title: Religion in China

text: Because this common religion is embedded in Chinese social relations, it historically has never had an objectifying name. Since the 2000s, Chinese scholars have proposed names to identify it more clearly, including "Chinese native religion" or "Chinese indigenous religion" ( "mínsú zōngjiào"), "Chinese ethnic religion" ( "mínzú zōngjiào"), or simply "Chinese religion" ( "Zhōnghuájiào"), "Shenism" ( "Shénjiào") and "Shenxianism" ( "Shénxiānjiào", "religion of deities and immortals"). This search for a precise name is meant to solve terminological confusion, since "folk religion" ( "mínjiān zōngjiào") or "folk belief" ( "mínjiān xìnyǎng") have historically defined the sectarian movements of salvation and not the local cults devoted to deities and progenitors, and it is also meant to identify a "national Chinese religion" similarly to Hinduism in India and Shinto in Japan.


title: Religion in China

text: Taoism has been defined by scholar and Taoist initiate Kristofer Schipper as a doctrinal and liturgical framework for the development of indigenous religions. The Zhengyi school is especially intertwined with local cults, with Zhengyi "daoshi" (, "masters of the Tao", otherwise commonly translated simply the "Taoists", since common followers and folk believers who are not part of Taoist orders are not identified as such) performing rituals for local temples and communities. Various vernacular orders of ritual ministers often identified as "folk Taoists", operate in folk religion but outside the jurisdiction of the state's Taoist Church or schools clearly identified as Taoist. Confucianism advocates the worship of gods and ancestors through appropriate rites. Folk temples and ancestral shrines, on special occasions, may use Confucian liturgy ( "rú" or "zhèngtǒng", "orthoprax") led by Confucian "sages of rites" ( "lǐshēng"), who in many cases are the elders of a local community. Confucian liturgies are alternated with Taoist liturgies and popular ritual styles. Taoism in its various currents, either comprehended or not within Chinese folk religion, has some of its origins from Chinese shamanism (Wuism).


title: Religion in China

text: Despite this great diversity, all experiences of Chinese religion have a common theological core that may be summarised in four cosmological and moral concepts: "Tian" (), Heaven, the "transcendently immanent" source of moral meaning; "qi" (), the breath or energy–matter that animates the universe; "jingzu" (), the veneration of ancestors; and "bao ying" (), moral reciprocity; together with two traditional concepts of fate and meaning: "ming yun" (), the personal destiny or burgeoning; and "yuan fen" (), "fateful coincidence", good and bad chances and potential relationships.


title: Religion in China

text: In Chinese religion yin and yang constitute the polarity that describes the order of the universe, held in balance by the interaction of principles of growth or expansion ("shen") and principles of waning or contraction ("gui"), with act ("yang") usually preferred over receptiveness ("yin"). "Ling" (numen or sacred) coincides with the middle way between the two states, that is the inchoate order of creation. It is the force establishing responsive communication between yin and yang, and is the power of gods, masters of building and healing, rites and sages.


title: Religion in China

text: The present-day government of China, like the erstwhile imperial dynasties of the Ming and Qing, tolerates popular religious cults if they bolster social stability, but suppresses or persecutes cults and deities which threaten moral order. After the fall of the empire in 1911, governments and elites opposed or attempted to eradicate folk religion in order to promote "modern" values while overcoming "feudal superstition". These attitudes began to change in the late 20th century, and contemporary scholars generally have a positive vision of popular religion.


title: Religion in China

text: Since the 1980s Chinese folk religions experienced a revival in both mainland China and Taiwan. Some forms have received official approval as they preserve traditional Chinese culture, including the worship of Mazu and the school of Sanyiism in Fujian, Huangdi worship, and other forms of local worship, for instance the worship of Longwang, Pangu or Caishen. In mid-2015 the government of Zhejiang began the registration of the province's tens of thousands of folk religious temples.


title: Religion in China

text: According to the most recent demographic analyses, an average 80% of the population of China, approximately 1 billion people, practises cults of gods and ancestors or belongs to folk religious movements. Moreover, according to one survey approximately 14% of the population claims different levels of affiliation with Taoist practices. Other figures from the micro-level testify the wide proliferation of folk religions: in 1989 there were 21,000 male and female shamans ("shen han" and "wu po" respectively, as they are named locally), 60% of them young, in the Pingguo County of Guangxi alone; and by the mid-1990s the government of the Yulin Prefecture of Shaanxi counted over 10,000 folk temples on its territory alone, for a population of 3.1 million, an average of one temple per 315 persons.


title: Religion in China

text: In December 2015, the Chinese Folk Temples' Management Association was formally established with the approval of the government of China and under the aegis of the Ministry of Cultural Affairs.


title: Religion in China

text: China has a long history of sectarian traditions, called "salvationist religions" ( "jiùdù zōngjiào") by some scholars, which are characterised by a concern for salvation (moral fulfillment) of the person and the society, having a soteriological and eschatological character. They generally emerged from the common religion but are separate from the lineage cults of ancestors and progenitors, as well as from the communal worship of deities of village temples, neighbourhood, corporation, or national temples. The 20th-century expression of such religions has been studied under Prasenjit Duara's definition of "redemptive societies" ( "jiùshì tuántǐ"), while modern Chinese scholarship describes them as "folk religious sects" ( "mínjiān zōngjiào", "mínjiān jiàomén" or "mínjiān jiàopài"), overcoming the ancient derogatory definition of "xiéjiào" (), "evil religion".


title: Religion in China

text: These religions are characterised by egalitarianism, charismatic founding figures claiming to have received divine revelation, a millenarian eschatology and voluntary path of salvation, an embodied experience of the numinous through healing and cultivation, and an expansive orientation through good deeds, evangelism and philanthropy. Their practices are focused on improving morality, body cultivation, and on the recitation of scriptures.


title: Religion in China

text: Many redemptive religions of the 20th and 21st century aspire to embody and reform Chinese tradition in the face of Western modernism and materialism. They include Yiguandao and other sects belonging to the Xiantiandao ( "Way of Former Heaven"), Jiugongdao ( "Way of the Nine Palaces"), the various branches of Luoism, Zailiism, and more recent ones such as the Church of Virtue, Weixinism, Xuanyuanism and Tiandiism. Also the qigong schools are developments of folk salvationist movements. All these movements were banned in the early Republic of China (1912–49) and later People's Republic. Many of them still remain underground or unrecognised in China, while others—for instance the Church of Virtue, Tiandiism, Xuanyuanism, Weixinism and Yiguandao—operate in China and collaborate with academic and non-governmental organisations. Sanyiism is another folk religious organisation founded in the 16th century, which is present in the Putian region (Xinghua) of Fujian where it is legally recognised. Some of these movements began to register as branches of the Taoist Association since the 1990s.


title: Religion in China

text: Another category that has been sometimes confused with that of the folk salvationist movements by scholars is that of the secret societies ( "huìdàomén", "mìmì shèhuì", or "mìmì jiéshè"). They are religious communities of initiatory and secretive character, including rural militias such as the Red Spears () and the Big Knives (), and fraternal organisations such as the Green Gangs () and the Elders' Societies (). They were very active in the early republican period, and often identified as "heretical doctrines" ( "zōngjiào yìduān"). Recent scholarship has coined the category of "secret sects" ( "mìmì jiàomén") to distinguish positively-viewed peasant secret societies of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, from the negatively-viewed secret societies of the early republic which were regarded as anti-revolutionary forces.


