So today we continue looking at what I call the resistance to the scientism of the 20th century in China, and the specific topic that we'll be talking about is what are now called redemptive societies and charity halls. We'll see the relationship between these two as we go along. Our sources this time are in fact quite numerous. I'll simply give the names right now and as we go along we'll be giving the full title of their chapters but there are chapters by Angela Leung 梁其姿, who is in charge of the Humanities Institute at Hong Kong University, there's André Laliberté, who teaches in Canada, Wang Chien-ch'uan 王見川 from Taiwan, and David Ownby also from Canada. So it's on these four chapters that we will be relying as we look at redemptive societies and charity halls. The first topic that we're going to be looking at is so-called "scientific" medicine and religion. My main source here will be Angela Leung, "Charity, Medicine, and Religion: The Quest for Modernity in Canton." So earlier we saw that "scientific" medicine and management were central concerns of the Republican-era Canton government as described by Angela Leung. But even there, she points out, religious traditions could not be ignored. I quote. "In November 1932, after the battle of Shanghai in January of that year, the Fangbian Hospital organized a huge memorial service, where an altar was built, sutras were chanted, and penitential rites, <i>lichan</i> 禮懺, typically considered 'superstitious' by the Republican regime, were performed... (And) an even more elaborate <i>jiao</i> 醮" —a traditional term for major Daoist undertaking but also often done by Buddhists— "an even more elaborate <i>jiao</i> ritual was organized by the Fangbian Hospital in the winter of 1935. Organizers of the event recorded that on the 21st of the tenth month of the year, a large altar constituted of more than 20 smaller ones was built on the empty grounds near the hospital, and a vast ritual space, <i>daochang</i> 道場, was prepared." I quote. "The organizers invited important Buddhist monks and Daoist priests from Mount Luofu 羅浮山," one of the most famous southern Daoist mountains, from Canton itself and from Hong Kong, "to carry out a ceremony that lasted seven days with the emotional participation of more than 20,000 people. The souls of all martyrs who had died for the Republic, all victims of various catastrophes, and all who had died in the hospital were released from suffering" —the term used is <i>chaodu</i> 超度, the traditional term for funeral rituals— so: the "release from suffering in the main ceremony and by rituals carried out in ritual boats and land processions. The hundred-page long report of the <i>jiao</i> contained the names of all the dead." Why? Well, this is in fact something that was done traditionally at the beginning of every dynasty. Buddhist and Daoist monks were invited to do <i>pudu</i> 普渡, universal salvation rituals, for all of the unfortunate dead who...otherwise would be unquiet dead and potential source of ongoing trouble, <i>zuosui</i> 作祟, haunting. "The ceremony clearly satisfied nationalist sentiments and (at the same time) soothed collective grief for the dead." And she concludes, "The event also demonstrates how deeply such rituals remained embedded in the economic and cultural fabric of Cantonese society decades after the beginning of the radicalization process in the late 19th century." "The gap," she says, "between the worldview of the society and that of the state-building ideology of the Canton Kuomintang revolutionary regime remained wide." Charity. The two—the modernizing state on the one hand, traditionalist movements on the other— could in fact be conjugated, because they shared a sense of mission and urgency. She says, "The main mission of the charitable organizations that sprang up in the last four decades of the Qing dynasty," so late 19th and the first decade of the 20th century, "in urban China was to restore social and political order that was rapidly disintegrating following the Taiping civil war (of the 1860s)." Speaking of spirit writing groups in approximately the same period, Wang Chien-ch'uan states that, I quote, "all these groups shared a sense of a mission to improve moral standards and relieve suffering in society through charitable and educational undertakings." In David Ownby's eyes, these "redemptive societies" were but an "organized, modern and contemporary expression of a lay salvationist impulse that has long existed in Chinese religion… Leadership of redemptive societies," he says, "has been charismatic, based on personal magnetism, healing skills," whether it's <i>qigong</i> or other similar body technologies, "and teachings that emphasize traditional morality. These teachings are recorded in syncretic scriptures, often produced via spirit writing" —we'll be talking more about that— "or by the charismatic master himself, and sometimes sounding millenarian" — that is apocalyptic— "themes." "<i>Qigong</i> organizations and Falungong," which was one of them, "like the Republican-period redemptive societies, were organized by charismatic masters who appealed to Chinese tradition and healing power, often calling for a return to traditional morality (in order) to avert (the) apocalypse." As purveyors of traditions under attack in the name of "scientific modernity," these groups may be regarded as vehicles for resistance to the forces that sought to drive them out of the public space. And I quote from Laliberté, who was referring to Robert Weller, specialist of Chinese religions at Boston University: "Religions, Weller argues, present themselves as an alternative to amoral markets where 'values', they claim, are in limited supply, and charity can represent a supplement if not an alternative to markets." The power of this impulse to charity in the first half of the 20th century may be seen in that other pole of Chinese modernity, Shanghai, which had 40 charities by 1911 and, by 1930, according to Wang Chien-ch'uan, 118! 118 charity organizations in Shanghai in 1930. And frequently, they were inseparable from spirit writing halls.
