Urban spirituality
This chapter focuses on the spirituality of the urban residents of Shenzhen, a new city just across the border from Hong Kong. As a prosperous city with little history and no tradition, inhabited almost exclusively by migrants from other parts of China, Shenzhen offers clues on the future of religion in a hypermodern, urban Chinese context. The chapter shows how Shenzhen residents actively turn to China’s spiritual heritage to give moral meaning to their lives in a competitive market economy.
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Shenzhen the special economic zone
In 1979 as part of the program of Opening and Reform program, Deng Xiaoping declared Shenzhen a special economic zone, a laboratory for free-market reforms that would later be extended to the rest of socialist China.During the 1980s, as Western companies rushed to begin production at Shenzhen, unskilled laborers and recruits from the People's Liberation Army arrived to supply the needed construction and factory workers. In the 1990s, many middle-class Chinese came to fill the demand for management personnel or to start their own business in the city. While Chinese people were witnessing the prosperous growth of the metropolis, a China watcher Ian Buruma captures the contrasts:"The atmosphere is young and brash. A raw, even primitive, vitality – life reduced to food, sex and money – flows through these new streets like a muddy river."
A famous quote by the famous China observer Ian Buruma.
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Deng Xiaoping on TIME magazine in 1979.
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fan lizhu - theory and reality
Sociologist Fan Lizhu who studies religion in China conducted years of field research in Shenzhen. In her chapter "Spirituality in a Modern Chinese Metropolis", Fan Lizhu describes how the Economic Reform in China during the 1980s ushered in more space of freedom in the modern city Shenzhen. In the clip "Theory and Reality", Fan talks about why she conducted research in the Chinese metropolis. The city has found its way to prosperity under the Economic Reform; however, besides material success, what else do people need? Let's see how Fan explains.
Chinese Religious Life Interview - Fan Lizhu - Theory and Reality
post-"iron rice bowl" anxiety
Before the economic reform announced by Deng Xiaoping, the life had been seemingly "fixed" by the socialist state. One had to accept one's lot in life, as peasant, as farmer, as wife. Chances of shifting occupations as well as improving social status had been rare. But as Deng the Chief Engineer decided to transform part of the country into market-oriented economy, people were exposed to capitalistic competition. In place of state sponsored guarantees of lifetime employment – the socialist “iron rice bowl” – young people today can and must choose their careers. If this provokes anxiety, it also brings freedom with a sense that one’s destiny is not only fixed but flexible. In contemporary Shenzhen, residents frequently speak of grasping their destinies in their own hands.
After the Cultural Revolution, the spiritual space appeared to be vacuum since religions were banned and destroyed in the ten-year struggle. In the clip "Faith Crisis After the Cultural Revolution", Fan Lizhu raises the question "After people lost their faith in revolution, what will they believe in?" Fan has given us a special answer.
After the Cultural Revolution, the spiritual space appeared to be vacuum since religions were banned and destroyed in the ten-year struggle. In the clip "Faith Crisis After the Cultural Revolution", Fan Lizhu raises the question "After people lost their faith in revolution, what will they believe in?" Fan has given us a special answer.
Chinese Religious Life Interview - Fan Lizhu - Faith Crisis After the Cultural Revolution
fathoming our destiny
No longer living in a state-planned economy, Shenzhen people had to face uncertainties in the market. Some encountered failures but some suddenly became successful. Fan and Whitehead have written about Mr. Zhou perception on destiny. Zhou was surprised by the changes that had taken place in his own life. His small printing business, producing mailing envelopes, deposit slips, and receipt books, had grown rapidly in pace with Shenzhen's expanding economy. After years of struggle, Zhou was suddenly quite successful and owned a house as well as an automobile. This sudden good fortune led him to question: why is this success mine? Is that fostered by the accumulation of moral capital from the previous life? Could virtues guarantee positive incarnation of the next life? Religion may provide the answers.
In the clip "The Anxieties of Success", Fan tells a typical story of a poor young man who started his gold-mining adventure in Shenzhen and turned rich at last, but he did not know where his luck came from. And how could he feed his "spiritual hunger" in the city? Please watch.
In the clip "The Anxieties of Success", Fan tells a typical story of a poor young man who started his gold-mining adventure in Shenzhen and turned rich at last, but he did not know where his luck came from. And how could he feed his "spiritual hunger" in the city? Please watch.
Chinese Religious Life Interview - Fan Lizhu - The Anxieties of Success
Religious adaptations in the city
Many in Shenzhen sense themselves to be without the spiritual support and constraints that were once provided by extended family or local village life. The hunger for a sense of belong continues, and for some, even intensifies, in this modernizing city. Intriguingly, vegetarian restaurants become the apt alternative for those who long for affiliation to certain communal networks. While having an apparent Buddhist aura in providing vegetarian diets, most of the restaurants embody religious pluralism in their settings. Bookshelves with Confucian moral books are often seen, and shrines for deities from both Daoism and Buddhism are popularly worshiped. Although one can find a monk giving lecture to customers occasionally, the hosts of the gatherings are often lay practitioners.
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Expanded media sources
As believers in the city are living in a more modern way, urban spirituality displays remarkable difference as compared to the rural. Expanded media sources have played a crucial role in the spiritual revival in Shenzhen. And images and icons of Western popular culture flood the local media. Confronted by this vast array of possibilities, Shenzhen residents need to, and want to, find for themselves the source of spiritual nourishment that suit their own situations and temperaments.
The Song of the Three Jewels (music by hongyi and lyrics by taixu)
One of the trendy practices here is the Buddhist pop music, which incorporates divine teachings into Karaoke singing. Tunes with pop-song background music are laid with sutra-like lyrics. A notable example is The Song of the Three Jewels (Sanboge) -- music arranged by the eminent monk-musician Hongyi (1880-1942), and lyrics written by prominent activists monk Taixu (1890-1947). Although the song was written more than half a century ago, its albums reproduced in the 1990s were widely circulated in mainland and Taiwan.
As in medieval China when the possession of the portrait of an eminent master was proof of a social and/or karmic connection between him and the owner of the portrait, the owners of a CD that displays Hongyi’s portrait and the tunes and lyrics he wrote may feel similarly connected with the master. |
Album Cover: The Song of the Three Jewels
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