title: Religion in China

text: A further type of folk religious movements, possibly overlapping with the "secret sects", are the martial sects. They combine two aspects: the "wénchǎng" ( "cultural field"), which is a doctrinal aspect characterised by elaborate cosmologies, theologies, and liturgies, and usually taught only to initiates; and the "wǔchǎng" ( "martial field"), that is the practice of bodily cultivation, usually shown as the "public face" of the sect. These martial folk religions were outlawed by Ming imperial decrees which continued to be enforced until the fall of the Qing dynasty in the 20th century. An example of martial sect is Meihuaism ( "Méihuājiào", "Plum Flowers"), a branch of Baguaism which has become very popular throughout northern China. In Taiwan, virtually all folk salvationist movements operate freely since the late 1980s.


title: Religion in China

text: Confucianism in Chinese is called, Rújiào, the "teaching of scholars", or Kǒngjiào, the "teaching of Confucius". It is both a teaching and a set of ritual practices. Yong Chen calls the question on the definition of Confucianism "probably one of the most controversial issues in both Confucian scholarship and the discipline of religious studies".


title: Religion in China

text: Guy Alitto points out that there was "literally no equivalent for the Western (and later worldwide) concept of 'Confucianism' in traditional Chinese discourse". He argues that the Jesuit missionaries of the 16th century selected Confucius from many possible sages to serve as the counterpart to Christ or Muhammad in order to meet European religion categories. They used a variety of writings by Confucius and his followers to coin a new "-ism"—"Confucianism"—which they presented as a "rationalist secular-ethical code", not as a religion. This secular understanding of Confucianism inspired both the Enlightenment in Europe in the 18th century, and Chinese intellectuals of the 20th century. Liang Shuming, a philosopher of the May Fourth Movement, wrote that Confucianism "functioned as a religion without actually being one". Western scholarship generally accepted this understanding. In the decades following the Second World War, however, many Chinese intellectuals and academic scholars in the West, among whom Tu Weiming, reversed this assessment. Confucianism, for this new generation of scholars, became a "true religion" that offered "immanent transcendence".


title: Religion in China

text: According to Herbert Fingarette's conceptualisation of Confucianism as a religion which proposes "the secular as sacred", Confucianism transcends the dichotomy between religion and humanism. Confucians experience the sacred as existing in this world as part of everyday life, most importantly in family and social relations. Confucianism focuses on a thisworldly awareness of "Tian" ( "Heaven"), the search for a middle way in order to preserve social harmony and on respect through teaching and a set of ritual practices. Joël Thoraval finds that Confucianism expresses on a popular level in the widespread worship of five cosmological entities: Heaven and Earth ("Di" ), the sovereign or the government ("jūn" ), ancestors ("qīn" ) and masters ("shī" ). Confucians cultivate family bonds and social harmony rather than pursuing a transcendental salvation. The scholar Joseph Adler concludes that Confucianism is not so much a religion in the Western sense, but rather "a non-theistic, diffused religious tradition", and that "Tian" is not so much a personal God but rather "an impersonal absolute, like "dao" and "Brahman"".


title: Religion in China

text: Broadly speaking, however, scholars agree that Confucianism may be also defined as an ethico-political system, developed from the teachings of the philosopher Confucius (551–479 BCE). Confucianism originated during the Spring and Autumn period and developed metaphysical and cosmological elements in the Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE), to match the developments in Buddhism and Taoism which were dominant among the populace. By the same period, Confucianism became the core idea of Chinese imperial politics. According to He Guanghu, Confucianism may be identified as a continuation of the Shang-Zhou (~1600 BCE–256 BCE) official religion, or the Chinese aboriginal religion which has lasted uninterrupted for three thousand years.


title: Religion in China

text: By the words of Tu Weiming and other Confucian scholars who recover the work of Kang Youwei (a Confucian reformer of the early 20th century), Confucianism revolves around the pursuit of the unity of the individual self and Heaven, or, otherwise said, around the relationship between humanity and Heaven. The principle of Heaven ("Li" or "Dao") is the order of the creation and the source of divine authority, monistic in its structure. Individuals may realise their humanity and become one with Heaven through the contemplation of this order. This transformation of the self may be extended to the family and society to create a harmonious fiduciary community. Confucianism conciliates both the inner and outer polarities of spiritual cultivation, that is to say self-cultivation and world redemption, synthesised in the ideal of "sageliness within and kingliness without". As defined by Stephan Feuchtwang, Heaven is thought to have an ordering law which preserves the world, which has to be followed by humanity by means of a "middle way" between yin and yang forces; social harmony or morality is identified as patriarchy, which is the worship of ancestors and progenitors in the male line, in ancestral shrines.


title: Religion in China

text: In Confucian thought, human beings are always teachable, improvable, and perfectible through personal and communal endeavor of self-cultivation and self-creation. Some of the basic Confucian ethical and practical concepts include "rén", "yì", "lǐ", and "zhì". "Ren" is translated as "humaneness", or the essence proper of a human being, which is characterised by compassionate mind; it is the virtue endowed by Heaven and at the same time what allows man to achieve oneness with Heaven—in the "Datong shu" it is defined as "to form one body with all things" and "when the self and others are not separated ... compassion is aroused". "Yi" is "righteousness", which consists in the ability to always maintain a moral disposition to do good things. "Li" is a system of ritual norms and propriety of behaviour which determine how a person should act in everyday life. "Zhi" is the ability to see what is right and what is wrong, in the behaviour exhibited by others. Confucianism holds one in contempt when he fails to uphold the cardinal moral values of "ren" and "yi".


title: Religion in China

text: Confucianism never developed an institutional structure similar to that of Taoism, and its religious body never differentiated from Chinese folk religion. Since the 2000s, Confucianism has been embraced as a religious identity by a large numbers of intellectuals and students in China. In 2003, the Confucian intellectual Kang Xiaoguang published a manifesto in which he made four suggestions: Confucian education should enter official education at any level, from elementary to high school; the state should establish Confucianism as the state religion by law; Confucian religion should enter the daily life of ordinary people, a purpose achievable through a standardisation and development of doctrines, rituals, organisations, churches and activity sites; the Confucian religion should be spread through non-governmental organisations. Another modern proponent of the institutionalisation of Confucianism in a state church is Jiang Qing.


title: Religion in China

text: In 2005, the Center for the Study of Confucian Religion was established and "guoxue" ("national learning") started to be implemented in public schools. Being well received by the population, even Confucian preachers started to appear on television since 2006. The most enthusiast New Confucians proclaim the uniqueness and superiority of Confucian Chinese culture, and have generated some popular sentiment against Western cultural influences in China.


title: Religion in China

text: The idea of a "Confucian Church" as the state religion of China has roots in the thought of Kang Youwei (1858–1927), an exponent of the early New Confucian search for a regeneration of the social relevance of Confucianism at a time when it fell out of favour with the fall of the Qing dynasty and the end of the Chinese empire. Kang modeled his ideal "Confucian Church" after European national Christian churches, as a hierarchic and centralised institution, closely bound to the state, with local church branches devoted to the worship of Confucius and the spread of his teachings.


