Abstract
Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a county in Southeast China, this article identifies three tendencies that have appeared in the revitalization of temple-based popular religion in the post-Mao period. These three tendencies—women taking more central roles in popular religion, the bifurcation between the ever increasing popularity and prosperity of a small number of temples and the decline in the majority of small village temples, and the tendency of popular religion temples to acquire Buddhist features—have consequently caused the character and terrain of popular religion to diverge greatly from the pre-1949 past. To explain these changes, the article argues that we have to come to terms with the two faces of popular religion: the communal/mandatory dimension and the individual/voluntary dimension that is largely associated with female devotees. All three tendencies have been taking place when popular religion temples’ bonds with village communities attenuated and their voluntary dimension moved to the forefront. The article attributes the weakening of the communal dimension of popular religion temples to the restructuring of rural society by the Maoist political campaigns and the post-Mao marketization.
Since the late 1970s, the relaxation of political control in China has brought about the resurgence of all kinds of religious activities. Temple-based popular religion, or territorial cults, once central to the religious life of the Chinese people (Feuchtwang, 2001; Yang, 1961), has also returned in force. 1 Existing studies have explained the revitalization by probing the role of the leaders and the tactics they have employed in the face of the still restrictive political climate (Chau, 2005, 2006; Fan, 2003; Feuchtwang and Wang, 2001), or interpreted the reconstruction of temples as an act of the local community to reclaim its history and reassert its autonomy from the state (Anagnost, 1994; Jing, 1996; Yang, 2004), or discussed the implications of the revival of popular religion for the development of civil society or the provision of public goods (Dean, 1997, 2003; Tsai, 2007). It was only very recently, however, that scholars began to look in-depth at the nature of the “revival” or “revitalization” of popular religion (Chau, 2011b; see also Siu, 1990). Realizing that post-Mao revitalization is not simply about resurrecting the pre-1949 tradition after a hiatus of Communist suppression, some scholars now tend to use such terms as “reinvention” or “remaking” in order to convey the idea that “religious traditions are complex, dynamic, ever-changing clusters of institutions, practitioners and consumers, knowledge and practices, sociopolitical relations and hierarchies fully amenable to innovations, inventions, and reinventions all the time” (Chau, 2011a: 2). In a similar vein, this article addresses the following questions: In what ways does the present situation of popular religion depart from the situation before 1949? What processes and mechanisms have contributed to divergences between the two eras?
Based on fieldwork in Peach River County in Zhejiang province, 2 I find that three observable processes have accompanied the resurgence of temple-based popular religion in the post-Mao period: (1) women have taken a much more prominent role in popular religion than ever before; (2) popular religion temples have been experiencing what can be termed a “bifurcation”—while a small number of temples have enjoyed ever-increasing popularity and prosperity, many temples have shown signs of decline years after the initial rebuilding period; and (3) popular religion temples have demonstrated a tendency to acquire Buddhist features. These three processes reveal the profoundly changed character of popular religion in contemporary China. In order to account for them, this article accentuates an often overlooked dimension of popular religion—the individual/voluntary aspect that is largely associated with the religious devotion of women—in addition to the communal and mandatory nature of territorial cults conventionally emphasized by prior studies. I argue that the three processes could take place because the traditional social foundation of the communal existence of territorial cults has been undermined, and consequently superseded by its voluntary dimension as a result of the political campaigns of the Mao era and the post-Mao marketization.
Field Site and Research Methods
The primary source for this study comes from fieldwork I conducted in Peach River County over a total period of eighteen months during the course of 2006–2009 as well as two additional trips in the summers of 2010 and 2011. Peach River County is located in Zhejiang province in Southeast China. Under the present administrative arrangements, it is divided into six subdistricts 街道, seven towns 镇, and three townships 乡. It has 646 villages, and 63 percent of its population of 560,000 was classified as farmers according to the 2010 census data.
To reconstruct the state of temple-based popular religion of the pre-1949 era, I rely on archival materials, stele inscriptions, as well as oral history. The history of the county as an administrative unit dates back to 674
During 2006–2009, I visited altogether 124 popular religion temples. This has given me a fairly good grasp of the general picture. I conducted 28 lengthy formal interviews. But my data also come from numerous casual conversations and observations when I joined my informants in pilgrimage trips, sutra chanting, consecration rituals, and all sorts of other religious activities in the field.
Popular Religion in the Past
The first recorded popular religion temple in the history of Peach River County was the Temple of the Marquis of Efficacious Response. Built in the year 466 ad, it remains one of the most prosperous temples today. Most temples in the county were built between the twelfth century and the late nineteenth century. In late imperial China, the system of territorial cults was fully crystallized. Individual villages, multivillage alliances, townships, and city districts each sponsored temples that protected the welfare of its territorial community. Village-level communal temples—properly called benbao dian (literally temple of our own community, 本保殿) in the local dialect—were universally scattered throughout the county. In addition to having its own benbao dian, a village often formed an alliance with neighboring villages and the village alliance acquired ritual functions by sponsoring a communal temple together (Brim, 1974; Dean and Zheng, 2010; Lin, 2008; Sangren, 1987). 4 Such multivillage-level temples were usually much grander than village-level temples. In the county seat stood the City God Temple 城隍庙, the Temple of the Eastern Peak 东岳庙, the Temple of the Medicine King 药皇庙, the Temple of Emperor Guan 关帝庙, the Wenchang Pavilion 文昌阁, and several other temples. The City God Temple was at the top of the county-wide popular religion temple system. The City God, a deity who figured prominently in the state cult, also enjoyed popular devotion (Feuchtwang, 1977). His birthday, the second day of the second lunar month, was an immensely popular festival in the county.
Each temple had a principal god, flanked by other, subsidiary deities. Guangong 关公, Lord Hu 胡公大帝, King Xu-yan 徐偃王, Guanyin 观音, and the Dragon King 龙王 were among the most popular choices as the principal god of village temples or village-alliance temples. 5 Some village communities, however, chose a local hero or a lineage ancestor as the principal god of their temple. Among the minor deities, the Earth God 土地公 and his wife, usually installed at the entrance of the temple or housed in a separate small shrine, were an indispensable pair. As the gods bestowed blessings on the community, the community reciprocated by regularly making food offerings, renovating the temple, and staging a yearly temple festival. The temple festival, held on the birthday of the principal god, was a grand communal event involving animal sacrifices, parading the god(s), and theatrical performances. In addition to the temple festival, the ritual of praying for rain was another major communal event. Since temples were suppliers of a common good, financial contributions toward temple upkeep and temple festivals as well as participation in communal ritual events were the obligation of members of the community.
