Negotiating Religion in Modern China: State and Common People in Guangzhou, 1900–1937

1. Collapse of the Imperial Order

Introduction The relationship between the state and the religious culture of the common people underwent significant changes in the last decade of the Qing dynasty, as the imperial order collapsed. The challenges that popular religion faced in modern China, including the government’s expropriation of temple property and the label of “superstition,” had their roots in government attacks on illicit cults in imperial China. However, the late Qing reform movement of the early 1900s, which resulted from China’s successive failures to resist foreign military action, brought the attacks against religion to an unprecedented scale and a new ideological level. To build modern schools, the educational reformers called for the confiscation of temple property and the conversion of parts of monasteries and temples into classrooms. The result of the reforms was to deprive these religious institutions of their autonomy and their economic base. At the same time, intellectuals started to introduce Western concepts into China in the belief that Western learning was a panacea for the country’s weakness . Among the numerous modern concepts transmitted to China in this period were those of evolution and science as the antidotes to superstition . These became core values of the age and began to undermine the ideological basis of religious practice. The confiscation of temple property and the application of the rhetoric of superstition were on a moderate scale in the late Qing period, and it was mainly prominent monasteries with large amounts of property that were affected. Small monasteries and temples owned by territorial communities remained largely intact. Although radical intellectuals adopted the superstition label to attack all types of religious worship, the official use of the term was narrower. Opposition to superstition did not become official policy until the outbreak of the 1911 Revolution, which chapter one Collapse of the Imperial Order Negotiating Religion.indd 17 2010/11/30 4:40:54 PM 18 Negotiating Religion in Modern China put the revolutionaries at the center of the political stage. This chapter is divided into four sections. The first section depicts the interlocking relationships among state, society, and religion in late imperial Guangzhou. The second explores the impact of the late Qing reforms, particularly the appropriation of temples and temple property for educational purposes, on the religious landscape of Guangzhou. The third section analyzes the changed attitudes towards religious worship that resulted from the new rhetoric of evolution and superstition, and the final section covers the more fundamental changes brought about by the 1911 Revolution. State, Society, and Religion in Late Imperial Guangzhou Itself a modern Western construct, the term—and notion of—“religion” did not exist in the Chinese language before the late nineteenth century. Although the two-character term “zongjiao 宗教,” which is the Chinese translation of “religion,” appeared in Chinese texts around the fifth or sixth century and was later widely used in Buddhist texts, it primarily refers to the teachings of a particular Buddhist sect rather than being understood as a collective term for all beliefs and rituals pertaining to the supernatural realm. It was Japanese intellectuals in the early Meiji period who first adopted the Chinese characters zongjiao (pronounced shūkyō in Japanese) as the equivalent of the English word “religion.” In the late 1890s, Chinese intellectuals such as Liang Qichao 梁啟超 introduced this translation together with its modern meaning to China.1 Yet, the absence of the word “religion” does not mean there was a lack of religious worship in traditional China. As C. K. Yang has pointed out, Chinese people’s religious worship was affiliated with institutionalized religions, including Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, which were collectively known as the “three teachings” (sanjiao 三教), as well as associated with daily life and social institutions, such as the family, lineage, and village.2 Religion formed an integral part of the governing ideology of imperial China. Religious practices affiliated with Confucianism were included in the category of ritual (li 禮). People’s behavior in social and religious settings was required to conform to a code of rites in order to maintain social and cosmic harmony, on which the imperial order was based.3 Confucians such as Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130–1200) in the Song dynasty also Negotiating Religion.indd 18 2010/11/30 4:40:54 PM Collapse of the Imperial Order 19 1 | believed that such religious rituals as ancestor worship could help to transform individuals and reshape society. As the legitimacy and political authority of the state in imperial...