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>> 197 Chapter 10 Second-Generation Chinese Americans The Familism of the Nonreligious Russell Jeung If anything, I think the part that I’d carry on is going to the cemetery . I think the whole respect thing is really important—you take care of your elders, whether it’s your parents or your grandparents. Even if that means it’s in the afterlife. I believe that there is a supernatural kind of aspect to everything. It’s a sign that you are there to take care of them no matter what that afterlife is, whether it’s a spirit or there is an actual life after death. It’s that your thoughts are still with them at some point. —Sophia Wong, second-generation Chinese American Sophia, in the above quotation, discusses the Chinese tradition of visiting gravesites (jizu) to pay respect and offer foods to one’s ancestors. She plans to maintain this practice, even if she does not fully believe that the foods feed actual spirits. Instead, the offering of food is a sign of respect, a sign of family sacrifice. She concludes, “They’re a part of what made your world what it is now. I would have to take care of the people who took care of me. It’s like feeding the karmic effect. You give and get what you deserve.” While she claims no religion, she certainly holds spiritual beliefs and practices, especially ones related to Chinese popular religion. In China, Taiwan, and overseas Chinese communities, Chinese popular religion is enjoying a revival (Clart and Jones 2003; DeBernardi 2006; Overmyer et al. 1995; Overmyer 2003; Teiser 1995). Extended families offer incense (baibai) at home and business shrines. Villagers and neighbors flock to local temples that have been rebuilt or restored. People consult fengshui masters to situate homes, offices, and burial sites. Despite political efforts in various nation-states to remove “superstitious practices,” Chinese popular religion 198 > 199 their pursuits, whether this-worldly or otherworldly. I hypothesize that their seeming secularization is attributable to the lack of structural support for Chinese popular religion in the United States and to their rationalistic and postmodern worldviews. In particular, they adopt an individualism that is either utilitarian or expressive. At the same time, this cohort of the new second generation continues to utilize the religious repertoire of Chinese popular religion to develop a unique, hybridized sensibility: Chinese American familism. In contrast to a broad, Confucian worldview or a Chinese popular religious practice, Chinese American familism selectively maintains aspects of both to provide identity and belonging. In Chinese American familism, the discourse of family sacrifice —exemplified by immigrant parents’ offering of time, resources, and even downward mobility—becomes the central narrative around which respondents develop their deepest and most meaningful pursuits and endeavors. Chinese Popular Religion: Persistence and Revival Reported numbers of religious self-identification in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and other overseas Chinese communities indicate that more Chinese affiliate with Chinese popular religion than with institutionalized religions (i.e., Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, or Islam). In China, 60% believe in supernatural beings associated with Chinese folk religions, as compared to the 14% who affiliate with state-recognized religions (Grim 2008). Likewise , “mainstream religious beliefs in Taiwan—represented by Taoism, various Buddhist sects, and other denominations that originated in mainland China—are largely polytheistic and syncretistic,” according to the Taiwanese Figure 10.1. Ethnic Chinese Religious Affiliation by Nation 200 > 201 protected the living. This tripartite division mirrored the bureaucratic landscape of China: officials, beggars, and kin. Extending this imperial metaphor, Stephan Feuchtwang (2001) suggests that the rituals of Chinese popular religion enable historical identification with Chineseness. Both Wolf’s and Feuchtwang’s analyses argue that popular religion not only promoted social solidarity but also served as a meaning system rooted in the people’s local context. Chinese popular religion persists and grows, therefore, as its meaning systems resonate with the historical moment. For example, Ole Bruun (2003) argues that the fengshui persists in China because it serves new generations of Chinese who continue to accept it as a “tradition of knowledge.” As a means of native reflection, mode of thought, and cosmological knowledge, it helps adherents to understand and engage otherworldly forces operating in this world. As Chinese seek advantages in the pursuit of wealth, happiness, longevity, and procreation, they direct the flow of universal qi through space in their buildings. In contrast to a focus on the meaning system of Chinese popular religion, Maurice Freeman (1974) focused on the political...

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