For multivillage-level temple festivals, villages in the alliance rotated the responsibility of organizing the temple festival. For the City God Temple, the trade guilds financed the lion’s share of the cost of staging its festival. These supralocal temple festivals usually lasted for several days and were important occasions of trade fairs. A handful of these temples achieved more prominence than others. By the nineteenth century at the latest, Peach River County had formed a cult of five temples 五大庙, comprising the City God Temple and four very large village-alliance temples located in the county seat and its outskirts. These five temples not only became county-wide pilgrimage centers but also participated in the county-wide rain ritual. When a most severe drought struck the county, the statues of the principal gods of these five temples would be carried out one after another and paraded through the thoroughfares of the county seat before being placed in the sun until rain fell. Only men could participate in the rain ritual. When the procession passed through the streets, all shops were closed and women were barred from sight. The county magistrate would take part in the rain ritual as well. If all five gods were out and still there was no immediate end of the drought, the locals would file a petition demanding tax and rent relief. The magistrate and landlords could not simply ignore the petition, or else they would face popular outrage.
Temples were administered by a temple management committee, which usually comprised men of status. These leaders were designated toushou 头首, a position, especially in a supravillage-level temple, that brought significant prestige. In a small number of cases, monks were hired to look after communal temples, but the decision-making power still resided in the hands of local leadership.
The Republican state following the 1911 Revolution, which overthrew the Qing and ended imperial rule, abolished the state cult and labeled popular religion a “superstition.” That is, the state denounced popular religion as delusory and an impediment to self-development and national progress. It also orchestrated campaigns to eradicate popular religion (Duara, 1991; Nedostup, 2009; Poon, 2011). However, the anti-superstition campaigns in many places, especially in rural areas, were not effective (Goossaert and Palmer, 2011). In Peach River County, popular religion temples retained their powerful grip over local society. A 1934 survey covering a large part of the county recorded 341 popular religion temples, which owned 3,015 buildings and 1,684 mu of land. Dozens of temples were used as classrooms but most preserved their religious functions. The county people continued to celebrate the City God’s birthday until the Japanese occupation in 1942 (see Poon, 2004, 2008). The grandeur and bustling festivity of the celebration left such a deep impression on some of my elderly informants that they recounted what they witnessed in their childhood to me with both excitement and wistfulness. During the Republican period, the county-wide rain ritual was held in 1929 and 1934 when the county suffered two prolonged droughts. In the last rain ritual in the county’s history, tens of thousands of men joined the procession, carrying the statues of five gods to the yamen. They demanded the magistrate receive them. The magistrate, a university professor–turned official, was compelled to change into white garb and wear straw sandals. Carrying an incense tray, he offered sacrifices to the gods according to the prescribed ritual procedures.
Popular religion suffered much more devastating damage after 1949. A great number of god statues were destroyed during the anti-superstition campaign in the early 1950s. During the Land Reform in 1951–1952, temple land was confiscated and redistributed to the poor. The movement against local religion reached its apogee in the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), when the remaining religious icons were ravaged and temple buildings were converted into granaries or pigsties, or torn down so that their materials could be used for other constructions. The City God Temple was partially demolished in 1954. Before the City God statue was to be destroyed, it was spirited away by some devotees at night and buried in a field in a nearby village. In 1958, the City God Temple was turned into an elementary school. In 1966, the City God statue was dug up and smashed to pieces by the Red Guards.
When the state adopted more tolerant and pragmatic religious policies in the early 1980s, popular religious practices began to reemerge. Women went to the original sites of temple buildings, most of which were in a dilapidated state or occupied for other uses, to burn incense and light candles. The restoration of temples soon followed. The peak of temple reconstruction was from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s. The Religious Affairs Bureau, after compiling data collected by cadres of every town and township, concluded that altogether 660 temples had been restored or built by 2009. Of all of the villages I visited, none has left its communal temple unrestored. During the time when I was in the field, the phase of temple restoration was near its end. The construction projects I witnessed were mainly for renovation and expansion.
There was clearly a rural-urban split in the restoration of popular religion temples. While villages have rebuilt their temples, most temples in the county seat, including the City God Temple, have not been recovered—they were either completely destroyed, turned over to work units or schools, or turned into residential compounds. Rebuilding of urban temples, which entails the relocation of the occupants, is oftentimes too difficult to be carried out (see Goossaert and Palmer, 2011: 268). Thus the restoration of popular religion temples mostly took place in the villages. Of the revitalization of popular religion in the rural and suburban areas of Peach River County, I have observed three tendencies, which have given the revived popular religion a different character compared with its past.
Feminization
Middle-aged and older women have played a pivotal role in the rebuilding of popular religion temples. They responded to the news of temple and statue building with great enthusiasm and have usually made donations to more than one temple building project. Their donations might be small, 6 but the total sum still constitutes the bulk of the temple construction funds. It is a common practice among women to pool money together with their relatives or friends and use the collective sum to sponsor the cost of a god statue or a column in the temple so that their names can be inscribed on the donated objects. Seeking reputation is surely not the only motivation. For these female worshippers, temple building provides an opportunity to earn merit that can bring this-worldly and otherworldly benefits. This deeply entrenched notion and practice of merit-making has been influenced by Buddhism, which has been immensely popular in the county’s history. Women often donate under the name of their husband or son so that the latter can receive the benefits of a good reputation and gods’ blessings.
Older women have also acted as indefatigable and effective fund-raisers for temple rebuilding. Men, having their status and dignity at stake, are often embarrassed about “begging for money.” Women, because of their lowly social status, feel much less concern. They have raised funds for temple rebuilding through their personal networks. They might also join the fund-raising and walk to neighboring villages and towns, soliciting donations. As elderly village women, they have a natural advantage. Even though their fund-raising methods sometimes have been quite aggressive, they certainly do not look threatening. And it is hard for people to turn them down.
With the exception of temple festivals, which often involve the participation of the entire village, of all other religious gatherings in the temples such as consecration rituals, pilgrimages, and liturgical services, over 95 percent of the participants are women. Women have also been the most active volunteers in temple rebuilding. After a temple is rebuilt, it is again women who take up the task of cleaning and making regular food offerings to the gods. During temple festivals and the Spring Festival, when temples receive an endless stream of worshippers, women volunteers work strenuously in temple kitchens cooking for visitors (see Kang, 2009).
While it is true that women also played a role as participants, patrons, donors, fund-raisers, and volunteers in the pre-1949 era, the difference is that during the past three decades women in many instances have played the roles of initiators and leaders of rebuilding projects and managers of temples, roles historically reserved for men. According to my information, based on the initial rebuilding of 112 temples, in 87 percent of the cases, older women initiated the plan to rebuild and were key to its success. The first sign of resurgence of popular religion activities in the early 1980s was older women flocking to temple sites to burn incense and taking pilgrimage trips. These early worshippers made a small makeshift shrine dedicating to the gods, which attracted even more women to come to worship. Stories of gods making their presence felt or appearing in dreams were circulating among female worshippers. The idea of restoring the original temples for gods was then brought up. Women sought the help of some men who could lead them in restoring temples. Yet, in many cases women took the leadership role themselves.
