Latter Days of the Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism, 850-1850 (review)

288 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 hiding; with the covetousness ofthe Japanese in Manchuria; and, above all, with Chiang just having started to build a power base in the lower Yangzi River area that would rely heavily on the goodwill ofthe West (especially the British and the Americans), it was most unlikely that transforming Shanghai into a showplace where the Chinese could display their ability to govern their own country, in order to pave die way for the recovery of sovereignty from the West, would be the top priority on Chiang's agenda. The history oftwentieth-century China is full ofexamples ofpolitical leaders touting their programs through an appeal to nationalism. Chiang was not the "forefather" ofsuch a tradition. Chiang's political mentor, Sun Yat-sen, who first proposed a "Plan for a Greater Shanghai" {Da Shanghaijihua 3lJl^VcM), had earned the nickname in his hometown of"Boaster Sun" (Sun Dapao ?#-?.?&). Communist leaders were no less magniloquent. Mao's Great Leap Forward, Zhou Enlai's "Four Modernizations," and Hua Guofeng's goal of surpassing the West by the end ofthis century are just some ofthe most obvious examples ofhow often promises have been made but not fulfilled, and these failed promises have led people to question not only their sincerity but also their historical importance in the first place. Hanchao Lu Georgia Institute of Technology Hanchao Lu is a historian specializing in studies ofurbanization in modern China. mm Marsha Weidner, editor. Latter Days ofthe Law: Images ofChinese Buddhism, 850-1850. Honolulu: University ofHawai'i Press, 1994. 481 pp. Hardcover $48.00, isbn 0-8248-1661-7. Paperback $34.00, isbn 0-8248-1662-5. Scholars of Buddhism and Chinese painting will find much ofvalue in this study. Weidner and the essay contributors pull together a vast amount ofinformation from recent research on Chinese Buddhist painting and present it in a meaningful , accessible way. One ofthe chapters by Patricia Berger breaks exciting new ground in describing how Tantric ritual art united Tibetan, Mongolian, and Man1 1996 by University C^1111I3n interests in solidifyingpolitical power in China. The focus ofthis exhibition catalog and essays, although late Tang, Song, and Yuan traditions are included , is primarily on the Ming and Qing periods. As the editor explains, this is primarily due to the availability ofobjects and funding. By including many unofHawai 'i Press Reviews 289 published Ming and Qing paintings from smaller collections, the thrust ofthe show fit nicelywith another recent exhibit that also concentrated on figure painting by uncelebrated painters of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries.1 Both efforts pointed to a larger trend in Chinese painting studies: the shift away from studies that locate how painting reinscribes a vertically constructed social hierarchy toward a consideration ofvisual culture across the board, redefining what is "popular" and blurring "high and low."2 The authors ofLatter Days ofthe Law chart a popular Buddhist visual tradition (primarily in the southeast) during the Ming and Qing dynasties and how new themes differ from earlier Buddhist art derived from silk-road cultures. The project explicidy aims to redress the surprisingly marginal treatment oflater Buddhist visual culture (p. 36). To demonstrate how pervasive Buddhist themes are in all aspects ofmaterial culture, the catalog and essays note die ways in which they lend auspicious qualities to ink cakes, textiles, architectural spaces, and other aspects ofeveryday life, in addition to paintings hung and exchanged in temples, pilgrimage environments, imperial interiors, and literati spaces—that is, the authors suggest, just about any place where power and cultural identity were negotiated in the fourteenth to eighteenth centuries (p. 47). Latter Days ofthe Lawis a substantial book composed of two segments: first, five essays that address broad issues suggested by the assortment ofpaintings in the exhibition and second, a catalog of these works divided by circumstances of production (the temple and beyond). Marsha Weidner takes on the group oflater paintings typically viewed in secular terms: works by Wu Bin, Ding Yunpeng, Zheng Zhong, Chen Hongshou, and Cui Zizhong (pp. 74-80). While visiting the exhibition , it was a real delight for me to see a picture of Seclusion (cat. no. 79), by the seventeenth-century monk-painter Kun Can, in...