title: Religion in China

text: In contemporary China, the Confucian revival has developed into various interwoven directions: the proliferation of Confucian schools or academies ("shuyuan" or "Kǒngxuétáng", "Confucian learning halls"), the resurgence of Confucian rites ("chuántǒng lǐyí" ), and the birth of new forms of Confucian activity on the popular level, such as the Confucian communities ("shèqū rúxué" ). Some scholars also consider the reconstruction of lineage churches and their ancestral temples, as well as of cults and temples of natural gods and national heroes within broader Chinese traditional religion, as part of the renewal of Confucianism.


title: Religion in China

text: Other forms of revival are folk religious movements of salvation with a Confucian focus, or Confucian churches, for example the "Yidan xuetang" () of Beijing, the "Mengmutang" () of Shanghai, Confucian Shenism ( "Rúzōng Shénjiào") or the phoenix churches, the Confucian Fellowship ( "Rújiào Dàotán") of northern Fujian, and ancestral temples of the Kong (Confucius') lineage operating as churches for Confucian teaching.


title: Religion in China

text: Also the Hong Kong Confucian Academy, one of the direct heirs of Kang Youwei's Confucian Church, has expanded its activities to the mainland, with the construction of statues of Confucius, the establishment of Confucian hospitals, the restoration of temples and other activities. In 2009, Zhou Beichen founded another institution which inherits the idea of Kang Youwei's Confucian Church, the Sacred Hall of Confucius ( "Kǒngshèngtáng") in Shenzhen, affiliated with the Federation of Confucian Culture of Qufu City. It was the first of a nationwide movement of congregations and civil organisations that was unified in 2015 in the Church of Confucius ( "Kǒngshènghuì"). The first spiritual leader of the church is the scholar Jiang Qing, the founder and manager of the Yangming Confucian Abode ( "Yángmíng jīngshě"), a Confucian academy in Guiyang, Guizhou.


title: Religion in China

text: Chinese folk religious temples and kinship ancestral shrines may, on peculiar occasions, choose Confucian liturgy (called "rú" or "zhèngtǒng", "orthoprax") led by Confucian ritual masters ( "lǐshēng") to worship the gods, instead of Taoist or popular ritual. "Confucian businessmen" ( "rúshāng", also "refined businessman") is a recently rediscovered concept defining people of the economic-entrepreneurial elite who recognise their social responsibility and therefore apply Confucian culture to their business.


title: Religion in China

text: Taoism ( "Dàojiào") (also romanised as "Daoism" in the current pinyin spelling) encompasses a variety of related orders of philosophy and rite in Chinese religion. They share elements that go back to the 4th century BCE and to the prehistoric culture of China, such as the School of Yin and Yang and the thought of Laozi and Zhuangzi. Taoism has a distinct scriptural tradition, with the "Dàodéjīng" ( "Book of the Way and its Virtue") of Laozi being regarded as its keystone. Taoism may be described, as does the scholar and Taoist initiate Kristofer Schipper in "The Taoist Body" (1986), as a doctrinal and liturgical framework or structure for developing the local cults of indigenous religion. Taoist traditions emphasise living in harmony with the "Tao" (also romanised as "Dao"). The term "Tao" means "way", "path" or "principle", and may also be found in Chinese philosophies and religions other than Taoism, including Confucian thought. In Taoism, however, "Tao" denotes the principle that is both the source and the pattern of development of everything that exists. It is ultimately ineffable: "The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao" says the first verse of the Tao Te Ching. According to the scholar Stephan Feuchtwang, the concept of "Tao" is equivalent to the ancient Greek concept of "physis", "nature", that is the vision of the process of generation and regeneration of things and of the moral order.


title: Religion in China

text: By the Han dynasty (206 BCE – 220 CE) the various sources of Taoism coalesced into a coherent tradition of religious organisations and orders of ritualists. In earlier China, Taoists were thought of as hermits or ascetics who did not participate in political life. Zhuangzi was the best known of them, and it is significant that he lived in the south, where he was involved in local shamanic traditions. Women shamans played an important role in this tradition, which was particularly strong in the state of Chu. Early Taoist movements developed their own institution in contrast to shamanism, but absorbing fundamental shamanic elements. Shamans revealed texts of Taoism from early times down to at least the 20th century.


title: Religion in China

text: Taoist institutional orders evolved in strains that in recent times are conventionally grouped in two main branches: Quanzhen Taoism and Zhengyi Taoism. Taoist schools traditionally feature reverence for Laozi, immortals or ancestors, along with a variety of rituals for divination and exorcism, and techniques for achieving ecstasy, longevity or immortality. Ethics and appropriate behaviour may vary depending on the particular school, but in general all emphasise "wu wei" (effortless action), "naturalness", simplicity, spontaneity, and the Three Treasures: compassion, moderation, and humility.


title: Religion in China

text: Taoism has had profound influence on Chinese culture over the course of the centuries, and Taoists (, "masters of the Tao") usually take care to mark the distinction between their ritual tradition and those of vernacular orders which are not recognised as Taoist.


title: Religion in China

text: Taoism was suppressed during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s but its traditions endured in secrecy and revived in following decades. In 1956 a national organisation, the Chinese Taoist Association, was established to govern the activity of Taoist orders and temples. According to demographic analyses, approximately 13% of the population of China claims a loose affiliation with Taoist practices, while self-proclaimed "Taoists" (a title traditionally attributed only to the "daoshi", i.e. the priests, who are experts of Taoist doctrines and rites, and to their closest disciples) might be 12 million (c. 1%). The definition of "Taoist" is complicated by the fact that many folk sects of salvation and their members began to be registered as branches of the Taoist association in the 1990s.


title: Religion in China

text: There are two types of Taoists, following the distinction between the Quanzhen and Zhengyi traditions. Quanzhen "daoshi" are celibate monks, and therefore the Taoist temples of the Quanzhen school are monasteries. Contrariwise, Zhengyi , also known as ("scattered" or "diffused" Taoists) or (Taoists "who live at home"), are priests who may marry and have other jobs besides the sacerdotal office; they live among the population and perform Taoist rituals within common Chinese religion, for local temples and communities.


title: Religion in China

text: While the Chinese Taoist Association started as a Quanzhen institution, and remains based at the White Cloud Temple of Beijing, that also functions as the headquarters of the Quanzhen sects, from the 1990s onwards it started to open registration to the "sanju daoshi" of the Zhengyi branch, who are more numerous than the Quanzhen monks. The Chinese Taoist Association had already 20.000 registered "sanju daoshi" in the mid-1990s, while the total number of Zhengyi priests including the unregistered ones was estimated at 200.000 in the same years. The Zhengyi "sanju daoshi" are trained by other priests of the same sect, and historically received formal ordination by the Celestial Master, although the 63rd Celestial Master Zhang Enpu fled to Taiwan in the 1940s during the Chinese Civil War. Taoism, both in registered and unregistered forms, has experienced a strong development since the 1990s, and dominates the religious life of coastal provinces.