I have encountered many moving stories of old women demonstrating admirable strength and tenacity in leading temple rebuilding. Many of them are already in their 80s or even 90s now. For instance, I met 83-year-old Ms. Yao Hehua in the communal temple of her village, which she helped restore. The temple was allocated to a family to live in during the Land Reform in 1952. In 1999, the family moved out to a new house. Ever since then, Ms. Yao was planning to restore the temple. She secured the help of a retired elementary school teacher who agreed to provide clerical assistance. The villagers, however, did not enthusiastically respond to her plan. Ms. Yao made the first donations of 1,000 yuan under the name of her late husband and another donation of 40 yuan under her own name. 7 Then villagers followed with donations of 50 or 100 yuan. However, there were still people who tried to evade paying their share. Yao knocked on their doors and implored them to donate at least 30 yuan per household. Because of her persistence, the temple was eventually repaired and god statues reinstalled. Now this nicely kempt temple has two halls, as well as thirteen big statues and fifteen smaller ones made of clay. Red couplets were posted on the gate and every column in the building. The handwriting looked a bit unsophisticated. To my surprise, all of these red couplets were handwritten by Ms. Yao, who had attended school for only two years before marrying into the village at the age of fourteen.
Old female devotees like Ms. Yao have played an instrumental role not only in restoring their own communal temples but also in reviving temples elsewhere. As mentioned above, all temples in the county seat were repurposed during the Maoist years or even before and none of them have been reclaimed from their occupants to restore their religious function. Only two of them, the City God Temple and the Temple of the Eastern Peak, found a way to continue their existence, mainly due to the efforts of female devotees. The City God Temple, once the center of popular religion practices in the county, was turned into an elementary school in the 1950s. Ever since the late 1970s, on the god’s birthday, women would go to the site to light incense and candles, and burn joss paper at the school gate. In the mid-1980s, a tale circulated widely in the county that the City God was manifesting himself on the wall of the school. While women from all over the county flocked to the school to worship the god, some activists led a campaign to petition the county government to relocate the school and restore the City God Temple. The petition, however, was rejected by the government. The City God, dear to the memory of the older generation of the county folks, eventually found shelter elsewhere. In 1986, some six women in their 60s and 70s in the village where the god statue was stashed by devotees and later destroyed by the Red Guards led the building of a temple dedicated to the martyred City God. They initially built a small and makeshift temple. In 1993, the same group of women launched a project to build a much bigger and grander temple to replace the old one so that the god could have a decent place to rest. The Temple of the Eastern Peak has had a very similar fate. The temple site was once used as the office of the Nationalist Party during the Republican period, later turned into the county Communist Party School, and is now part of a police station. According to a local tale, the Emperor of the Eastern Peak 东岳大帝, who had been homeless for years, appeared in a dream of a woman in a village two kilometers from the original temple site, beseeching her to build a temple for him. In 2003, women in this village raised money and built a temple dedicated to the god, right next to their village communal temple, which they also helped restore.
Among the temples whose rebuilding was essentially led by women, some of them later were entrusted to a temple management committee mainly consisting of men, and some temples have brought in a Buddhist monk or a lay Buddhist to help with their management. In a great percentage of cases, however, women continued to be in charge. Some temples, like the one under the care of Ms. Yao, never formed a formal temple management committee and continued to be managed by the women who led the temple restoration; some of the temple management committees were dominated by women with strong personalities and capable leadership. These women were involved in planning and organizing temple festivals.
In sum, in the past three decades women have played a very active and important role in reviving popular religion. Without them, popular religion temples could not have been restored so quickly. In this process, women have gained unprecedented influence in the public space of popular religion. They have been moving to the front stage of popular religion, which used to be occupied by men. Male leadership tends to be more prominent in the restoration of multivillage-level temples than of village-level temples. Yet, even in these cases, the patrons, donors, and volunteers are also predominantly women.
Bifurcation
Three decades have passed since temple rebuilding started. Now looking back, it is easy to see that a process of bifurcation has been taking place among popular religion temples: while a few temples have become ever more popular and richer, the majority of the small village temples have been in decline several years after their restoration.
A small number of temples have become more and more prosperous since they have been restored. For instance, the number of buildings and the floor space of the temple complex as well as the number of statues in the Temple of the Marquis of Efficacious Response and the Temple of Lord Zhao have surpassed the record in both temples’ history. Both temples have undergone several major renovation and expansion projects since restoration and construction projects are still underway. The scale of their temple festivals and the number of visitors on such occasions have also exceeded their historical record. Several village temples have emerged from obscurity to become new pilgrimage centers. Attracting patrons from near and far, their influence goes much beyond their village community.
The majority of the popular religion temples, however, have been much less fortunate. Many small village temples enjoyed the enthusiastic support of villagers only for a few years after being rebuilt. Then the communal support began to run out of steam. Xu Village was one of the earliest in the county that rebuilt its temple. The villagers celebrated the god’s birthday by organizing a wooden bench dragon dance, a traditional form of celebration and performance often seen in festive celebrations in Peach River County. In the dance, several people would hold the dragon head and up to dozens or hundreds of people would carry decorated benches connected together to form the dragon’s body and tail. Traditionally, when the village decided to hold the wooden bench dragon dance, every household would contribute a bench. In recent years, however, it has become more and more difficult to organize the dragon dance as the number of households willing to contribute a bench has dwindled. For the past three years, no dragon dance has been staged. Only the dragon head is placed on the village opera stage, letting the villagers worship it. The temple is usually only open on the first and fifteenth day of every lunar month. Once every other month, about a dozen female devotees of the village gather in the temple to practice the gengshen 庚申 ritual (an explanation of the ritual is in a later section).
The temple in Ms. Yao’s village is another example. For the first few years after its restoration, the villagers organized celebrations of the god’s birthday by carrying the statue of the god from the temple to the lineage hall, making communal sacrifices, and carrying it back to the temple. In recent years, communal celebrations are no longer held. Now, on the god’s birthday, only village women come to the temple to make their individual offerings. Ms. Yao would open the temple on the first and fifteenth day of every lunar month for villagers who wished to come to worship. The temple remained closed for the rest of the year except when Ms. Yao invited a nun from a nearby Buddhist temple to lead a ritual event called chan liuli 忏琉璃 (an explanation will be given in a later section) in which older women in the vicinity participate. However, as Ms. Yao became more and more frail, she was no longer able to organize this ritual event. Indeed, as the old generation of female devotees who have the deepest attachment to the temples and popular religion practices are fading away, the future of these small village temples does not look promising.
Admittedly, popular religion temples in premodern times were also stratified. In terms of the size of temples and the scale of temple festivals, there was a hierarchy among the few temples that enjoyed county-wide worship, village-alliance temples, and small village temples. Nonetheless, the smaller were no less sustainable than larger ones in the past. Except when war intervened, celebrations of the god’s birthday were held yearly, and temples were more or less well maintained. In other words, there is little evidence to suggest that the kind of the bifurcation process described above had also occurred in premodern times.
