Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T10:29:36.075Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Spiritual Land Rush: Merit and Morality in New Chinese Buddhist Temple Construction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 February 2008

Gareth Fisher
Get access

Abstract

This article explores factors contributing to a boom in Buddhist temple construction in contemporary mainland China. In contrast to recent studies focusing on struggles between religious believers and the state over the revival of local temples and churches, this article examines the culture of merit making and morality building that leads clergy and lay practitioners to form translocal networks with the aim of constructing temples in rural areas where they have few or any cultural ties. The author explores how temple building is driven by differing moral visions within the urban Buddhist community, but with little consideration for the culture and history of the people in the localities where the temples are constructed.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Asian Studies , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , February 2008 , pp. 143 - 170
Copyright
Copyright © The Association for Asian Studies, Inc. 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

List of References

Borchert, Thomas. 2005. “Of Temples and Tourists: The Effects of the Tourist Political Economy on a Minority Buddhist Community in Southwest China.” In State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies, ed. Yang, Fenggang and Tamney, Joseph B., 87–111. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brokaw, Cynthia. 1991. The Ledgers of Merit and Demerit: Social Change and Moral Order in Late Imperial China. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brook, Timothy. 1993. Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Chau, Adam Yuet. 2006. Miraculous Response: Doing Popular Religion in Contemporary China. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Ch'en, Kenneth. 1964. Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dean, Kenneth. 1993. Taoist Ritual and Popular Cults of Southeast China. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Dean, Kenneth. 1997. “Ritual and Space: Civil Society or Popular Religion?” In Civil Society in China, ed. Brook, Timothy and Frolic, B. Michael, 172–92. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Dean, Kenneth. 1998. Lord of the Three in One: The Spread of a Cult in Southeast China. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dean, Kenneth. 2003. “Local Communal Religion in Contemporary South-East China.” China Quarterly 174: 338–58.Google Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit. 1988. Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900–1942. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Duara, Prasenjit. 1991. “Knowledge and Power in the Discourse of Modernity: The Campaigns against Popular Religion in Early Twentieth-Century China.” Journal of Asian Studies 50 (1): 67–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
DuBois, Thomas David. 2005. The Sacred Village: Social Change and Religious Life in Rural North China. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eng, Irene, and Yi-Min, Lin. 2002. “Religious Festivities, Communal Rivalry, and Restructuring of Authority Relations in Rural Chaozhou, Southeast China.” Journal of Asian Studies 61 (4): 1259–85.Google Scholar
Fayin [Voice of the Dharma]. 2003. “Hebei Bailin Chansi longzhong juxing Wanfolou luocheng ji foxiang kaiguang zhuangdian fahui” [Hebei's Bailin Chan Monastery Holds the Solemn Dedication Ceremony for the Opening of the Ten Thousand Buddha Hall]. September, 47–48.Google Scholar
Feuchtwang, Stephan. 2000. “Religion as Resistance.” In Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance, ed. Perry, Elizabeth J. and Selden, Mark, 161–77. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Feuchtwang, Stephan. 2001. Popular Religion in China: The Imperial Metaphor. Rev. ed. Richmond: Curzon Press.Google Scholar
Fisher, Gareth. 2006. “Universal Rescue: Re-Making Post-Mao China in a Beijing Temple.” PhD diss., University of Virginia.Google Scholar
Flower, John. 2004. “A Road Is Made: Roads, Temples, and Historical Memory in Ya'an County, Sichuan.” Journal of Asian Studies 63 (3): 649–85.Google Scholar
Flower, John, and Pamela, Leonard. 1998. “Defining Cultural Life in the Chinese Countryside: The Case of the Chuan Zhu Temple.” In Cooperative and Collective in China's Rural Development: Between State and Private Interests, ed. Vermeer, Eduard B., Pieke, Frank N., and Chong, Woei Lien, 273–90. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe.Google Scholar
Gao, Bingzhong. 2004. “Zhishifenzi, minjian, yu yige simiao bowuguan de dansheng” [Intellectuals, Folk, and the Creation of a Temple Museum]. Minjian Wenhua Taolun, 13–18.Google Scholar