title: Religion in China

text: Chinese vernacular ritual masters, also referred to as practitioners of Faism ( "Fǎjiào", "rites/laws' traditions"), also named Folk Taoism ( "Mínjiàn Dàojiào"), or "Red Taoism" (in southeast China and Taiwan), are orders of priests that operate within the Chinese folk religion but outside any institution of official Taoism. Such "masters of rites", "fashi" (), are known by a variety of names including "hongtou daoshi" (), popular in southeast China, meaning "redhead" or "redhat" daoshi, in contradistinction to the "wutou daoshi" (), "blackhead" or "blackhat" daoshi, as vernacular Taoists call the "sanju daoshi" of Zhengyi Taoism that were traditionally ordained by the Celestial Master. In some provinces of north China they are known as "yīnyángshēng" ( "sages of yin and yang"), and by a variety of other names.


title: Religion in China

text: Although the two types of priests, daoshi and fashi, have the same roles in Chinese society—in that they may marry and they perform rituals for communities' temples or private homes—Zhengyi daoshi emphasise their Taoist tradition, distinguished from the vernacular tradition of the fashi. Some Western scholars have described vernacular Taoist traditions as "cataphatic" (i.e. of positive theology) in character, while professional Taoism as "kenotic" and "apophatic" (i.e. of negative theology).


title: Religion in China

text: "Fashi" are "tongji" practitioners (southern mediumship), healers, exorcists and they officiate "jiao" rituals of "universal salvation" (although historically they were excluded from performing such rites). They are not shamans ("wu"), with the exception of the order of Mount Lu in Jiangxi. Rather, they represent an intermediate level between the "wu" and the Taoists. Like the "wu", the "fashi" identify with their deity, but while the "wu" embody wild forces, vernacular ritual masters represent order like the Taoists. Unlike the Taoists, who represent a tradition of high theology which is interethnic, both vernacular ritual masters and "wu" find their institutional base in local cults to particular deities, even though vernacular ritual masters are itinerant.


title: Religion in China

text: Shamanism was the prevalent modality of pre-Han dynasty Chinese indigenous religion. The Chinese usage distinguishes the Chinese "Wuism" tradition ( "Wūjiào"; properly shamanic, in which the practitioner has control over the force of the god and may travel to the underworld) from the "tongji" tradition (; southern mediumship, in which the practitioner does not control the force of the god but is guided by it), and from non-Han Chinese Altaic shamanisms ( "sàmǎnjiào") which are practised in northern provinces.


title: Religion in China

text: With the rise of Confucian orthodoxy in the Han period (206 BCE – 220 CE), shamanic traditions found an institutionalised and intellectualised form within the esoteric philosophical discourse of Taoism. According to Chirita (2014), Confucianism itself, with its emphasis on hierarchy and ancestral rituals, derived from the shamanic discourse of the Shang dynasty (c. 1600 BCE – 1046 BCE). What Confucianism did was to marginalise the features of old shamanism which were dysfunctional for the new political regime. However, shamanic traditions continued uninterrupted within the folk religion and found precise and functional forms within Taoism.


title: Religion in China

text: In the Shang and later Zhou dynasty (c. 1046 BCE – 256 BCE), shamans had an important role in the political hierarchy, and were represented institutionally by the Ministry of Rites (). The emperor was considered the supreme shaman, intermediating between the three realms of heaven, earth and humanity. The mission of a shaman ( "wu") is "to repair the dysfunctionalities occurred in nature and generated after the sky had been separated from earth":


title: Religion in China

text: Since the 1980s the practice and study of shamanism has undergone a great revival in Chinese religion as a mean to repair the world to a harmonious whole after industrialisation. Shamanism is viewed by many scholars as the foundation for the emergence of civilisation, and the shaman as "teacher and spirit" of peoples. The Chinese Society for Shamanic Studies was founded in Jilin City in 1988.


title: Religion in China

text: In China, Buddhism ( "Fójiào") is represented by a large number of people following the "Mahayana", divided between two different cultural traditions, namely the schools of Chinese Buddhism followed by the Han Chinese, and the schools of Tibetan Buddhism followed by Tibetans and Mongols, but also by minorities of Han. The vast majority of Buddhists in China, counted in the hundreds of millions, are Chinese Buddhists, while Tibetan Buddhists are in the number of the tens of millions. Small communities following the "Theravada" exist among minority ethnic groups who live in the southwestern provinces of Yunnan and Guangxi, bordering Myanmar, Thailand and Laos, but also some among the Li people of Hainan follow such tradition.


title: Religion in China

text: With the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, religion came under the control of the new government, and the Buddhist Association of China was founded in 1953. During the Cultural Revolution, Buddhism was suppressed and temples closed or destroyed. Restrictions lasted until the reforms of the 1980s, when Buddhism began to recover popularity and its place as the largest organised faith in the country. While estimates of the number of Buddhists in China vary, the most recent surveys found an average 10–16% of the population of China claiming a Buddhist affiliation, with even higher percentages in urban agglomerations.


title: Religion in China

text: Buddhism was introduced into China by its western neighbouring populations during the Han dynasty, traditionally in the 1st century. It became very popular among Chinese of all walks of life; admired by commoners, and sponsored by emperors in certain dynasties. The expansion of Buddhism reached its peak during the Tang dynasty, in the 9th century, when Buddhist monasteries had become very rich and powerful. The wealth of Buddhist institutions was among the practical reasons—the ideal reason was that Buddhism was a "foreign religion"—why the Tang emperors decided to enact a wave of persecutions of the religion, starting with the Great Anti-Buddhist Persecution (845) by Emperor Wuzong, through which many monasteries were destroyed and the religion's influence in China was greatly reduced. However, Buddhism survived the persecutions and regained a place in the Chinese society over the following centuries.


title: Religion in China

text: Spreading in China, Buddhism had to interact with indigenous religions, especially Taoism. Such interaction gave rise to uniquely Han Chinese Buddhist schools ( "Hànchuán Fójiào"). Originally seen as a kind of "foreign Taoism", Buddhism's scriptures were translated into Chinese using the Taoist vocabulary. Chan Buddhism in particular was shaped by Taoism, developing distrust of scriptures and even language, as well as typical Taoist views emphasising "this life", the "moment", and dedicated practices. Throughout the Tang period, Taoism itself developed elements drawn from Buddhism, including monasticism, vegetarianism, abstention from alcohol, and the doctrine of emptiness. During the same period, Chan Buddhism grew to become the largest sect in Chinese Buddhism.


title: Religion in China

text: Buddhism was not universally welcomed, particularly among the gentry. The Buddha's teaching seemed alien and amoral to conservative Confucian sensibilities. Confucianism promoted social stability, order, strong families, and practical living, and Chinese officials questioned how monasticism and personal attainment of Nirvana benefited the empire. However, Buddhism and Confucianism eventually reconciled after centuries of conflict and assimilation.


title: Religion in China

text: In contemporary China, the most popular forms of Chinese Buddhism are the Pure Land and Chan schools. Pure Land Buddhism is very accessible for common people, since in its doctrine even lay practitioners may escape the cycle of death and rebirth. The goal for followers of this popular form of Buddhism is to be reborn in the Pure Land, which is a place rather than a state of mind. In the 2000s and 2010s, the influence of Chinese Buddhism has been expressed through the construction of large-scale statues, pagodas and temples, including the Great Buddha of the Central Plains, the second highest statue in the world. Many temples in China also claim to preserve relics of the original Gautama Buddha.