Buddhification
Since their restoration, temples have displayed yet another tendency: a leaning toward Buddhism. It is true that Buddhism was historically very influential in Peach River County and Buddhist influence could be identified in popular religion practices. For instance, deities of Buddhist origin were found in some popular communal temples, and sometimes Buddhist monks were hired to perform liturgical services or to look after the temples. Yet, these practices affected little the deep structure of popular religion: Buddhist deities incorporated into the pantheon of communal temples often assumed subsidiary roles; even for temples that adopted a deity of Buddhist origin (Guanyin in most cases) as their principal god, the organization of ritual events and relationship with the local community were the same as those of other popular religion temples; Buddhist liturgies performed by the monks only supplemented the communal sacrifices and procession of the god(s), which were core to the celebration of temple festivals; although Buddhist monks were hired to serve various functions, the temple management committee, which consisted of local elders, had ultimate control over temple assets and made important decisions about the temple.
In the past two decades or so, a great number of popular religion temples have added Buddhist gods to their original pantheon or added Buddhist halls to their original temple structure. Of the 112 popular religion temples about which I have information, 23 are managed by monks or lay Buddhists. During the time of my fieldwork, a number of temple management committees were also contemplating inviting monks to tend their temples. While for some temples acquired Buddhist elements have not overridden their popular religion identity, other temples have undergone a major transformation to become primarily Buddhist sites. It is the latter cases that reveal something distinct from the traditional pattern of appropriating and blending Buddhist features.
In what follows, I provide examples of popular religion temples that display varying degree of Buddhification. After its restoration in 1985, the Temple of the Marquis of Efficacious Response launched several expansion projects in which a Guanyin Pavilion and an Arahat Hall were added to the original temple complex. In comparison, the Temple of Lord Zhao has gone even further down the path of Buddhification. Not long after its restoration in the early 1990s, some thirty women from nearby villages, who had formally gone through the ceremony of “taking refuge in the three jewels of Buddhism” 三皈依 to become lay Buddhists, formed a group that meet in the temple on the first and fifteenth day of every lunar month to practice the basic Buddhist liturgy. In 2007, the temple management committee announced a plan to build a Main Buddha Hall 大雄宝殿 and kicked off a fund-raising drive. In November 2008, the temple committee invited a Buddhist monk to reside in the temple and manage its routine work. For temples like the Temple of Lord Zhao, the temple management committee composed of villagers still has control over the temple coffers and makes important decisions about the temple. Several other temples, however, have yielded these powers to Buddhist leaders and allowed themselves to be quite thoroughly transformed into Buddhist temples. In these temples, Buddhist rituals have been replacing popular religion rituals, and their core patrons and participants have embraced the identity of lay Buddhists.
One such example is the Luminous Efficacy Temple 赫灵庙, which worships Lord Hu and is sponsored by four allied villages. Turned into a cowshed during the Cultural Revolution, it was restored to its religious functions in 1991 and statues of gods were reinstalled two years later. In 1997, a Buddhist monk was invited to reside in the temple. Under the management of the monk and his successors, the main hall, which originally enshrined Lord Hu, was remodeled and changed to the Main Buddha Hall. Two additional Buddhist halls were added to the flanks of the temple. The original popular religion deities were relocated to the rear hall of the temple. After the Luminous Efficacy Temple was restored, on the birthday of Lord Hu, villagers would organize a communal celebration that involves animal sacrifice and parading the statue of the god. However, as Buddhification of the temple developed further, the traditional communal celebration eventually was discontinued. In September 2007 when I visited the temple on Lord Hu’s birthday, I did not see a temple fair. Instead, a Buddhist repentance ritual was taking place in the Main Buddha Hall. The ritual was administered by four Buddhist monks and had over fifty female participants. About a third of the participants were dressed in black long-sleeved robes known as haiqing 海青, which usually are supposed to be worn by those who have taken the formal ceremony of becoming lay Buddhist disciples. From what I observed that day, it seems that the villagers have almost forsaken their god. From 9 am to 2 pm, I only saw about ten village women going to the rear hall to light candles before the god statues and only one of them carried a tray of sacrificial meat to offer to Lord Hu.
In still another example, the Crystal Pond Temple, a temple of ten villages, was rebuilt during 1994–1995. In 2004, the temple invited a young man, Mr. Shao, to take up residence in the temple and lead a group of some twenty female worshippers. Under his management, the temple was quickly transformed into a Buddhist site. Shao managed to raise some 210,000 yuan to build, next to the original communal temple, a freestanding three-story building dedicated to Buddhist practice. The construction was completed in 2007. A devout lay Buddhist, Shao was deeply influenced by the teachings of a Buddhist master named Jingkong 净空 who is based overseas but nonetheless has exerted tremendous influence over the Buddhist community in mainland China since the mid-1980s through the free distribution of his lectures in printed and audiovisual format (Sun, 2011). Shao had the group of female worshippers watch the lectures of Jingkong, and took them on pilgrimage trips to the Zhaoming Temple, which, located some 250 miles away from Peach River County, is a national center that promotes Pure Land Buddhist practices according to the teachings of Jingkong. The interior design of the Buddha Hall recently built by Shao is modeled after the Buddha Recitation Hall of the Zhaoming Temple. Shao frequently organized Buddha recitation events, during which over one hundred participants chanted the name of the Amitabha Buddha together. When the Buddha Hall was crowded with too many participants, Shao would also make use of the space of the original popular religion temple. On such occasions, the statues of popular religion deities would be covered with large paintings of Buddha images. Thus, the popular religion identity of the Crystal Pond Temple has become overshadowed by its newly acquired Buddhist identity. The temple has become known to the county people as a site for the practice of Pure Land Buddhism. Female devotees who originally patronized the popular religion temple have converted to Buddhism and are now the core members of Shao’s Buddhist group. The communal celebration of the god’s birthday by the villagers ceased in 2007.
For temples that have gone through the profound change of becoming mostly Buddhist sites, even their names were altered to reflect this transformation. Usually, a temple name consists of two parts, the first part having at least two Chinese characters, and the second being a term indicating the nature of the religious building (Naquin, 2000: 19–21). Over the years, these temples have changed the second part of their names from dian 殿 or miao 庙, which indicates a place that enshrines popular religion gods, to si 寺, which is used to designate a place for worshipping Buddhist deities.
A religious system cannot survive without its underlying institutional structure, which includes the organizational structure of the religion, its supporting social institutions and social groups. An explanation of the changes that a religion experiences, therefore, should start with an investigation of the institutional dimension of the religion and see how sociopolitical forces have changed it. This is the approach I adopt in offering my explanation of the three tendencies popular religion has demonstrated during its post-Mao resurgence. The following starts with an investigation of the organizational structure and social foundation of popular religion in pre-1949 times, and proceeds to examine how the organizational structure and social foundation have been altered by the sociopolitical forces in the Maoist and the post-Mao eras.