Hahn, Thomas H. 1989. “New Developments concerning Buddhist and Taoist Monasteries.” In The Turning of the Tide: Religion in China Today, ed. Pas, Julian F., 79–101. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jianbo, Huang, and Yang, Fenggang. 2005. “The Cross Faces the Loudspeakers: A Village Church Perseveres under State Power.” In State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies, ed. Yang, Fenggang and Tamney, Joseph B., 41–62. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Liying, Jia. 2007. “Lun Bailin Chan Si zongjiao luyou de chanye kaifa” [On the Religious Tourism Development in Bailin Temple]. Shijiazhuang Xueyuan Xuebao 9 (2): 100–104.Google Scholar
Jun, Jing. 1996. The Temple of Memories: History, Power, and Morality in a Chinese Village. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Jones, Charles B. 1999. Buddhism in Taiwan: Religion and the State, 1660–1990. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kipnis, Andrew. 2001. “The Flourishing of Religion in Post-Mao China and the Anthropological Category of Religion.” Australian Journal of Anthropology 12 (1): 31–46.Google Scholar
Kuan Khun Eng. 1998. “Rebuilding Their Ancestral Villages: The Moral Economy of the Singapore Chinese.” In China's Political Economy, ed. Gungwu, Wang and Wong, John, 249–76. Singapore: Singapore University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lagerwey, John, ed. 2004. Religion and Chinese Society. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lai, Chi-Tim. 2003. “Daoism in China Today, 1980–2002”. China Quarterly 174: 413–27.Google Scholar
Leung, Beatrice. 2005. “China's Religious Freedom Policy: The Art of Managing Religious Activity”. China Quarterly 184: 894–913.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lozada, Eriberto P. 2001. God Aboveground: Catholic Church, Postsocialist State, and Transnational Processes in a Chinese Village. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Mueggler, Erik. 2001. The Age of Wild Ghosts: Memory, Violence, and Place in Southwest China. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Naquin, Susan. 2000. Peking: Temples and City Life, 1400–1900. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Ortner, Sherry B. 1989. High Religion: A Cultural and Political History of Sherpa Buddhism. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Overmyer, Daniel L., ed. 2002. Ethnography in China Today: A Critical Assessment of Methods and Results. Taipei: Yuan-Liou.Google Scholar
Pittman, Don A. 2001. Toward a Modern Chinese Buddhism: Taixu's Reforms. Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press.Google Scholar
Chong, Sun. 2002. “Shenghuo ru ge, Chan zuo xian: Bailin Chansi ‘Shenghuo Chan Xia Linggong Xialingying’ shi zhounian ceji” [Life Is Like a Song, Meditation Is Like the Strings That Strum It: Remarks on the Tenth Anniversary of the Bailin Chan Monastery's “Living Chan Summer Camp”]. Zhongguo Zongjiao, 21–23.Google Scholar
Tsai, Lily Lee. 2002. “Cadres, Temple and Lineage Institutions, and Governance in Rural China.” China Journal, no. 48: 1–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Welch, Holmes. 1967. The Practice of Chinese Buddhism. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Welch, Holmes. 1972. Buddhism under Mao. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Zhanjiang, Wu, Huiwen, Liu and Shuping, Yuan. 2002. “Qieji qieli de shenghuo chan: fang Bailin Si fangzhang Jinghui Fashi” [Novel and Traditional Living Chan: An Interview with the Abbot of the Bailin Monastery, Master Jinghui]. Shijie Zongjiao Wenhua, March 29, 15–17.Google Scholar
Zhanjiang, Wu, and Shuping, Yuan. 2000. “Tingqian baizi yu qingcang: Bailin Chan Si qieji qieli fojiao guan shulun” [Ancient Cypress Re-Grown in Front of the Hall: On the Novel and Traditional in the Buddhist Teaching of the Bailin Chan Monastery]. Hebei Xian Shehuizhuyi Xueyuan Xuebao 1:37–40.Google Scholar
Fenggang, Yang, and Wei, Dedong. 2005. “The Bailin Buddhist Temple: Thriving under Communism.” In State, Market, and Religions in Chinese Societies, ed. Yang, Fenggang and Tamney, Joseph B., 63–87. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Yang, Mayfair M. M. 2000. “Putting Global Capitalism in Its Place: Economic Hybridity, Bataille, and Ritual Expenditure.” Current Anthropology 41 (4): 477–509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yang, Mayfair M. M. 2004a. “Goddess across the Taiwan Strait: Matrifocal Ritual Space, Nation-State and Satellite Television Footprints.” Public Culture 16 (2): 209–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yang, Mayfair M. M. 2004b. “Spatial Struggles: Post-Colonial Complex, State Disenchantment, and Popular Reappropriation of Space in Rural Southeast China. Journal of Asian Studies 63 (3): 719–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashiwa, Yoshiko, and Wank, David L.. 2005. “The Globalization of Chinese Buddhism: Clergy and Devotee Networks in the Twentieth Century.” International Journal of Asian Studies 2 (2): 217–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ashiwa, Yoshiko, and Wank, David L.. 2006. “The Politics of a Reviving Buddhist Temple: State, Association, and Religion in Southeast China.” Journal of Asian Studies 65 (2): 337–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Yü, Chün-fang. 1981. The Renewal of Buddhism in China: Chu-Hung and the Late Ming Synthesis. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar