focuses predominantly on the visibility and materiality of religious practices and symbols in the urban environment; on the effect of migration (both rural-to-urban and transnational) on the religious landscape of the city; and on religion in cities in the ‘secularised’ West. My research aims to correct some of these biases by shedding light on the ways religion features in an Asian urban setting by residents in not-always public and/or visible ways. I argue that life in cities is not only shaped by religious practices and symbols, but equally by religious orientations, which provide a lens through which residents see and evaluate the complex and at times unsettling urban environment. To that end, I investigate the experiences of Hong Kong middle class Buddhists (primarily Theravāda Buddhists) and Catholics concerning tensions between the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) post-1997 Handover. These tensions culminated in the so-called Umbrella Movement, during which an estimated 1.2 million people occupied the streets of urban Hong Kong from late September to mid-December 2014. The thesis takes its point of departure in the realisation that there is antagonism between Mainland China and Hong Kong. Fears regarding this antagonism are especially expressed by members of Hong Kong’s middle class, who see their aspirations threatened and who describe their lives to be situated in political and socio-economic turbulence. This particular turbulence inscribes itself in middle class Buddhist and Catholic orientations. At the same time, these orientations shape their attitudes towards the changes and challenges they face. In the three main chapters that constitute this thesis (which follow a brief exploration of the position of Buddhism and Catholicism in historical and contemporary Hong Kong) I investigate how specific urban circumstances and religious orientations mutually influence each other, shaping people’s day-to-day city lives. I do this by exploring three themes. The first theme deals with how and why my informants emphasise tradition and universalism as the stable foundations of their religions. These foundations provide them with an anchor in the uncertain political environment in which they live. The second theme regards personal accountability as a central tenet in my informants’ religious beliefs, appointing their role and position in their religion and in the world. The specific notion of religious accountability shapes the way in which my informants negotiate the threat Mainland China poses to their socio-economic aspirations. Regarding the third theme, I investigate how, by trying to (re)gain the rights to the city during the Umbrella Movement, my interlocutors highlight their religious aspirations of salvation as a possible goal in the here and now. In all these themes, global, local, religious, and non-religious factors combine to give shape to life in the city of Hong Kong. i ii STATEMENT OF CANDIDATURE I certify that the work in this thesis entitled “In the Eye of the Typhoon: Aspirations of Buddhists and Catholics in Turbulent Hong Kong” has neither been previously submitted for a degree, nor has it been submitted as part of the requirement for a degree to a university or institution other than Macquarie University. I also certify that the thesis is an original piece of research written by me. Any help and assistance that I have received during my research work and the preparation of this thesis have been appropriately acknowledged. In addition, I certify that all information sources and literature used are acknowledged in the thesis. The research presented in this thesis was approved by the Macquarie University Ethics Review Committee, reference number 5201200242, on 23 May 2012. Mariske Westendorp (42666759) July 2016 iii Hong Kong middle class Buddhism and Catholicism. Two mannequins at a fashion store in the Peak Gallery shopping mall, wearing caps with the words ‘I am blessed’, and a vest with the words ‘I am karma’ (photo courtesy of David Scott, the Peak, Hong Kong Island, 02.10.2014). iv PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is the result of a four year long PhD program undertaken in the Department of Anthropology, Macquarie University, Sydney. It is an ethnographic account of Buddhists and Catholics living in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) during a time of turbulent change. For these individuals, the increasing travel and migration of mainland Chinese people to ‘their’ city, and the increasing influence of mainland Chinese politics on their lives, feels, to say the least, unsettling. My informants’ religious reflections on these eventuations concur with my personal interest in Buddhism and Catholicism as two distinct religions. In my homeland of the Netherlands, I was raised a Catholic. Subsequent to my first visit to Asia in 2009, I developed a personal interest in Buddhism. During that visit, I conducted research on the Buddhist pilgrimage island of Putuoshan, China. This research sparked my interest in how religion is lived in the contemporary People’s Republic of China (PRC). I began to investigate questions surrounding the ways in which religious practices and experiences are coloured and influenced by politics, and vice versa. My studies of Cultural Anthropology and Religious Studies (both undertaken in the Netherlands) added scholarly complexity to this fascination, in particular in relation to questions concerning the relationship between identity and religion in politically unsettling and/or unstable contexts. This thesis, which is a result of years of contemplation, has, at its core, an attempt to combine my personal religious background and interests with anthropology and religious studies, by focusing on religion as a lived experience. v Contrary to my earlier research undertaken on the small island of Putuoshan, this thesis is the result of relatively extensive research undertaken in a large Chinese city. Cities prove excellent laboratories to conduct research on religion, because “[u]nder urban circumstance people experience, more than anywhere else, the rapidity of cultural change, the hiatus of social inequalities, the consequences of the human impact on nature and the tangible power of political authorities” (Burchardt & Becci, 2013, pp. 17-18). Research into religion (in this case, Theravāda Buddhism and Catholicism) in a big Chinese city should thus bring to the fore most clearly the intrinsic relations between religion and politics. I had initially planned to research religion in a city on the Chinese mainland, e.g., Shanghai, Beijing or Guangzhou. However, following recommendations by several scholars who I met during the first months of my PhD program, I decided to go to Hong Kong instead; a city that is both inside (officially part of the PRC under the ‘one country, two systems’ policy, see pages 3-4) and outside (especially in the discourse used by local Hongkongers, see chapters 2 and 3) of China. Conducting research in Hong Kong instead of in Mainland China provided a number of advantages: fewer language barriers; a higher degree of religious freedom; and, a relative easiness with which people talked about and expressed their religious practices and notions. Moreover, Hong Kong intrigued me. Up until the commencement of my PhD program, I had only heard of Hong Kong as a post-colonial and financial city in which members of the middle class pursue the ‘Hong Kong Dream’, while at the same time struggling to find their place in the economic world post-1997 Handover.