title: Religion in China

text: The revival of Chinese Buddhism in the 21st century has also seen the development of the Humanistic Buddhist movement, reintroduced from Taiwan and Chinese overseas communities, with organisations such as the "Cíjì" (), which has been working in mainland China since 1991 and has opened its mainland headquarters in the 2010s in Suzhou.


title: Religion in China

text: The Buddhist schools that emerged in the cultural sphere of Tibet ( "Zàngchuán Fójiào" or "Lǎmajiào", "Lamaism") also have an influence throughout China that dates back to historical interactions of the Han Chinese with neighbouring populations. Tibetan Buddhism and its clergy, the lamas, were introduced in China proper since the 7th century; its emphasis on ritual action was a shared element with Taoism. It spread significantly much later, with Tibetan influence in the west, and with the Mongols and Manchus in the north, especially under the dynasties which they established in China, the Yuan and the Qing dynasty.


title: Religion in China

text: Today, Tibetan Buddhism is the dominant religion in Tibet, among Tibetans in Qinghai and other provinces, and has a historical and significant presence in Inner Mongolia (where its traditional name is "Burkhany Shashin", "Buddha's religion", or "Shira-in Shashin", the "Yellow religion"— "Huángjiào" in Chinese). However, there are many Tibetan Buddhist temples as far as northeast China, the Yonghe Temple in Beijing being just one example.


title: Religion in China

text: There are controversies surrounding the Tibetan Buddhist hierarchy, specifically the succession of Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama—the spiritual leader of the Gelug school, the major school of Tibetan Buddhism—who, before fleeing China during the 1959 Tibetan uprising, had full political power in Tibet. The Panchen Lama, the Tibetan hierarch in charge of the designation of the future successor of the Dalai Lama, is a matter of controversy between the Chinese government and Tenzin Gyatso. The government of China asserts that the present (11th) incarnation of the Panchen Lama is Gyancain Norbu, while the 14th Dalai Lama asserted in 1995 that it was Gedhun Choekyi Nyima, who from that year has been detained by the Chinese government and never seen in public.


title: Religion in China

text: After the liberalisation of religions in China in the 1980s, there has been a growing movement of adoption of the Gelug sect, and other Tibetan-originated Buddhist schools, by the Han Chinese. This movement has been favoured by the proselytism of Chinese-speaking Tibetan lamas throughout China.


title: Religion in China

text: Theravada Buddhism is a major form of Buddhism, practised mostly in Southeast Asia but also among some minority ethnic groups in southwest China. Theravada Buddhism spread from Myanmar to present day Xishuangbanna, Dehong, Simao, Lincang, and Baoshan, all in Yunnan, during the 6th and 7th century. Today, this school of Buddhism is popular among the Dai people, and also the Palaung, Blang, Achang, and Jingpo ethnic groups.


title: Religion in China

text: The first Buddhist temple in Yunnan province, the Wabajie Temple in Xishuangbanna, was erected in 615. After the 12th century, Theravada Buddhist influence into the region began to come from Thailand. Thais began to bring copies of the Pali canon to Yunnan, to translate the scriptures and to build new temples. The people living in Yunnan where Theravada Buddhism is widespread follow norms similar to those of Thai Buddhists, and their Buddhism is often blended with local folk beliefs. Theravada Buddhism suffered from persecution during the Cultural Revolution, but after the 1980s it was revived.


title: Religion in China

text: Besides Tibetan Buddhism and the Vajrayana streams found within Chinese Buddhism, Vajrayana Buddhism is practised in China in some other forms. For instance, Azhaliism (Chinese: "Āzhālìjiào") is a Vajrayana Buddhist religion practised among the Bai people.


title: Religion in China

text: The Vajrayana current of Chinese Buddhism is known as Tangmi ( "Tang Mysteries"), as it flourished in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907) just before the great suppression of Buddhism by imperial decision. Another name for this body of traditions is "Han Chinese Transmission of the Esoteric (or Mystery) Tradition" ( "Hànchuán Mìzōng", where "Mizong" is the Chinese for Vajrayana). Tangmi, together with the broader religious tradition of Tantrism (in Chinese: "Dátèluō" or "Dátèluó mìjiào"; which may include Hindu forms of religion) has undergone a revitalisation since the 1980s together with the overall revival of Buddhism.


title: Religion in China

text: The Gateway of the Hidden Flower ( "Huácáng Zōngmén") and the True Awakening Tradition ( "Zhēnfó Zōng") are two new Han Chinese movements within the Vajrayana, and are among the Buddhist sects which are officially proscribed as evil by the government.


title: Religion in China

text: From the 1890s to the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1945, the "Hompa Honganji-ha" organisation of the "Jōdo Shinshū" (淨土真宗; Chinese reading: "Jìngtǔ Zhēnzōng", "True Tradition of the Pure Land"), or Shin Buddhism ("True Buddhism"), which is a Japanese variation of Pure Land Buddhism, carried out missionary activity throughout East Asia, including Manchuria, Taiwan and China proper. With the unconditional surrender of Japan at the end of the war, the missions were shut down.


title: Religion in China

text: Starting in the 1990s there has been a revival of Shin Buddhism among the Chinese, which has taken a formal nature with the foundation of the Hong Kong Fǎléi Niànfóhuì () in 2000, followed by the Fuzhou Fǎléi Niànfóhuì () founded in 2006 and the Shaanxi Fǎléi Niànfóhuì () founded in 2010. There are Shin Buddhist groups also in Henan, Zhejiang, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan and other provinces.


title: Religion in China

text: The propagation of Shin Buddhism in China has faced some critiques for cultural, historical and doctrinal reasons. Cultural critiques point to the fact that Shin Buddhist clerics may marry and eat meat; modern Chinese Shin Buddhist groups, however, tend to follow the norms of celibacy and vegetarianism of Chinese Buddhism. Historical critiques have to do with the links that Jodo Shinshu had with Japanese militarism and colonialism prior to 1945. Doctrinal critiques are based on the attribution of "unfiliality" to Shin Buddhism, because it was not influenced by Chinese folk religion as Chinese Buddhism was, and therefore does not have firmly established practices for ancestor worship.


title: Religion in China

text: Nichiren Buddhism, a denomination of the Buddhist religion that was founded in Japan in the 13th century, has been spreading in China in the 21st century in the form of the Soka Gakkai (in Chinese: "Chuàngjià xuéhuì"). Nichiren Buddhism was founded by the monk Nichiren (1222–1282), who elaborated his teachings upon the "Lotus Sutra" aspiring to reform Buddhism. Nichiren Buddhism promises both immediate relief from daily problems as well as this-worldly benefits. This society has engaged in missionary efforts in China partially aided by the good relationship it has interlaced with the Chinese government. Delegations from the Japanese Soka Gakkai and the Chinese government and intellectual class have made visits to each other, so that the society has been called an "intimate friend of the Chinese government". Soka Gakkai members in China are organised in the form of the house church, as they "meet quietly in small groups in the homes of other members", with little interference from the government.


