The Souls of China: The Return of Religion after Mao by Ian Johnson (review)

This volume is really more of a well-researched literary travelogue than an academic study, although it contains just as many facts. It consists of short accounts of Johnson's encounters and re-encounters with Chinese religious figures of various faiths, all strung together in a series of episodes that reveal key aspects of the religious renaissance that has taken place in China since 1989. Another strand uniting these vignettes is brief descriptions of the twenty-four roughly fifteen-day cycles of the seasons into which the traditional lunar calendar is divided each year; they precede new sections and foreshadow their contents. Johnson's mini-narratives also contain reflections on the fates of qigong and Falungong, plus various meditation fads that have come and gone over the past two decades. Arguably the most significant sub-narrative of this book, however, is its revelations about current Chinese Premier Xi Jinping's involvement with Buddhism, and how the Party is trying to harness traditional Chinese religions as agents of social harmony. These make Johnson's tales relevant to the student of today's Chinese government, as well as society in general. Thus, this book has broader applications than just the sociology of religion, but it is mainly a first-person account of going on a quest to find the truth about what Chinese believe in today, and it is written in almost lyrical prose.

The seven sections of Johnson's book are divided into thirty chapters, most of which deal with three religious groups: the Ni family in Beijing, which runs a "tea association" that provides free refreshments to Miaofengshan pilgrims; the Li family in rural Shanxi Province, who come from a long line of Daoist yinyang men and are torn about how to adjust their services to today's urbanizing Chinese; and Pastor Wang's Early Rain church in Chengdu, one of many unregistered Protestant congregations that worry the government. There are also a few chapters on Buddhist and Daoist meditation gurus who recruit disciples and students eager for spiritual relief amidst the hectic pace of Chinese society. Through Johnson's accounts of his conversations with them and observations of their practices, it is apparent that they are all trying to fill the immense spiritual vacuum created first by Mao's suppression of religion and then by the unbridled materialism of the Deng years.

Johnson's first section thus begins with the theme of yuanxiao, the "First Night," or first full moon of the first lunar month (p. 4). At this time, he visits the Ni family in Beijing's Tolling Bell neighborhood, where of course the sound of temple bells is long gone; it is all new high rises (pp. 5–6). The complete lack of anything ancient in this quarter except its name does not deter Johnson, though, since he has realized that "Beijing's culture was not dead; it was being reborn in odd corners" (p. 6). This statement could be taken as the premise of the whole volume. The 81-year-old patriarch of the Ni family is Ni Zhenshan, who collaborates with the government official in charge of Miaofengshan, the capital's premier religious site (pp. 7–8), and the skill with which old Ni navigates the labyrinth of social and political obstacles to keep his Whole Heart Philanthropic Salvation Tea Association running, leads Johnson to pronounce on how things get done in the PRC; "Personal contact is how life is organized in China, whether running a pilgrimage, business, or political party. All of these have rules, regulations, or bylaws, but what really holds them together is a web of relationships that rarely fits on a flowchart" (p. 9). In every subsequent chapter, Johnson is therefore careful to delineate who is related to whom, who is whose guanxi, etc. While complex, these webs of relationships paint a detailed picture of how religion functions at the grassroots...