The Two Faces of Popular Religion
The literature on the communal and mandatory nature of temple-based popular religion in pre-1949 times (Goossaert and Palmer, 2011: 24–25; Litzinger, 1996; Yang, 1961) has noted that temples guarded the common interest and welfare of the territorial community, and as such mandated contributions from and participation by every household of the community. In Peach River County and many other places in Southeast China, popular religion had an intricate relationship with the major social organization in the local society—the lineage organization (Siu, 1990; Szonyi, 2000). Lineage leaders often led temple construction and served on temple management committees. In multi-lineage villages, collecting dues and organizing ritual participation for temple festivals were often done through lineage organizations. In single-lineage villages, lineage branches often rotated the duty of staging the yearly temple festivals. An integral part of the celebration was carrying the statue of the god to the lineage ancestor hall or lineage branch ancestral halls to receive communal sacrifices. Hence, the communal and coercive aspect of popular religion was reinforced by the authority and resources of lineage organizations.
Temple-based popular religion, however, had another dimension: while the temple served the communal interest, individuals also came to temples and prayed for divine assistance, which usually focused on personal and familial needs and concerns. 8 This voluntary and individual dimension of temple-based popular religion has been much less acknowledged by students of Chinese religion (but see Chau, 2006: 62–73; DuBois, 2005: 48–51).
It is also important to recognize that temple-based popular religion was a gendered practice. Past historical studies have acknowledged the significant role of women in popular religion by pointing out that they were an important category of temple donors (Naquin, 2000: 161, 227–32), active participants of voluntary religious associations (Duara, 1988: 115; Naquin, 2000: 237–38), or eager temple visitors, pilgrims, and participants in temple festivals (Dudbridge, 1992; Zhao, 2002). Research has also shown that women’s biological attributes and social role, the structure of their life world, as well as their needs and desires shaped their distinctive views toward life and death (Martin, 1988), their attachment to female deities (Sangren, 1983), and ways of participation in popular religion (Zhao, 2002: 259–96). 9
In pre-1949 Peach River County, the communal aspect of temple-based popular religion was associated with male dominance. The temple management committee was an all-male team of local notables who made major decisions regarding the temple and organized temple festivals. The male precedence was reflected in the communal rituals centered on the temple. Women also participated in the communal sacrificial ritual, but men always strode before them in the procession and carried important sacrificial objects. Moreover, the rain ritual completely excluded women. However, temple-based popular religion also had room for female participation, which showed distinctive features and had a strong connection with the voluntary dimension of popular religion.
In Peach River County before 1949, popular religion temples often installed at least one statue that appealed to the needs of women. 10 Many temples had fertility deities such as the child-bestowing goddess 送子娘娘 or 子孙堂 in the image of an idealized family of four generations and a dozen frolicking boys. But the most popular female deities in Peach River County were Guanyin and the Earth Mother Goddess 地母娘娘. The Earth Mother Goddess has the image of a white-haired elderly lady in a yellow robe who holds a whisk in her hand and rides on a mysterious animal with a dragon’s head and a fish’s body.
Among female devotees, ballads circulated that convey religious messages. Known as “small sutras” 小经, these ballads are short, usually with fewer than 30 verses. 11 Although both Buddhist and Daoist influence can be detected in these ballads and almost all of them end with the verse “Homage to Buddha; Homage to the Amitabha Buddha” 南无佛, 南无阿弥陀佛, they form their own distinct tradition. The themes of the religious ballads are related to certain religious practices, such as lighting candles or burning incense, or are about a religious object such as a lantern or a fan, or are dedicated to certain deities such as earth gods, the bridge god, or Guanyin, or are to be chanted at certain ritual occasions such as the gengshen ritual. Most of these small sutras take the perspective of married women and reflect their religious practices, life world, social relations, desires and fears. Women chanted these ballads in the local dialect, sometimes drumming on a wooden fish to keep the rhythm. They treasured these ballads and eagerly learned them from one another.
A number of liturgical forms were particularly popular among this group of female devotees. They included the ritual of paying the debt for the next life 还来生债, the repentance ritual of breaking the bloody pond 忏血湖, and the “glaze repentance ritual” 忏琉璃. 12 These rituals could be performed by either Buddhist clerics, or Daoist ritual specialists, or religious professionals known in the local society as “repentance ritual masters” 忏生. Women also practiced ritual forms not mediated by religious specialists. For instance, it was popular among female worshippers to observe the gengshen days, that is, the fifty-seventh day in the sixty-day cycle. On gengshen days, women would assemble in their local temple and stay awake throughout the night, reciting the “gengshen sutras,” which belonged to the category of “small sutras.” 13 It was believed that keeping vigil on the gengshen days would reduce illness and prolong life. In the first year, women observed the gengshen vigil for the well-being of their in-laws, the next year for their own parents, the third year for their husbands, and the fourth year, finally, for themselves.
The temple-going activities of women have a long history in the county and developed certain cultures. One could identify women on a temple-visiting trip by their look. Female pilgrims would usually wear their best attire and carry a yellow bag over their shoulder. The yellow bag, which the women purchased from some Buddhist temple they once visited, had Buddhist symbols on it and contained incense, candles, joss paper, and offerings. Once female worshippers entered a temple, they followed some basic ritual procedures. They lit two red candles and bowed to the Heaven, the Earth, and the four directions before putting them on the candle stand. They placed a bag of fruit, candies, and pastries on the altar of the principal god. Then they prostrated themselves before the god images and placed incense in the incense burner. They burned yellow paper and paper ingots in the incinerator outside the temple gate. When all of these were done, they picked up their bags of offerings blessed by the gods and moved on to the next temple. If the temple had cypress trees nearby, they would pluck a small twig as an auspicious memento to bring home. It is a local custom in Peach River County for women to visit as many temples as possible on the first day of the Chinese New Year. Women usually kicked off the pilgrimage by visiting their own communal temple and then went on to visit some big popular religion temples. Furthermore, female devotees were most eager to attend the consecration ritual, which was held when new buildings were completed or new icons were installed. They believed the blessings one could receive from attending one moment of a consecration ritual were even greater than worshipping gods for an entire lifetime 拜佛一世, 开光一时.
In sum, in the pre-1949 local society, women constituted the main category of participants in voluntary activities associated with popular religion and formed an enduring bond with it. In analyzing the female mode of the practice of popular religion, I would like to highlight three points. First, women participated in religious activities not only for the sake of their personal well-being but also for the welfare of the entire family (Zhao, 2002: 270–71). Indeed, while men dominated the temple management committee and the communal temple festivals, within each household the task of taking care of religious matters was relegated to women. This division of labor was universally practiced in Peach River County. Second, these women devotees were not bound exclusively to their own communal temples. Instead, they visited and patronized different temples. Third, there was a deep affinity between these women devotees and Buddhism (Sangren, 1983: 19). Female worshippers did not distinguish between Buddhist deities and deities of popular religion. They referred to temple visiting activities as “lord worshipping” 拜老爷, or “Buddha worshipping” 拜佛, or “Bodhisattva worshipping” 拜菩萨. 14
Table 1 summarizes the two faces of temple-based popular religion. Its communal aspect was most prominent during communal rituals, which were organized by male leaders and required the adherence of all households in the territorial community. When there were no communal ritual events, the individual aspect of temple-based popular religion stood out and was largely associated with the voluntary participation of female devotees.
The Two Faces of Temple-Based Popular Religion.
During the past three decades, the personal mode has eclipsed the communal mode and has become more central to temple-based popular religion. All three major trends that have occurred in the religion as highlighted in the prior section have been the result of this major change. Hence, inquiry in the following section will focus on how the sociopolitical forces in the Maoist and post-Mao eras have contributed to the decline of the communal mode.
State-Initiated Changes in Rural Society
The Maoist state left two legacies that have had a major impact on the development of popular religion in the post-Mao era. The first legacy of course is various campaigns from the 1950s to 1970s to eradicate popular religion. Not only were icons and buildings destroyed, but propaganda campaigns were also organized to rid Chinese society of the influence of popular religion. In Peach River County, exhibitions of “superstitious objects” and confessions of “superstitious professionals” (such as spirit mediums) that aimed to expose the ignorance and evils of popular religious beliefs and practices were orchestrated. Popular religion, which was once the symbol of communal solidarity, now was condemned as “feudal superstition.” Association with popular religion, which once could be a source of power and prestige, now brought only stigma and persecution. The valuation of popular religion was completely inverted.
The second legacy left by the Maoist state is the destruction of lineage organizations and the old local elites. Because lineage power once was very strong in Peach River County, the campaigns against it were particularly severe. In the Land Reform and other political campaigns, the lineage organizations were dispossessed of land and other properties, and forcibly dismantled. Local notables who served as important toushou of popular religion temples were “struggled” and many of them were executed. The power structure that once buttressed communal temple religion suffered fatal damage.
In the post-Mao era, the state abandoned its radical policies and once again recognized the legitimacy of five religions, 15 and has reinstalled the state agency—the Religious Affairs Bureau—at the local level to regulate and manage religious activities (Potter, 2003). Popular religion is not among the five state-recognized religions. In the early period in the reform era, there was still stigma attached to popular religion activities and there were local cadres who tried to obstruct efforts to rebuild popular religion temples. But as the political climate became more open, even though popular religion was not granted legitimacy, 16 the restoration and building of popular religion temples has encountered little effective obstruction from the Religious Affairs Bureau or the local cadres. Since the mid-1990s, the local government in Peach River County has increasingly adopted a noninterventionist stance toward popular religious activities. 17 Nonetheless, during the same period, the state’s policies and actions have brought massive changes to local society, which in turn has profoundly affected local popular religious practices.
Beginning in the late 1970s, when the Chinese state launched the market-orientated economic reform, it turned first to the reform of agriculture. Under the newly introduced Household Responsibility System, collective farms were broken up and each individual household was allocated a parcel of land and agricultural implements. Individual households could make independent decisions about how they used the land and could keep anything they produced after they had fulfilled state quotas (Putterman, 1993). The change in the economic system drastically improved production incentives and increased the economic output in rural Peach River County (Lin, Cai, and Li, 2003). Sometime around the mid-1980s, industrial enterprises collectively owned by township and villages (TVEs) began to mushroom in the county (Bramall, 2007: 48–71). The TVEs thrived for a time. But by the mid-1990s, with the exception of a few villages whose cement and textile industry continued to boom, many TVEs faltered. Since the 1990s, economic reform has accelerated in urban areas. The expanding non-state-owned economy and newly created industrial parks have greatly increased the demand for labor. At the same time, the state has relaxed its restrictions on labor mobility, making it possible for a large number of rural youth to move to the county seat, nearby cities, and burgeoning regional economic centers such as Yiwu in search of work (Meng, 2000).
Shaped by the massive changes taking place in the economic realm, rural society has greatly changed. For one, as the economy became decollectivized, the rural community has become much less cohesive, and this has been consequential to the development of popular religion. Households and individuals have been trying to grapple with the unprecedented opportunities and pressures brought by market forces. In the process, the individualist orientation and materialist pursuits of villagers were reinforced (Yan, 2003). At the same time, the out-migration of rural youth made the villages increasingly a huge empty nest. In many villages in the county, over 60 percent of the households have young members working as migrant workers in cities. Communal religious activities thus could not rely on the active participation and support of the younger generation since they were absent most of the time. Even when they returned to their home villages, their schooling, which did not lack atheist indoctrination, and their life experience as migrant workers in urban centers determined that the younger generation could not easily embrace the customs, beliefs, and practices of the past in the same way the older generation did. The sudden increase in wealth could become a source of discord that further tears the community apart. For instance, villages, especially those on the outer rim of cities, often became embroidered in bitter disputes arising from the distribution of compensation fees for the land sold to the government or urban developers (Zhou, 2009). Farmers who lost their land complained that they did not receive a fair share of the compensation and village cadres were often accused of reaping undue personal benefits in the process. The grievances run so strong in some villages that villagers became disinclined to contribute to communal causes such as hosting temple festivals. They expected the village committee, which retained a handsome portion of the land compensation fee, to cover the cost.
If the political campaigns of the Mao era swept away the traditional social foundations undergirding the communal dimension of popular religion, then market forces unleashed by the economic reforms in the post-Mao era have led to the disintegration of the village community and consequently the further attenuation of popular religion’s communal bond. The latter transformation appears less violent but is no less powerful.
The S tory of Multilayered Revitalization
It is in such a sociopolitical context that the resurgence of popular religion has been taking place in rural society. Leading the temple rebuilding projects was supposedly the responsibility of the male toushous, but, during the 1980s, when popular religion was still stigmatized, even those who survived the political persecution in the Mao era were reluctant to do anything that would suggest an association with popular religion. At the time, all across the county, it was the older women who initiated temple restoration projects. They had the deepest personal bond with popular religion and their weak social position also worked to their advantage. Their religious activities were considered harmless and local cadres usually let these lao mama (old ladies) do what they pleased.
Hence, from the very start, the rebuilding of popular religion temples bore the imprint of the voluntary activities of female worshippers. In no position to impose rebuilding projects on residents of the territorial community, female worshippers not only begged their fellow villagers to donate but also canvassed outside their village community. After all, their religious activities were never restricted by territorial boundaries even in pre-1949 times. News of temple rebuilding traveled very fast among female worshippers. Believing that contributions to temple building would bring blessings, women who were not members of the territorial community were willing to make donations. As a result, not only supralocal temples, but also small village communal temples benefited from the translocal communities of female worshippers. For example, Ms. Fang, a resident of the county seat, was a generous donor to popular religion temples. Once she donated a handsome amount to a village communal temple to sponsor the making of the statues of the Earth God and his wife, even though she was not a member of the village community nor connected with it through a family relationship. Such acts would simply have been inconceivable in the past because the earth deities were traditionally thought to be strictly in charge of the affairs of the particular territorial community that worshipped them and not beyond.
When a communal temple was restored, it did rekindle the interest of the village community, as evidenced by the staging of temple festivals and the enthusiastic participation of villagers. Nonetheless, the initial outpouring of communal support soon ran out of steam, as the village males had their attention riveted on how to get rich and the youth migrated to urban areas. As the bonds between temples and their village communities weakened, temples increasingly had to rely on resources from the outside. They were forced to become more entrepreneurial and compete with each other for the attention and patronage of their main patrons—female worshippers. At the same time, the attenuation of the communal bond also made temples less beholden to the village community. As a result, temple leadership has gained more latitude to explore different means of increasing temple revenues and expanding temple influence. In this process, they have become more receptive to outside influences.