title: Religion in China

text: Various Chinese non-Han minority populations practise unique indigenous religions. The government of China protects and valorises the indigenous religions of minority ethnicities as the foundations of their culture and identity.


title: Religion in China

text: Benzhuism ( "Běnzhǔjiào", "religion of the patrons") is the indigenous religion of the Bai people, an ethnic group of Yunnan. It consists in the worship of the "ngel zex", Bai word for "patrons" or "source lords", rendered as "benzhu" () in Chinese. They are local gods and deified ancestors of the Bai nation. Benzhuism is very similar to Han Chinese religion.


title: Religion in China

text: Bimoism ( "Bìmójiào") is the indigenous religion of the Yi people, the largest ethnic group in Yunnan after the Han Chinese. This faith is represented by three types of religious specialists: the "bimo" (, "ritual masters", "priests"), the "sunyi" (male shamans) and the "monyi" (female shamans).


title: Religion in China

text: What distinguishes the "bimo" and the shamans is the way through which they acquire their authority. While both are regarded as the "mediators between humanity and the divine", the shamans are initiated through a "spiritual inspiration" (which involves illness or vision) whereas the "bimo"—who are always males with few exceptions—are literates, who may read and write traditional Yi script, have a tradition of theological and ritual scriptures, and are initiated through a tough educational process.


title: Religion in China

text: Since the 1980s, Bimoism has undergone a comprehensive revitalisation, both on the popular level and on the scholarly level, with the "bimo" now celebrated as an "intellectual class" whose role is that of creators, preservers and transmitters of Yi high culture. Since the 1990s, Bimoism has undergone an institutionalisation, starting with the foundation of the Bimo Culture Research Center in Meigu County in 1996. The founding of the centre received substantial support from local authorities, especially those whose families were directly affiliated with one of the many "bimo" hereditary lineages. Since then, large temples and ceremonial complexes for Bimoist practices have been built.


title: Religion in China

text: "Bon" (Tibetan: བོན་; Chinese: "Běnjiào") is the post-Buddhist name of the pre-Buddhist folk religion of Tibet. Buddhism spread into Tibet starting in the 7th and 8th century, and the name "Bon" was adopted as the name of the indigenous religion in Buddhist historiography. Originally, "bon" was the title of the shamans of the Tibetan indigenous religion. This is in analogy with the names of the priests of the folk religions of other peoples related to the Tibetans, such as the "dong ba" of the Nakhi or the "bø" of Mongolians and other Siberian peoples. Bonpo ("believers of Bon") claim that the word "bon" means "truth" and "reality".


title: Religion in China

text: The spiritual source of Bon is the mythical figure of Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche. Since the late 10th century, the religion then designated as "Bon" started to organise itself adopting the style of Tibetan Buddhism, including a monastic structure and a Bon Canon ("Kangyur"), which made it a codified religion. The Chinese sage Confucius is worshipped in Bon as a holy king, master of magic and divination.


title: Religion in China

text: Dongbaism ( "Dōngbajiào", "religion of the eastern "Ba"") is the main religion of the Nakhi people. The "dongba" ("eastern "ba"") are masters of the culture, literature and the script of the Nakhi. They originated as masters of the Tibetan Bon religion ("Ba" in Nakhi language), many of whom, in times of persecution when Buddhism became the dominant religion in Tibet, were expelled and dispersed to the eastern marches settling among Nakhi and other eastern peoples.


title: Religion in China

text: Dongbaism historically formed as beliefs brought by Bon masters commingled with older indigenous Nakhi beliefs. Dongba followers believe in a celestial shaman called "Shi-lo-mi-wu", with little doubt the same as the Tibetan "Shenrab Miwo". They worship nature and generation, in the form of many heavenly gods and spirits, chthonic "Shu" (spirits of the earth represented in the form of chimera-dragon-serpent beings), and ancestors.


title: Religion in China

text: Manchu folk religion is the ethnic religion practised by most of the Manchu people, the major of the Tungusic peoples, in China. It may also be called "Manchu Shamanism" ( "Mǎnzú sàmǎnjiào") by virtue of the word "shaman" being originally from Tungusic "šamán" ("man of knowledge"), later applied by Western scholars to similar religious practices in other cultures.


title: Religion in China

text: It is a pantheistic system, believing in a universal God called "Apka Enduri" ("God of Heaven") that is the omnipotent and omnipresent source of all life and creation. Deities ("enduri") enliven every aspect of nature, and the worship of these gods is believed to bring favour, health and prosperity. Many of the deities are original Manchu kins' ancestors, and people with the same surname are viewed as being generated by the same god.


title: Religion in China

text: Most of the Miao people (or Hmong) in China have retained their traditional folk religion. It is pantheistic and deeply influenced by Chinese religion, sharing the concept of "yeeb ceeb" and "yaj ceeb" representing, respectively, the realm of the gods in potentiality and the manifested or actual world of living things as a complementary duality.


title: Religion in China

text: The Miao believe in a supreme universal God, "Saub", who may be defined a "deus otiosus" who created reality and left it to develop according to its ways, but nonetheless may be appealed in times of need. He entrusted a human, "Siv Yis", with healing powers so that he became the first shaman. After his death, Siv Yis ascended to heaven, but he left behind his ritual tools that became the equipment of the shaman class. They ("txiv neeb") regard Siv Yis as their archetype and identify as him when they are imbued by the gods.


title: Religion in China

text: Various gods ("dab" or "neeb", the latter defining those who work with shamans) enliven the world. Among them, the most revered are the water god Dragon King ("Zaj Laug"), the Thunder God ("Xob"), the gods of life and death ("Ntxwj Nyug" and "Nyuj Vaj Tuam Teem"), Lady Sun ("Nkauj Hnub") and Lord Moon ("Nraug Hli"), and various deified human ancestors.


title: Religion in China

text: Mongolian folk religion, that is Mongolian shamanism ( "Ménggǔzú sàmǎnjiào"), alternatively named Tengerism ( "Ténggélǐjiào"), is the native and major religion among the Mongols of China, mostly residing in the region of Inner Mongolia.


title: Religion in China

text: It is centred on the worship of the "tngri" (gods) and the highest "Tenger" (Heaven, God of Heaven, God) or "Qormusta Tengri". In Mongolian folk religion, Genghis Khan is considered one of the embodiments, if not the most important embodiment, of the Tenger. In worship, communities of lay believers are led by shamans (called "böge" if males, "iduγan" if females), who are intermediaries of the divine.


title: Religion in China

text: Since the 1980s there has been an unprecedented development of Mongolian folk religion in Inner Mongolia, including böge, the cult of Genghis Khan and the Heaven in special temples (many of which built in a style resembling yurts), and the cult of "aobao" as ancestral shrines. Han Chinese of Inner Mongolia have easily assimilated into the traditional Mongolian spiritual heritage of the region. The cult of Genghis is also shared by the Han, claiming his spirit as the founding principle of the Yuan dynasty.


title: Religion in China

text: The for worship of ancestral gods may be private shrines of an extended family or kin (people sharing the same surname), otherwise they are common to villages (dedicated to the god of a village), banners or leagues. Sacrifices to the are made offering slaughtered animals, joss sticks, and libations.


