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UC Berkeley GAIA Books UC Berkeley GAIA Books Title Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3jn4j8cf Author Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui Publication Date 2008-11-01 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Chinese Religiosities: Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation Edited by Mayfair Mei-hui Yang Published in association with University of California Press Description: The long twentieth century in China and Taiwan has seen both a dramatic process of state-driven secularization and modernization and a vigorous revival of contemporary religious life. Chinese Religiosities explores the often vexed relationship between the modern Chinese state and religious practice. The essays in this comprehensive, multidisciplinary collection cover a wide range of traditions, including Buddhism, Daoism, Islam, Confucianism, Protestantism, Falungong, popular religion, and redemptive societies. Editor: Mayfair Mei-hui Yang is Professor of Religious Studies and East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Professor and Director of Asian Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. Contributors: José Ignacio Cabezón, Prasenjit Duara, Ryan Dunch, Dru C. Gladney, Vincent Goossaert, Ji Zhe, Ya-pei Kuo, Richard Madsen, Rebecca Nedostup, David A. Palmer, Benjamin Penny, Mayfair Mei-hui Yang Review: “Extraordinarily timely and useful. As China emerges as an economic and political world power that seems to have done away with religion, in fact it is witnessing a religious revival. The thoughtful essays in this book show both the historical conflicts between state authorities and religious movements and the contemporary encounters that are shaping China’s future. I am aware of no other book that covers so much ground and can be used so well as an introduction to this important field.” —Peter van der Veer, University of Utrecht Chinese Religiosities UC-Yang-rev.indd i 8/27/2008 1:01:13 PM UC-Yang-rev.indd ii 8/27/2008 1:01:34 PM Chinese Religiosities Afflictions of Modernity and State Formation Edited by Mayfair Mei-hui Yang Global, Area, and International Archive University of California Press Berkeley Los Angeles London UC-Yang-rev.indd iii 8/27/2008 1:01:34 PM The Global, Area, and International Archive (GAIA) is an initiative of International and Area Studies, University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the University of California Press, the California Digital Library, and international research programs across the UC system. GAIA volumes, which are published in both print and open- access digital editions, represent the best traditions of regional studies, reconfigured through fresh global, transnational, and thematic perspectives. University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2008 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data International Conference on Religion, Modernity, and the State in China and Taiwan (2005 : University of California, Santa Barbara) Chinese religiosities : afflictions of modernity and state formation / edited by Mayfair Mei-hui Yang. p. cm. (Global, area, and international archive) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. isbn: 978-0-520-09864-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. China—Religion—20th century. 2. Religion and state—China— 20th century. 3. China—Civilization—20th century. I. Yang, Mayfair Mei-hui. II. Title. BL1803.I58 2008 200.951'0904—dc22 2008024032 Manufactured in the United States of America 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper). UC-Yang-rev.indd iv 8/27/2008 1:01:34 PM Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Mayfair Mei-hui Yang 楊美惠 Part I. Religious Approaches to Citizenship: The Traffic between Religious Orders and the Secular National Order 1. Religion and Citizenship in China and the Diaspora 43 Prasenjit Duara 杜贊奇 2. Redeploying Confucius: The Imperial State Dreams of the Nation, 1902–1911 65 Ya-pei Kuo 郭亞珮 Part II. State Discourse and the Transformation of Religious Communities 3. Ritual Competition and the Modernizing Nation-State 87 Rebecca Nedostup 張倩雯 4. Heretical Doctrines, Reactionary Secret Societies, Evil Cults: Labeling Heterodoxy in Twentieth-Century China 113 David A. Palmer 宗樹人 5. Animal Spirits, Karmic Retribution, Falungong, and the State 135 Benjamin Penny 裴凝 6. Christianity and “Adaptation to Socialism” 155 Ryan Dunch 唐日安 UC-Yang-rev.indd v 8/27/2008 1:01:34 PM 7. Islam and Modernity in China: Secularization or Separatism? 