Thus, temples found themselves increasingly operating in a field of mutual competition and the competition ever intensified because the number of restored temples has proliferated. What kinds of temples are likely to be “winners” in such a competition? Surely, some temples are endowed with natural advantages. For example, multivillage-level temples are in a better position than village temples, since the former can draw resources from a much wider catchment area. For the same reason, temples that historically established a county-wide reputation are also likely to do better. These two factors explained a large part of the continued prosperity of the Temple of the Marquis of Efficacious Response and the Temple of Lord Zhao. While the former is the communal temple of five villages, the latter is sponsored by eighteen villages. Both temples were historically an integral part of the cult of five large temples that used to be the centers of county-wide worship and pilgrimages. Small village temples are underprivileged. Nonetheless, they still have a chance to shine if they are particularly adept at creating events to attract translocal female worshippers or can provide special services to them. Temple and icon building as well as the consecration ritual following the completion of construction are great occasions to mobilize the support of devotees. Frequent ritual events help a temple to sustain the patronage of worshippers. The charismatic or liturgical services of spirit mediums or Buddhist clerics can also add to the appeal of a temple. It is little wonder then that the Heavenly Mother Temple of Willow Mount Village could prosper, since it managed to make good use of all three means. Originally an obscure village temple that fell into disrepair during the Cultural Revolution, it was rebuilt in 1992 under the capable leadership of Ms. Lin, who claimed to have healing power given to her by Guanyin of the South Sea 南海观音. Her reputation as a spirit medium spread across the county and even to neighboring counties. The walls of the room where she received clients were covered with banners from her clients praising her magical efficacy. With ample funds continuously flowing in, Ms. Lin led the temple on repeated expansion projects. Big projects were undertaken in 1996, 2003, 2005, and 2006. Now, the temple complex includes five temples or halls—the renovated and expanded popular religion temple, the Jade Emperor Hall, the Heavenly King Hall, the Main Buddha Hall, and the Ksitigarbha (Earth Womb) Bodhisattva Temple—and houses more than fifty statues. Monks or repentance ritual masters hired by Ms. Lin frequently perform liturgical services in the temple. It should be noted that the temple could not possibly have achieved this kind of success if its communal ties had not been weakened. In the past, when the temple was tightly controlled by the male leaders of the village community, Ms. Lin, a female spirit medium, would not have a chance to run the show. 18
The prosperity of the “winners” in the competition has been boosted by modern transportation, which has made traveling to temples much easier for women, and by the economic boom in the reform era, which has meant that female patrons have more money to contribute to religious undertakings. However, the number of temples that could turn the weakening of communal bonds into an opportunity for expansion has been small. The majority of village temples, when they could not be maintained by communal support, started to wane and became sites of only occasional religious activities of a small group of village female worshippers. This is how the bifurcation among popular religion temples came to pass.
How did Buddhification take place? Did temples acquire Buddhist features so that they might register as Buddhist temples to obtain official recognition? Did the Religious Affairs Bureau or the Buddhist Association then try to impose Buddhist standards on these popular religion temples registered as Buddhist temples? The kind of Buddhification prompted by the state’s religious policies that only recognize Buddhism and the other four religions as legitimate is plausible. Indeed, Goossaert and Palmer’s (2011: 247, 249, 347) study indicates this has been occurring in some places in China. In Peach River County, the story is a little more complicated. Before the mid-1990s, the restoration of popular religion temples still faced possible obstruction from village cadres and the Religious Affairs Bureau. Hence, temples tried hard to secure official legitimation. But their attempts were unsuccessful. After the mid-1990s, the local authorities have grown lax toward popular religion (and toward religion in general). Besides, local officials became more open to bribery. In this period, to register as a Buddhist venue became much easier and temple leaders bribed Religious Affairs Bureau officials in order to do so. All twenty-one popular religion temples obtained their registered status as “Buddhist sites” after 1997. 19 Yet, when the governance of local authorities turned so lax that unregistered popular religion temples received little official interference, 20 temples increasingly felt much less motivated to get themselves registered. In order to gain registered status, a temple has to pay a sizeable amount of money (roughly 5,000 yuan) as an application fee to the Religious Affairs Bureau. In addition, registered temples pay 500 yuan a year as membership dues to the Buddhist Association, which then transfers a third of the sum to the Religious Affairs Bureau. Still, at times of major natural disasters, the Religious Affairs Bureau would solicit donations from registered temples and take credit for the disaster-relief funds. Small temples with little financial means are not willing to spend money on something that they feel will be of no real benefit to them and so are happy to stay unregistered. In fact, quite a few on the list of registered temples did not initiate the application process for registered status themselves but were urged by the Religious Affairs Bureau to apply. During the post-restoration years, some registered temples have suffered a decline in wealth. As far as I know, at least three of these temples had not paid fees to renew their membership for more than two years and thus have automatically given up their registered status.
Registered popular religion temples, as long as they attend meetings organized by the Buddhist Association and the Religious Affairs Bureau, pay membership dues and other fees, and submit annual financial reports in a timely fashion, are basically free from the meddling of the Religious Affairs Bureau and the Buddhist Association in their internal management. In recent years, in only one case did the Buddhist Association dispatch a monk to take over the control of a popular religion temple following the eruption of a scandal in which the monk whom the villagers invited to manage the temple fled with the temple funds. In that case, Buddhification already occurred before the arrival of the monk assigned by the Buddhist Association.
As I observed, other factors rather than the official registration policies have been more significant in prompting the Buddhification process in Peach River County. There are many advantages a popular religion temple can gain by acquiring Buddhist features. Buddhist deities have a more universal appeal than local deities. And as I have noted, women in this county traditionally have an affinity with Buddhism. Moreover, Buddhism has highly sophisticated ways of generating revenues through providing an extraordinarily rich assortment of liturgical services to the laity (Welch, 1967: 178–207). All of these help Buddhist temples attract female worshippers. As the communal support of popular religion temples weakened, temple managers were all the more tempted by the obvious financial benefits of adopting or appropriating Buddhist features. When temple managers thought of adding extra buildings or icons, they would give priority to the Guanyin pavilion, the Main Buddha Hall, or familiar Buddhist icons such as the eighteen Arahats and the Maitreya Buddha. Also, as I have mentioned, temples hired Buddhist monks to perform rituals. Even the Temple of the Marquis of Efficacious Response and the Temple of Lord Zhao resorted to these tactics to boost their popularity. In 1996, the Temple of the Marquis of Efficacious Response was short of money to pay for the construction costs, which exceeded the original budget. To solve the problem, the temple management committee announced a plan to build a Guanyin Pavilion. Funds were raised shortly afterward, enough to pay off the debt as well as to build the pavilion. This is also true in the case of the Temple of Lord Zhao. As Table 2 shows, the two biggest sources of income are both related to the temple’s adoption or appropriation of Buddhism. The fund-raising campaign was carried out in the name of building a Main Buddha Hall and the funds collected were the largest source of temple income. The profit from Buddhist rituals constitutes another major source of income for the temple and its percentage has increased steadily over the years. When a construction project is completed, the Buddhist rituals would become the single biggest revenue-generating source.