title: Religion in China

text: Qiang people are mostly followers of a native Qiang folk religion. It is pantheistic, involving the worship of a variety of gods of nature and of human affairs, including Qiang progenitors. White stones are worshipped as it is believed that they may be invested with the power of the gods through rituals. Qiang people believe in an overarching God, called "Mubyasei" ("God of Heaven"), which is related with the Chinese concept of "Tian" and clearly identified by the Qiang with the Taoist-originated Jade Deity.


title: Religion in China

text: Religious ceremonies and rituals are directed by priests called "duāngōng" in Chinese. They are shamans who acquire their position through years of training with a teacher. "Duāngōng" are the custodians of Qiang theology, history and mythology. They also administer the coming of age ceremony for 18 years-old boys, called the "sitting on top of the mountain", which involves the boy's entire family going to mountain tops, to sacrifice a sheep or cow and to plant three cypress trees.


title: Religion in China

text: Two of the most important religious holidays are the Qiang New Year, falling on the 24th day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar (though now it is fixed on 1 October), and the Mountain Sacrifice Festival, held between the second and the sixth month of the lunar calendar. The former festival is to worship the God of Heaven, while the latter is dedicated to the god of mountains.


title: Religion in China

text: The Yao people, who reside in Guangxi and Hunan and surrounding provinces, follow a folk religion that is deeply integrated with Taoism since the 13th century, so much that it is frequently defined as "Yao Taoism". Yao folk religion was described by a Chinese scholar of the half of the 20th century as an example of deep "Taoisation" ( "Dàojiàohuà"). In the 1980s it was found that the Yao clearly identified themselves with Chinese-language Taoist theological literature, seen as a prestigious statute of culture ( "wénhuà").


title: Religion in China

text: The reason of such strong identification of Yao religion with Taoism is that in Yao society every male adult is initiated as a Taoist. Yao Taoism is therefore a communal religion, not identifying just a class of priests but the entire body of the society; this contrasts with Chinese Taoism, which mostly developed as a collection of sacerdotal orders. The shared sense of Yao identity is further based on tracing back Yao origins to a mythical ancestor, Panhu.


title: Religion in China

text: Zhuang folk religion, sometimes called Moism ( "Mójiào") or Shigongism ( "Shīgōngjiào", "religion of the [Zhuang] ancestral father"), after two of its forms, is practised by most of the Zhuang people, the largest ethnic minority of China, who inhabit the province of Guangxi. It is a polytheistic-monistic and shamanic religion centered on the creator god usually expressed as "Buluotuo", the mythical primordial ancestor of the Zhuang. Its beliefs are codified into a mythology and a sacred scripture, the "Buluotuo Epic". A very similar religion, also called by the same name, is that of the Buyei people, who are kindred to the Zhuang.


title: Religion in China

text: The Zhuang religion is intertwined with Taoism. Indeed, Chinese scholars divide the Zhuang religion into several categories according to the type of ritual specialists who conduct the rites; these categories include Shigongism, Moism, Daogongism ( "Dàogōngjiào") and shamanism ( "wūjiào").


title: Religion in China

text: "Shigongism" refers to the dimension led by the "shīgōng" () ritual specialists, a term which may be translated variously as "ancestral father" or "teaching master", and which refers both to the principle of the universe (God) and to the men who are able to represent it. "Shīgōng" specialists practise masked dancing and worship the Three Primordials, the generals Tang, Ge and Zhou. "Moism" refers to the dimension led by "mógōng" (), who are vernacular ritual specialists able to transcribe and read texts written in Zhuang characters and lead the worship of "Buluotuo" and of the goddess "Muliujia". "Daogongism" is Zhuang Taoism, that is the indigenous religion directed by Zhuang Taoists, known as "dàogōng" ( "lords of the Tao") in the Zhuang language, according to Taoist doctrines and rites. Zhuang shamanism entails the practices of mediums who provide direct communication between the material and the spiritual worlds; these shamans are known as if female and if male.


title: Religion in China

text: Since the 1980s and the 1990s there has been a revival of Zhuang folk religion, which has followed two directions. The first is a grassroots revival of cults dedicated to local deities and ancestors, led by shamans; the second way is a promotion of the religion on the institutional level, through a standardisation of Moism elaborated by Zhuang government officials and intellectuals.


title: Religion in China

text: Christianity ( "Jīdūjiào", "Religion of Christ") in China comprises Roman Catholicism ( "Tiānzhǔjiào", "Religion of the Lord of Heaven"), Protestantism ( "Jīdūjiào Xīnjiào", "New-Christianity"), and a small number of Orthodox Christians ( "Zhèngjiào"). Mormonism ( "Móménjiào") also has a tiny presence. The Orthodox Church, which has believers among the Russian minority and some Chinese in the far northeast and far northwest, is officially recognised in Heilongjiang. The category of "Protestantism" in China also comprehends a variety of heterodox sects of Christian inspiration, including Zhushenism ( "Zhǔshénjiào", "Church of Lord God"), Linglingism ( "Línglíngjiào", "Numinous Church"), Fuhuodao, the Church of the Disciples ( "Méntúhuì") and Eastern Lightning or the Church of Almighty God ( "Quánnéngshénjiào").


title: Religion in China

text: Christianity existed in China as early as the 7th century, living multiple cycles of significant presence for centuries, then disappearing for other centuries, and then being re-introduced by foreign missionaries. The arrival of the Persian missionary Alopen in 635, during the early period of the Tang dynasty, is considered by some to be the first entry of Christianity in China. What Westerners referred to as Nestorianism flourished for centuries, until Emperor Wuzong of the Tang in 845 ordained that all foreign religions (Buddhism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism) had to be eradicated from the Chinese nation. Christianity was reintroduced in China in the 13th century, in the form of Nestorianism, during the Mongol Yuan dynasty, which also established relations with the papacy, especially through Franciscan missionaries in 1294. When the native Han Chinese Ming dynasty overthrew the Yuan dynasty in the 14th century, Christianity was again expelled from China as a foreign influence.


title: Religion in China

text: At the end of the Ming dynasty in the 16th century, Jesuits arrived in Beijing via Guangzhou. The most famous amongst them was Matteo Ricci, an Italian mathematician who came to China in 1588 and lived in Beijing. Ricci was welcomed at the imperial court and introduced Western learning into China. The Jesuits followed a policy of adaptation of Catholicism to traditional Chinese religious practices, especially ancestor worship. However, such practices were eventually condemned as polytheistic idolatry by the popes Clement XI, Clement XII and Benedict XIV. Roman Catholic missions struggled in obscurity for decades afterwards.


title: Religion in China

text: Christianity began to take root in a significant way in the late imperial period, during the Qing dynasty, and although it has remained a minority religion in China, it influenced late imperial history. Waves of missionaries came to China in the Qing period as a result of contact with foreign powers. Russian Orthodoxy was introduced in 1715, and Protestant missions began entering China in 1807. The pace of missionary activity increased considerably after the First Opium War in 1842. Christian missionaries and their schools, under the protection of the Western powers, went on to play a major role in the Westernisation of China in the 19th and 20th centuries.


