Chinese folk religion

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Chinese folk religion has no single name. The Chinese language historically had no overarching word for "religion" at all. The modern term zongjiao only took shape in Chinese discourse around 1900, and in its earliest uses it meant Christianity. So how do you describe a tradition that millions practice but few can name?

  This is the religion of the Han Chinese, including the Chinese diaspora, built on the veneration of shen, meaning spirits, and of ancestors. By the Song dynasty, which ran from 960 to 1279, its practices had merged with Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist teachings into a popular system that survives today. Scholars have reached for borrowed words to capture it. One called it Chinese Universism. Another proposed Siniticism. A neologism, shenism, was coined for its practice in Malaysia.

  The government of modern China does not count it among the five recognized religions. Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity, and Islam hold that legal status. Folk religion, being a syncretism with ambiguous boundaries, is treated instead as part of China's cultural heritage. Why does a tradition so vast resist definition? And how did it survive a century of leaders who branded it feudal superstition?

• 2. The Common Core

  ›

  Tian, qi, ancestor veneration, and bao ying. Scholars Fan and Chen summarise the Chinese tradition through these four spiritual, cosmological, and moral concepts. Tian is Heaven, the transcendent source of moral meaning. Qi is the breath or substance from which all things are made. Bao ying means moral reciprocity. Beneath the diversity of local forms and founders, these ideas form a shared foundation.

  Tian is both the physical heavens, home of the sun, moon, and stars, and the home of the gods and ancestors. From it flows the Mandate of Heaven, the principle that Tian grants the imperial family the right to rule in response to human virtue and withdraws it when a dynasty declines. With the Zhou dynasty, which preferred gods of nature, Tian became a more abstract and impersonal idea of God. A popular representation is the Jade Emperor, originally formulated by Taoists.

  Yin and yang describe the order of the universe. Their root meanings are shady and sunny, dark and light. Yin is the dense, dark, sinking, condensing mode of qi; yang is the light, rising, expanding mode. In common religion, yang, meaning act, is usually preferred over yin, meaning receptiveness. The taijitu and bagua are common diagrams of these forces, the same power that deities like Zhong Kui wield.

  Bao ying sits within two further ideas of fate. Ming yun is personal destiny, perceived as both fixed like life itself and flexible, since a person chooses how to behave. Yuanfen is fateful coincidence, the good and bad chances and potential relationships of a life. Scholars K. S. Yang and D. Ho noted a psychological benefit: assigning causality to yuanfen reduces guilt and pride and preserves social harmony.

• 3. Gods, Spirits, And The Soul

  ›

  Guan Yu was once a warrior. After death he became a god. In Chinese religion shen, translated as gods or spirits, fall into kinds: shen of nature, gods who were once people, household gods like the Stove God, and ancestral gods. The early dictionary Shuowen Jiezi, by Xu Shen, explains that they "are the spirits of Heaven" and they "draw out the ten thousand things."

  Gui stand opposite the gods. As forces of growth, gods are regarded as yang; gui are a yin class of chaotic beings, cognate with return and contraction. A disciple of Zhu Xi observed that between Heaven and Earth there is no place where yin and yang are not found, and therefore no place where gods and spirits do not exist. Neo-Confucian scholars rationalised them. Cheng Yi called them "traces of the creative process." Zhang Zai called them the inherent potential of the two ways of qi.

  The human soul splits along the same line. The hun is the yang, rational soul attached to the vital breath; the po is the yin, animal soul tied to the body. At death the po returns to the earth and disappears, while the hun is thought to be pure awareness, and it is the shen to whom ancestral sacrifices are dedicated. Properly cultivated and honoured, the dead become upheld ancestors. When ancestries are not properly cultivated, the world falls into disruption and they become gui.

  There is no firm line between gods and immortals. Gods can incarnate in human form, and humans can reach higher spiritual states by emulating the order of Heaven. This makes humans one of three aspects of a trinity, the Three Powers, standing as the medium between Heaven that engenders order and Earth that nourishes it.