Revenue Sources of the Temple of Lord Zhao, 2005–2009.
Source. Management Committee of the Temple of Lord Zhao.
This kind of Buddhification, which arises from financial considerations, can remain at a superficial level if a temple management committee consisting of villagers retains ultimate control. The other kind of Buddhification, which entails a much more fundamental conversion to Buddhism and the dilution of the original popular religion identity, can only take place when a temple experiences the erosion of the communal bond and the village community has no intention to halt the development of such a tendency. Female worshippers have always been among those most eager to invite Buddhist leaders to manage temples. Even though they have played an instrumental role in the restoration of the temples, many female worshippers lack self-confidence and feel more at ease if the task of temple management is entrusted to religious professionals. Furthermore, during the same period, Buddhism has also experienced a resurgence in Peach River County. Many female worshippers patronized the restoration of Buddhist temples, participated in ritual events held in Buddhist temples, and even took the ceremony to become formal Buddhist disciples. Pilgrimages to large Buddhist temples in and outside the county could also be a transformative experience for women. Intermingling with monks and lay Buddhists could lead to these female worshippers acquiring an understanding that there was something different between Buddhism and popular religion and that Buddhism somehow was a more formal 正规 practice. “I was told not taking [Buddhist] refuge means that you haven’t crossed the threshold to enter into the hall,” said the 78-year-old Ms. Tong, who has been the janitor of the Temple of the Marquis of Efficacious Response for sixteen years. She has taken the ceremony twice with two Buddhist monks and thus she has two “masters” 师父. For female worshippers like Ms. Tong, even though their knowledge of Buddhism was not much improved after the conversion ritual, they felt their bond with Buddhism had been cemented. For these reasons, they had a strong inclination to have Buddhist monks or lay Buddhist leaders to take up residence in their temple and take over the leadership. The weakened control of the temples by the village community gave these female worshippers unprecedented power in deciding whom they would like to invite. In quite a few cases, women met monks on their pilgrimage trips and took the liberty of inviting them to their villages. Under the management of able Buddhist leaders, a popular religion temple could then be transformed into a burgeoning local Buddhist center. The temple managed by the young Buddhist leader Shao is one of the most notable examples. Women affiliated with this temple were able to experience a more refined and intensive religious life and acquired a sense that they belonged to a broad religious community. Their strengthened piety and commitment in turn led to the stronger growth of the temple. Shao’s temple served as a stimulating example for other popular religion temples, and enhanced the appeal of Buddhification. On the other hand, I should also mention that there are cases in which women became gullible victims of swindler monks. During my fieldwork, I encountered four cases in which Buddhist monks who were accepted into popular religion temples were of dubious character and eventually absconded with temple funds.
Buddhification of popular religion temples in Peach River County was less a result of the temples’ need for political legitimation under the constraints of the state’s policies governing the registration of religious sites, and more an outcome of popular religion temples being drawn to the benefits of Buddhification, or unable to resist the penetration of Buddhism. These in turn were a result of the weakening of temples’ communal ties. The state has exerted indirect influence on Buddhification: its social policies have contributed to the weakening of the communal ties of popular religion temples, and its religious policies, which are favorable to Buddhism, have helped to bolster the notion that Buddhism is a more formal and legitimate religion than popular religion, even among practitioners of popular religion.
Conclusion
Ever since the end of imperial China, popular religion’s ties with the village community have been forcibly undermined by both political and economic forces. The revitalization of popular religion in the post-Mao period has had to rely on voluntary participation and support. Put differently, popular religion has been acquiring more characteristics of a voluntary religion. Losing communal support is a bane to the majority of small village temples. At the same time, there are also temples that can turn the decoupling from village communities into an opportunity for expansion. A few of the most successful ones can even use temple wealth and influence to gain political clout. Peach River County has not yet produced noticeable cases of this sort. But other studies have provided us with some examples. In the case of the Black Dragon Temple in Shaanxi province studied by Chau, the temple boss used temple funds to finance a local primary school and reforestation project, which won him fame as well as political clout—he won elections as the village head and was inducted into the county branch of the People’s Political Consultative Conference (Chau, 2006: 184–86). While such cases reveal what popular religion can still possibly achieve, what I have found in Peach River County questions their representativeness. They seem to constitute only a minority of cases at one end of the spectrum. Indeed, my findings warn against portraying popular religion in contemporary China as simple, rosy revival stories.
Have the three processes described in this article been taking place with temple-based popular religion in other parts of China as well? Given that female piety in popular religion was a widespread phenomenon (Goossaert, 2008; Zhao, 2002: 259–96), and that the Maoist political campaigns and the post-Mao marketization have exerted a similar impact across regions under an exceptionally strong state, and that Buddhism exercises a strong influence over a vast region in China, I suspect popular religion in many other places in China might have also undergone similar tendencies as in Peach River County, albeit to different degrees. Other studies of popular religion (Fan, 2003; Kang, 2009; Luo, 2007, 2008) seemed to render some support to my speculation. Yet, studies on central and southern Fujian (Dean, 2003; Dean and Zheng, 2010), where popular religion temples seem to have experienced ubiquitous growth while retaining their communal bonds and male dominance, indicate otherwise. A meaningful answer to this question requires research in different parts of China to take into account the entire population of popular religion temples of a sizable area instead of focusing on one or a few popular religion temples, and to incorporate the historical comparative perspective that would allow a comparison between the present and the pre-1949 past (not just the Mao era). Patterns of similarities and differences in popular religion’s resurgence would have to be explained as outcomes of legacies of the attributes of popular religion in pre-1949 times, as well as the working of sociopolitical forces in the local context after 1949.
Research on popular religion in Taiwan suggests that popular religion in modern Taiwan has also been experiencing the weakening of its communal and territorial dimension and the strengthening of its individual and voluntary expression (Chipman, 2009; Li, 1991). Further research is needed to illuminate the patterns of similarities and differences between popular religion in mainland China and Taiwan on this very aspect, namely, what social forces have led to these similarities and differences, and how the similarities and differences in this crucial aspect shape the dynamics of popular religion in each case. Comparative research on the contemporary development of popular religion in mainland China and Taiwan will help us to achieve a clearer and deeper understanding of the working of social mechanisms behind the changes in popular religion in contemporary times.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank Robert Weller, Dingxin Zhao, Peter Bol, Wei-ping Lin, David Palmer, Richard Madsen, Robert Hymes, Courtney Bender, and an anonymous reviewer for their most helpful comments. Deborah Aschkenes’s editorial assistance is gratefully acknowledged. All remaining mistakes are of course mine.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.