Wu Yun’s Way: Life and Works of an Eighth-Century Daoist Master by Jan De Meyer (review)

174 Journal of Chinese Religions proclaimed a Christianity that was in harmony with Chinese philosophical traditions and cultural values. Their consistent efforts to make one’s Christian faith relevant to China earned them the reputation of cultural mediators between East and West. Third, the twentieth-century Chinese Christian literature and theological writings revealed a sense of historical, religious, and cultural consciousness. In particular, the concern for cosmological truth revealed a notion of growing unease among those who cherished the long established Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist teachings. This concern gave rise to new demands for the interpretation of the sacred and its relation to humankind. Such intense crosscultural integrations showed that the transmission, reception, and appropriation of Christianity were not an intellectual exercise among foreign missionaries and native church leaders, but an important way to contextualize Jesus Christ in a uniquely Chinese context. It enabled more common people to use Christianity to cope with political, social, and cultural crises facing the society at large. It is also worth mentioning that the Communist state today has remained relatively passive in the debate about the rise of Chinese Christianity. It has not imposed its ideological agendas on the debate as it had done during the Maoist era. This political autonomy has given rise to different voices and initiatives from the Chinese society. The Chinese Christian movements are characterized by the contests of different Chinese sections about the relevance of Christianity in the early twentieth-first century. Roman Malek should be commended for compiling these collections of essays on the study of the Chinese perceptions of Jesus Christ. There is no other publication that presents such an insightful study of the transmission, indigenization, and appropriation of Christianity in modern China. These two volumes present an original investigation of the intellectual, religious, social, and political issues that shaped the process of Sino-Christian encounters throughout the twentieth century, and they are valuable reference materials for Sinologists, church historians, religious specialists, and theologians. JOSEPH TSE-HEI LEE, Pace University Wu Yun’s Way: Life and Works of an Eighth-Century Daoist Master JAN DE MEYER. Leiden & Boston: Brill, 2006. Sinica Leidensia, vol. 72. xiii, 503 pages. ISBN 90-04-12136-6. €119,00, US$161.00, hardcover. This is a book for Sinologists who love detailed arguments, really substantial footnotes, and challenges to received narratives; I count myself among that group. Jan De Meyer argues convincingly that Wu Yun 吳筠 (d. 778) deserves our attention as an important Tang dynasty (618 – 907) poet, essayist, and Daoist master who has been unjustly neglected by modern scholars in Tang and Daoist studies. This book reclaims and interprets Wu Yun’s Book Reviews 175 contributions to both Tang literature and Daoism. Along the way De Meyer praises my late teacher, Edward Schafer, as the first Westerner to recognize Wu Yun’s significance, and respectfully corrects several mistakes in Schafer’s pioneering study. De Meyer’s exhaustive investigation is the new authoritative work on the life, career, and writings of Master Wu. It thoroughly examines Wu Yun’s life and works, placing him in historical and intellectual context. In four parts and eleven chapters, De Meyer addresses Wu Yun’s biography and orientations in the world of Tang thought, his pursuit and defense of reclusion, his positions regarding long life and immortality, and his last years as an itinerant priest. In the course of his project, De Meyer translates and analyzes a diverse group of documents by and about Wu Yun, providing a rich sample of evidence about the master’s beliefs and arguments, his place in Tang social and intellectual history, and his reputation in his own and succeeding periods. This monograph represents a convergence of several lines of scholarship, some very old and some very new indeed: herein resides its uniqueness and importance. Some streams that flow into this single volume include classical philology, Tang studies, Chinese history, literary criticism, biography, and Daoist studies. The book makes substantial contributions to all these fields and deserves to find a wide audience. De Meyer’s use of primary sources is nothing short of stunning. His reach is broad but focused. His translations are fluid, beautiful, and accurate. I might quibble about...