• 4. Belonging, Not Believing

  ›

  You do not convert to Chinese religion. Unlike institutional faiths, it requires no initiation ritual and no official church membership separate from a person's native identity. Sociologist C. K. Yang saw it embedded in family and civic life rather than expressed through a separate structure like a Western church. The prime criterion for taking part is not to believe in a doctrine but to belong: to the association, the village, or the kinship, with their gods and rituals.

  Deity associations and lineage associations, pilgrimages and formalized prayers, rituals and expressions of virtue are the common forms of organization at the local level. Religious behaviour is bound to local communities, kinship, and environments, varying from province to province and even from one village to another. In each setting, temples and the gods within them acquire symbolic character and perform specific functions in everyday life. Sociologist Richard Madsen, adopting Tu Weiming's definition, described the tradition as an "immanent transcendence" grounded in devotion to concrete humanity.

  The north and south differ sharply. In south China, where lineage bonds are stronger, religion centres on family worship of deities and ancestors in ancestral shrines. Kinship associations congregate people of the same surname, such as the Chens or the Lins, who build temples enshrining their deified ancestors. Ancestor worship is observed nationally with large rituals on the Qingming Festival.

  In north China, where lineage religion is often absent and villages hold people of different surnames, the deity society serves as the pole of community life. Mao Zedong, analysing religious trusts, distinguished god associations, village communities, and temple associations, noting that every kind of god can have an association. Many northern villages are named after their deities and temples. Special devotional currents carry their own names, among them Mazuism, Wang Ye worship, and the cult of the Silkworm Mother.

• 5. A Century Of Suppression

  ›

  In 1898 Kang Youwei persuaded the Emperor to issue an edict confiscating temples not performing state sacrifices and turning them into schools. The confiscations were shortly reversed. By 1899, 400 syncretic temples blending folk, Buddhist, Taoist, and Confucianist gods existed on the American West Coast alone. A 1904 reform of the late Qing again provided for schools to be built from confiscated temple property. Anti-superstition campaigns followed.

  After the Qing dynasty fell in 1911, modernizing elites condemned feudal superstition as an obstacle to modernisation. Christian missionaries had also used the feudal superstition label as propaganda against what they saw as religious competition. Following the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, most temples were turned to other uses or destroyed, with a few changed into schools. Many ancient temples had already been destroyed in the Taiping Rebellion and the Boxer Rebellion of the late 1800s.

  The Nationalist government intensified the campaign with the 1928 "Standards for retaining or abolishing gods and shrines." The policy tried to abolish the cults of all gods except ancient heroes and sages, sparing figures such as the Yellow Emperor, Yu the Great, Guan Yu, Sun Tzu, Nuwa, Mazu, Guanyin, Lao Tzu, and Confucius. During the Japanese invasion between 1937 and 1945, many temples were used as barracks and destroyed in warfare.

  The Communist Party took power in 1949. Temples fell during anti-superstition campaigns in the 1950s, and during the Land Reform movement temple land was seized and given to the poor. The Cultural Revolution, between 1966 and 1976, was the most serious and last systematic effort to destroy the tradition. In Taiwan the religion was well preserved but controlled by Chiang Kai-Shek during his Chinese Cultural Renaissance, mounted to counter the Cultural Revolution.

• 6. The Great Revival

  ›

  After 1978 the tradition revived rapidly, with millions of temples rebuilt or built from scratch. Territorial cults re-emerged, often acquiring more features of Buddhist practice. Since the 1980s the central government moved toward benign neglect of rural community life, and the new regulatory relationship became one of practical mutual dependence, giving popular religion room to grow. Central Zhejiang saw a substantial increase in practice, and temple reconstruction peaked from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Women frequently led the fundraising and organizing for rebuilding.

  The revival ran on stories of gods returning. Zavidovskaya, writing in 2012, studied how temple restorations in northern China were triggered by alleged instances of gods becoming active again. At a Chenghuang Temple in Yulin, Shaanxi, turned into a granary during the Cultural Revolution, stored seeds were always found rotted; locals took this as the god Chenghuang demanding his residence be emptied of grain so he could return. It was restored to its original function in the 1980s.

