Today (yesterday), I was dragged by Classmate Slim to take part in a salon event, where we discussed the question of Confucianism and Christianity, East and West, using the incident of building a church in Qufu as our thread. Although I’ve lately been rather lazy and reluctant to move, I still went, after all, academic salons are activities I’ve always highly esteemed, and since a classmate was organizing it and had actively come to invite me, there was no reason to demur.
I had originally planned merely to go along and make up the numbers, but when I arrived I discovered that there were in fact fewer participants than expected, so I ended up saying a few more words. Let me sort out the general line of thought here once again.
First of all, this matter of building a church in Qufu reminded me of something from a few years ago: the controversy over opening a Starbucks in the Forbidden City. At the time, there was also a great deal of boycott and opposition, with talk of desecrating Chinese traditional culture and so on. But was the problem Starbucks itself? Was it the invasion and penetration of certain Western power blocs? I’m afraid not. The problem lay in the situation of the Forbidden City itself: that place had already become a commercialized tourist attraction, and so it was bound to submit to the logic of capital. Starbucks’ entry merely exposed the Forbidden City’s condition; that condition was not brought about by Starbucks. One might say that, as a commercial attraction, the Forbidden City had long since already made room for Starbucks. You can ban Starbucks and open a state-run café in the same spot, but the spatial structure of the Forbidden City today would not differ very much depending on whether Starbucks is opened or not.
A Christian church in relation to Qufu is probably similar. The spatial structure of Qufu has long since changed, or rather, the structure of space has long since disappeared. Modern space is Cartesian space: uniform, flat, isotropic. The sacred and ethical meanings of “place” have all been stripped away. The more modernized it becomes, the more geometrized space becomes, the more distinct lines and boundaries become, and the thinner the meanings carried by space become. In this modern space, a Christian church can at any time be built right beside the Temple of Confucius; this modern space, which has long since left room for a church, is the real root of the problem. In modernized time-space, Qufu’s “status” is already gone.
Of course, when we say that building a church beside the Temple of Confucius still has “symbolic significance,” and that landmark-like buildings also have “signifying significance,” these meanings are no longer the same as the meaning of the time-space itself that carries “status.” When Muslims pray in the direction of Mecca, they do not say it is because that direction “has symbolic significance”; rather, it is because that direction “contains the holy city of Mecca.” What is called “symbolic significance” is at most a kind of translation, on the premise that the meaning of the place itself is regarded as false, and that the “direction” itself contains no meaning, so an additional symbolic meaning is attached to it in order to understand it. We too are now using symbolic significance to interpret the meaning of building a church in Qufu: supporters think it symbolizes religious diversity and dialogue, while opponents think it symbolizes cultural invasion and provocation. But the very appearance of these symbolic meanings precisely signifies the loss of the meaning of status. What, after all, should Qufu’s status be? Where, in today’s China, should Confucius be placed? These are the more fundamental questions. As for whether a Christian church is built or not, that itself is a secondary question. If the Temple of Confucius is properly settled in its place, then finding a position for a Christian church nearby would not be impossible. Even if the church were built so grandly—so it is said, to become the second-largest church in the world—it would not necessarily be regarded as an offense either. Traditional Chinese architecture is not about height as a sign of honor; even the buildings and pavilions of the imperial household were mostly no more than two stories high. Only Buddhist pagodas rose skyward. So what if the church is tall and grand? It is only because we already regard them entirely through the modern spatial structure that the church’s grandeur appears to be a provocation. If one followed the traditional logic, one ought instead to talk more about fengshui. Traditional fengshui studies are not merely the pursuit of some kind of superstition; they also include an interpretation of the nature of space. Modern space, by contrast, has quantity but no quality; therefore people can only judge and inspect it by height and size, but cannot see fengshui.
Speaking of the sacredness of space, someone raised the point that the word sacredness is foreign, a Christian concept, whereas in Chinese tradition there are gods and sages but no notion of “sacredness”; so what, then, is the sacredness I have been talking about? Of course, the sacredness I casually mentioned earlier is roughly equivalent to the dimension of “charisma” as Weber called it—not material, not tangible, not immediately visible, but a meaning-bearing transcendence. But beyond speaking so broadly, sacredness as a religious concept is likewise what the Three Confucian sites carry.
Speaking of the religious dimension of Chinese tradition, please be sure to read my earlier “Reviving Historiographical Culture—The Historiographical Office as a Religious Institution.” There I already proposed that history provides the transcendent dimension in Chinese traditional culture. If Confucianism is not only an ethical code and a way of life, but also some kind of religion, then in some sense it must provide a transcendent support: it must push concerns over meaning beyond one’s actual life. Christianity provides a transcendent dimension through the promise of the world beyond; people entrust meaning to another world. But Chinese traditional culture provides this dimension through historical books and “incense and lineage.” “Since ancient times, who has not died? Let my loyal heart illuminate the annals of history” — the meaning of this life is entrusted to later generations; meaning transcends one’s own life, yet is still entrusted within this world, not carried off to the other shore. Therefore historical transmission and continuity are of utmost importance.
