This panel explores the role of Daoist- and Buddhist-based movements in contemporary China in providing resources for spiritual seekers concerned about a loss of authenticity in contemporary social life. From popular films to restorative health classes to organized religious institutions, an increasing array of groups and activities aim to help contemporary Chinese persons develop a healthy inner self amid what many perceive as the superficiality of contemporary Chinese social life and the potential bodily and psychological harm engendered by a one-sided drive for money and success. Drawing on multi-disciplinary perspectives, the panelists critically explore these new movements, their potential to transform contemporary Chinese life, their ambivalent relationship to the market, and their precarious existence under the watchful eye of the state.
What role does Daoism have for a competitive middle class in China? How are Daoists shaping curricula for a consuming public to solve contemporary concerns? This paper examines how one Daoist academy in Wudangshan pursued a reinterpreted Daoist ideal of the “Authentic Person” (zhenren). It analyzes how, through course lectures and informal social events, Daoist teachers led their individualistic, middle-class students to use this Daoist ideal figure as a framework for personal, social, and spiritual authenticity. These Daoist masters and students suggested that the world in which they lived was morally suspect and “false” (xuwei). Developing a form of Daoist authenticity and acting from it were presented as means of healing an over-worked self, solving social problems, and ensuring success in life. Within this process, the masters of Wudang performed “authentic” traditional sociality through cultured, convivial behavior that was interpreted by students as evidence of the success of Daoist cultivation.
In the People’s Republic of China, "nourishing life" (yangsheng) refers to both an ancient longevity principle and a major economic trend. On the one hand, yangsheng has been discussed from the foundational texts of Daoism as a means to attain immortality through techniques such as meditation, dietetics and calisthenics. On the other hand, "nourishing life" refers to a general idea of longevity and well-being that expresses itself in huge markets of self-help literature and wellness classes. This presentation explores how religion and the consumer-based economy merge in the form of "nourishing life training classes" (yangsheng peixun ban) held within the Medicine King Temple of Mt. Qingcheng, a sacred Daoist mountain. Anxiety about authenticity occurs both on the part of participants who fear that practices are over-commercialized and organizers who fear that too little commercialization may arouse the concern of the state that the practices are too religious in nature.
Many urban Chinese citizens, particularly the young and well-educated, are turning to Buddhist-based meditation practices to cure what they characterize as the restlessness and inauthenticity of social life. This presentation will explore this interest in Chan meditation techniques at three sites: a weeklong Chan meditation camp that promises spiritual renewal to young urban professionals, a Beijing-based teahouse operated by alumni of the camp, and a temple in Jiangsu province that operates a biweekly meditation class for mostly middle-aged lay Buddhists. Drawing on Talal Asad’s notion of the religious and secular as contingent, mutually-creating categories, the presentation will argue that, while the segregation of the religious and spiritual from everyday life in urban China contributes to anxiety about the authentic in the first place, the possibility for Chan meditation to function as a site of the authentic is equally dependent on the segregation of religious sites from everyday time and space.
Feng Xiaogang’s If You Are the One II (2010) achieved the second-highest opening day gross in Chinese box office history. While some laud its deeply Buddhist sensibilities toward living and dying, others lambast its ubiquitous product placements and seemingly unbridled consumerism. At the heart of these contestations lies a perennial conundrum that has become especially acute in post-Mao China: should religion have anything to do with business? This paper explores the entwinement of Buddhism and economics through the prism of a blockbuster romantic comedy. In the film’s production, text, and reception, I observe a swirl of socioreligious discourses animated by the anxiety that artistic and spiritual integrity may be rendered inauthentic by the desire for financial profit. Building on recent work on the corporate form, I frame Feng’s commercial cinema as a vehicle through which the desires for ethical depth, familial well-being, and material prosperity are simultaneously affirmed.