  The cult of Zhenwu in Congluo Yu, Shanxi, lay inactive until the mid-1990s. A man with terminal cancer prayed to Zhenwu in his last hope and, by his account, recovered a little each day until he was completely healed after a year. In thanks he organised an opera. During the performance large white snakes appeared, calm and unafraid, and locals took them to be incarnations of Zhenwu come to watch. Temple banners often read, "if the heart is sincere, the god will reveal their power."

  State policy has since warmed further. Under Xi Jinping's administration, folk religion can register temples as folk belief activities sites, the minjian xinyang huodong changsuo. Where few temples could once gain legal status except by registering as Buddhist or Daoist, the state now emphasizes their value as traditional Chinese culture.

• 7. Masters Of Ritual

  ›

  Wu and xi. The female shamans were called wu, the male shamans xi, and together they were said to represent the voice of spirits, repair natural dis-functions, and foretell the future through dreams and divination. Paul R. Goldin, writing in 2005, noted that the reach of shamanism in ancient China is disputed, but that many communities relied on shamans for their daily spiritual needs. Andreea Chirita argued in 2014 that Confucianism itself derived from the shamanic discourse of the Shang dynasty, marginalising its dysfunctional features. The Chinese Society for Shamanic Studies was founded in Jilin City in 1988.

  Taoism gave these traditions a formal home. The scholar and Taoist priest Kristofer Schipper defined Taoism as a liturgical framework for local religion. Priests are called daoshi, masters of the Tao. The Zhengyi school is especially interwoven with folk religion, and its sanju daoshi may marry and work as part-time priests, performing rites of offering, thanks-giving, exorcism, and passage. They received ordination from the Celestial Master, though the 63rd Celestial Master, Zhang Enpu, fled to Taiwan in the 1940s during the Chinese Civil War.

  Outside official Taoism stand the ritual masters, the fashi, practitioners of what is sometimes called Red Taoism. They hold the same social role as the sanju daoshi but are not considered Taoist priests by the daoshi who trace their lineage to the Celestial Masters. Confucianism too has its liturgy, led by sages of rites who are often the elders of a local community. In November 2015 a national Church of Confucius was established with the contribution of many Confucian leaders.

  Some traditions resist any priest. Among the Yi peoples, lineages of bimo, the scripture sages, have revived without identifying as Taoists. Bimoism has its own theological literature and clergy ordination, which is among the reasons the Chinese government holds it in high regard.

• 8. The Salvationist Sects

  ›

  Redemptive societies. That is what the scholar Prasenjit Duara called the salvationist sects, religions of soteriological and eschatological character that emerged from common religion yet stand apart from ancestor cults and village temples. Imperial officials once branded them with a derogatory term meaning evil religion. Modern scholarship calls them folk religious sects. They share features: egalitarianism, foundation by a charismatic figure, direct divine revelation, a millenarian eschatology, and an expansive drive through good deeds, evangelism, and philanthropy.

  Yiguandao is among the best known. It focuses on personal salvation through inner work and considers itself the most valid Way of Heaven, offering its own Way of Former Heaven, a cosmological account of things before creation in unity with God. It belongs to the Xiantiandao, the Way of Former Heaven, a cluster that also includes the Luo teaching, the Zaili teaching, and newer De, Xuanyuan, and Tiandi teachings. The Sanyi teaching, founded in the 16th century, survives in the Putian region of Fujian, where it is legally recognised.

  The Tiandi teachings grew from the work of Xiao Changming and Li Yujie, spread in the early 20th century, and centre on the Heavenly Deity, on health through qi cultivation, and on a qigong style called Tianren qigong. Li Yujie had studied for eight years in the Taoist tradition of Huashan. Weixinism, headquartered in Taiwan, focuses on the lineages of the Yijing and feng shui and worships three great ancestors: Huangdi, Yandi, and Chiyou. It built a "City of Eight Trigrams" complex on Yunmeng Mountain in Henan.

  These movements were banned in early Republican China and again under Communist rule, and many remain illegal or underground. Others, including the De, Tiandi, Xuanyuan, Weixinist, and Yiguandao teachings, have built cooperation with mainland academic and non-governmental bodies. In Taiwan, virtually all redemptive societies have operated freely since the late 1980s. The martial sects, by contrast, paired secret cosmologies with public body cultivation, and one of them, Meihuaism, has become very popular throughout northern China.