That is why I say that, when comparing Eastern and Western religious beliefs, we should not merely set the objects of worship such as the Buddha Tathagata (why is he also called zǔ, ancestor?), Hongjun Laozu, the Jade Emperor, the Sage Confucius, Lord Guan, and so on, against Western God, Jesus, Muhammad, and the like. If one compares them like that, one may find that Chinese belief is diverse and compatible—you can worship both bodhisattvas and Guan Gong—whereas the West is exclusive: once you worship Jesus, you cannot worship the Prophet Muhammad. Is that comparison? In my view, that is simply comparing the wrong things. In Chinese traditional culture, the function played by these immortals and deities is precisely to serve the real, rather than the transcendent; people worship bodhisattvas and the Jade Emperor in order to seek practical returns in this life, seeking many children and much blessing (why must there be many children? Why does the saying go, “Of the three forms of unfilial conduct, having no heir is the greatest”? What is a “heir”?). These gods were not truly the figures who provided ultimate concern for the ancient Chinese. The meaning of a person’s life beyond this life was not guaranteed by the Heavenly Emperor and the rest, but by “the annals of history,” “incense and lineage,” or “heir.” So if you tell me how compatible ancient Chinese religious belief was, how this and that could all be worshiped at will, I only need ask one question: can ancestors be worshiped at will?
Back then, in order to compromise with Chinese traditional rites, Western missionaries emphasized that Chinese ancestor worship was ethical in meaning rather than religious in meaning. This was done for the convenience of missionary work, so that the Roman Curia would allow Chinese converts to retain certain traditional rituals that were hard to abandon. It was a stopgap measure. But if our scholars today still unthinkingly classify ancestor worship as a purely ethical activity, then I fear something will have been missed.
Arendt regarded Socrates as the emblematic figure of Western “contemplative life,” and this had to do with the fact that Socrates did not try to write his own thoughts down. In this respect, Confucius seems similar. But looking carefully, Confucius was not simply one who “did not make,” but one who “transmitted without creating,” and what he transmitted was precisely “history.” Confucius’s own “family history” is also the most complete. Confucius’s position in “time” is not a node like “around 500 BCE,” but a lineage of blood and doctrine extending to the present, carried on by his family history and the Chinese dynastic histories. It is precisely this temporality as “tradition” that gives the Confucian ancestral temple its sacred meaning. This is different from Western sacredness. The meaning of Jesus Christ is precisely such a node: “year one of the Common Era.” If Confucius is viewed merely according to this “Common Era,” linear, neutral conception of time, then the Three Confucian sites would at most amount to nothing more than monuments.
Speaking of these transcendent dimensions, someone raised the point that Christian missionary work seems often aimed at delivering people from the sufferings of reality, and of course that is not wrong. I also happen to want to emphasize that religion, as religion, can by no means be understood only in terms of its transcendent dimension.
The spread of Christianity in contemporary China probably mainly takes two routes: one is the high-end route, aimed at university students or intellectuals; the other is the low-end route, aimed mainly at rural populations, with middle-aged and elderly women as the biggest breakthrough point. So what are rural middle-aged and elderly women seeking? The other shore? Heaven? Probably not. In my view, the greatest attraction Christianity can offer is a sense of belonging to a community and an identity. And this is precisely what rural middle-aged and elderly women lack most: men can go off to migrant work and labor, children can go to school, but they cannot find an appropriate place to belong. Christianity can most conveniently provide such a community organization; people can join without any skill or threshold, and without needing any shared interest or cause, they can still find common language and common activities. Collective, ritual activities fill life, making one’s life meaningful, while identity recognition further strengthens one’s sense of belonging and presence. In ancient China, this sense of belonging was provided by the system of clan and kinship. Everyone was content in his or her place, able to find an identity and belonging within the ancestral line. But this structure was broken in modern China: the enormous clans dispersed, and even the smallest family structure was torn apart by the emergence of migrant laborers. Where can people find a sense of community belonging? Christianity has taken advantage of the vacuum.
That is why I propose that rebuilding reverence for the “ancestors” is the crux of reviving traditional culture, and perhaps this could begin with promoting matters such as re-erecting ancestral tablets and revising family genealogies. Of course, equally crucial is the rebuilding of the historiographical office. Jingang disagreed with my line of thought. Jingang mentioned the issue of constructing the so-called “imagined community,” and pointed out the important significance of surname culture—two people can derive a sense of closeness by calculating that “five hundred years ago, we were one family.” This is precisely what I want to say next: the construction of the Chinese traditional so-called “imagined community” is accomplished through the fiction of “descendants of Yan and Huang.” Even when an outlander regime holds power, it still has to construct a genealogy of Yan and Huang descendants. And the cohesion of such a community is precisely what derives from the reverence for “ancestors” that I have stressed. First there is the sense of closeness among kin and fellow clansmen, and only then can it extend to distant relatives, and even further to all the “descendants of Yan and Huang.” Only by revering one’s own ancestors can a certain fictional ancestor truly function. Jingang, however, thinks that we may not need to begin rebuilding this imagined community from the work of re-establishing ancestral status in every household—for example, in the form of ancestral tablets—but could instead have television stations broadcast programs on surname culture every day for propaganda. Even leaving aside the fact that I absolutely cannot accept such a brainwashing strategy, its effectiveness is, from the looks of it, highly questionable.
Although I keep talking about the “revival” of traditional culture, what I mean is not that tradition has been severed and must be wholly rebuilt. I have long said that tradition is not something handed down from the past, but actually refers to “transmission” itself. Tradition must still continue in some way within our lifeworld; only then can we possibly revive it. For example, Teacher Wang mentioned people’s habit of using “drinking” as an occasion to curry favor and play at being relatives. Here, in the time-space behind the word “close,” traditional meaning still remains carried. It is precisely in many places regarded as the “dregs” or remnants of traditional culture that one is most likely to find the opportunity to revive tradition.
January 13, 2011
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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