179 Dru C. Gladney 杜磊 Part III. The Reinvention and Control of Religious Institutions 8. Republican Church Engineering: The National Religious Associations in 1912 China 209 Vincent Goossaert 高萬桑 9. Secularization as Religious Restructuring: Statist Institutionalization of Chinese Buddhism and Its Paradoxes 233 Ji Zhe 汲喆 10. State Control of Tibetan Buddhist Monasticism in the People’s Republic of China 261 José Ignacio Cabezón Part IV. Taiwan and Transnational Chinese Religiosity 11. Religious Renaissance and Taiwan’s Modern Middle Classes 295 Richard Madsen 趙文詞 12. Goddess across the Taiwan Strait: Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-State, and Satellite Television Footprints 323 Mayfair Mei-hui Yang 楊美惠 Notes 349 Bibliography 377 Glossary and Chinese Proper Names 437 Contributors 451 Index 455 UC-Yang-rev.indd vi 8/27/2008 1:01:34 PM Acknowledgments Most of the essays in this volume were first presented at the International Conference on Religion, Modernity, and the State in China and Taiwan, held at the University of California, Santa Barbara, October 28–30, 2005. This volume could not have been produced without the funding of two key grant agencies that supported the international conference: the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation and the University of California Pacific Rim Program. The editor and contributors wish to extend our sincere appreciation to these two agencies for their support. We would also like to thank the UCSB Interdisciplinary Humanities Center for providing a conference site and logistical support. Warm appreciation is extended as well to Professor Tu Kuo-ch’ing and his Taiwan Studies Center at UCSB for additional financial support of scholars presenting papers on the religious situation in Taiwan. The editor also wishes to express appreciation to the following par- ticipants at the UCSB conference who presented papers, offered valuable comments and suggestions, and posed challenging questions: Peter van der Veer, Kenneth Dean, Robert Weller, Bill Powell, Julia Huang, Adam Chau, Dan Smyer Yu, Chen Hsi-yuan, Dominic Sachsenmeir, Liu Xun, Kuo Cheng-tian, Fan Lizhu, Christian Jochim, and Charlotte Furth. We are also indebted to Nathan MacBrien at the Division of International and Area Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, for his unflag- ging support of our volume, for putting up with delays, and for allowing Chinese characters in the body of the text. An anonymous reader provided very useful comments and suggestions for each essay, which are greatly appreciated. Many thanks also go to Pan Shiying for her tireless efforts and detailed work on the Chinese- and Western-language bibliographies and on the formatting of the manuscript. Gratitude is also extended to He Hongguang for his valuable work on the index and in proofreading. Last but not least, Mayfair Yang would like to extend loving thanks to Philip Myers and Kai Keyang Zhang for their patience and family support. vii UC-Yang-rev.indd vii 8/27/2008 1:01:34 PM UC-Yang-rev.indd viii 8/27/2008 1:01:34 PM Introduction Mayfair Mei-hui Yang 楊 美 惠 At a conference at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2004, I gave a paper on the revival of popular religion based on my fieldwork in rural Wenzhou, on the southeastern coast of China (M. Yang n.d.).1 Afterward, a U.S.-trained Chinese scholar with an academic position in the U.S, but born and raised in China, asked why I was studying religion when it has never been very important in China and the Chinese people have always been pragmatic and secular, even in imperial times. This was a view famil- iar to me from the 1980s, in conversations with intellectuals and even with working-class people during two-and-a-half years of living in Beijing. It is symptomatic of the cultural amnesia that has beset China, rendering many Chinese unaware of the vast modern efforts to demonize and eradi- cate the rich religious life that was long an integral part of China. The Chinese sociologist C. K. Yang wrote that both Western sinologists and China’s own modern cultural elites, including the journalist-reformer Liang Qichao (1873–1929) and philosopher-essayist Hu Shi (1891–1962), held that religion was not an important feature of Chinese culture, and that what religious life there was, such as Buddhism and Christianity, had been introduced from foreign lands (C. K. Yang 1961; Liang 1981a). Yang explained that Western sinologists overlooked the richness
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