title: Religion in China

text: The Taiping Rebellion (1850–1871) was influenced to some degree by Christian teachings, and the Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) was in part a reaction against Christianity in China. Christians in China established the first clinics and hospitals practising modern medicine, and provided the first modern training for nurses. Both Roman Catholics and Protestants founded numerous educational institutions in China from the primary to the university level. Some of the most prominent Chinese universities began as religious institutions. Missionaries worked to abolish practices such as foot binding, and the unjust treatment of maidservants, as well as launching charitable work and distributing food to the poor. They also opposed the opium trade and brought treatment to many who were addicted. Some of the early leaders of the early republic (1912–49), such as Sun Yat-sen, were converts to Christianity and were influenced by its teachings. By 1921, Harbin, Manchuria's largest city, had a Russian population of around 100,000, constituting a large part of Christianity in the city.


title: Religion in China

text: Christianity, especially in its Protestant form, gained momentum in China between the 1980s and the 1990s, but, in the following years, folk religion recovered more rapidly and in greater numbers than Christianity (or Buddhism). The scholar Richard Madsen noted that "the Christian God then becomes one in a pantheon of local gods among whom the rural population divides its loyalties". Similarly, Gai Ronghua and Gao Junhui noted that "Christianity in China is no longer monotheism" and tends to blend with Chinese folk religion, as many Chinese Christians take part in regional activities for the worship of gods and ancestors.


title: Religion in China

text: Protestants in the early 21st century, including both official and unofficial churches, had between 25 and 35 million adherents. Catholics were not more than 10 million. In the 2010s the scholarly estimate was of approximately 30 million Christians, of whom fewer than 4 million were Catholics. In the same years, about 40 million Chinese said they believed in Jesus Christ or had attended Christian meetings, but did not identify themselves with the Christian religion. Demographic analyses usually find an average 2–3% of the population of China declaring a Christian affiliation. According the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, before 1949, there were approximately were 4 million Christians (3 million Catholics and 1 million Protestants), and by 2010, China had roughly 67 million Christians, representing about 5% of the country's total population. Christians were unevenly distributed geographically, the only provinces in which they constituted a population significantly larger than 1 million persons being Henan, Anhui and Zhejiang. Protestants were characterised by a prevalence of people living in the countryside, women, illiterates and semi-literates, and elderly people. While according to the Yu Tao survey the Catholic population were characterised by a prevalence of men, wealthier, better educated, and young people. A 2017 study on the Christian community of Wuhan found the same socio-economic characteristics, with the addition that Christians were more likely than the general population to suffer from physical and mental illness. In 2018, the government published a report saying that there are over 44 million Christians (38M Protestants; 6M Catholics) in China.


title: Religion in China

text: A significant number of members of churches unregistered with the government, and of their pastors, belong to the Koreans of China. Christianity has a strong presence in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, in Jilin. Yanbian Koreans' Christianity has a patriarchal character; Korean churches are usually led by men, in contrast to Chinese churches that most often have female leadership. For instance, of the twenty-eight registered churches of Yanji, only three of which are Chinese congregations, all the Korean churches have a male pastor while all the Chinese churches have a female pastor. Also, Korean church buildings are stylistically very similar to South Korean churches, with big spires surmounted by red crosses. Yanbian Korean churches have been a matter of controversy for the Chinese government because of their links to South Korean churches.


title: Religion in China

text: According to a report by the Singapore Management University, from the 1980s onwards, more people in China and other Asian countries have converted to Christianity, and these new converts are mostly “upwardly mobile, urban, middle-class Chinese”. According to the "Council on Foreign Relations" the "number of Chinese Protestants has grown by an average of 10 percent annually since 1979". According to "The Economist", "Protestant Christianity is booming in China". If the current trend continues, China will have the largest Christian population in the world as some have estimated.


title: Religion in China

text: In recent decades the CCP has remained intolerant of Christian churches outside party control, looking with distrust on organisations with international ties. The government and Chinese intellectuals tend to associate Christianity with subversive Western values, and many churches have been closed or destroyed. In addition, Western and Korean missionaries are being expelled. Since the 2010s policies against Christianity have been extended also to Hong Kong.


title: Religion in China

text: In September 2018, the Holy See and the Chinese government signed the 2018 Holy See-China Agreement, a historic agreement concerning the appointment of bishops in China. The Vatican spokesman Greg Burke described the agreement as "not political but pastoral, allowing the faithful to have bishops who are in communion with Rome but at the same time recognized by Chinese authorities".


title: Religion in China

text: The introduction of Islam ( "Yīsīlánjiào" or "Huíjiào") in China is traditionally dated back to a diplomatic mission in 651, eighteen years after Muhammad's death, led by Sa'd ibn Abi Waqqas. Emperor Gaozong is said to have shown esteem for Islam and to have founded the Huaisheng Mosque (Memorial Mosque) at Guangzhou, in memory of the Prophet himself.


title: Religion in China

text: Muslims, mainly Arabs, travelled to China to trade. In the year 760, the Yangzhou massacre killed large numbers of these traders, and a century later, in the years 878–879, Chinese rebels fatally targeted the Arab community in the Guangzhou massacre. Yet, Muslims virtually came to dominate the import and export industry by the Song dynasty (960–1279). The office of Director General of Shipping was consistently held by a Muslim. Immigration increased during the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), when hundreds of thousands of Muslims were relocated throughout China for their administrative skills. A Muslim, Yeheidie'erding, led the construction project of the Yuan capital of Khanbaliq, in present-day Beijing.


title: Religion in China

text: During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Muslims continued to have an influence among the high classes. Hongwu Emperor's most trusted generals were Muslim, including Lan Yu, who led a decisive victory over the Mongols, effectively ending the Mongol dream to re-conquer China. The admiral Zheng He led seven expeditions to the Indian Ocean. The Hongwu Emperor even composed "The Hundred-word Eulogy" in praise of Muhammad. Muslims who were descended from earlier immigrants began to assimilate by speaking Chinese dialects and by adopting Chinese names and culture, mixing with the Han Chinese. They developed their own cuisine, architecture, martial arts' styles and calligraphy ("sini"). This era, sometimes considered a Golden Age of Islam in China, also saw Nanjing become an important center of Islamic study.


title: Religion in China

text: The rise of the Qing dynasty saw numerous Islamic rebellions, including the Panthay Rebellion which occurred in Yunnan from 1855 to 1873, and the Dungan Revolt, which occurred mostly in Xinjiang, Shaanxi and Gansu from 1862 to 1877. The Manchu government ordered the execution of all rebels, killing a million Muslims after the Panthay Rebellion, and several million after the Dungan Revolt. However, many Muslims like Ma Zhan'ao, Ma Anliang, Dong Fuxiang, Ma Qianling and Ma Julung, defected to the Qing dynasty side and helped the Qing general Zuo Zongtang to exterminate the rebels. These Muslim generals belonged to the "Khufiyya" sect, while rebels belonged to the "Jahariyya" sect. In 1895, another Dungan Revolt (1895–96) broke out, and loyalist Muslims like Dong Fuxiang, Ma Anliang, Ma Guoliang, Ma Fulu, and Ma Fuxiang massacred the rebel Muslims led by Ma Dahan, Ma Yonglin, and Ma Wanfu. A few years later, an Islamic army called the Kansu Braves, led by the general Dong Fuxiang, fought for the Qing dynasty against the foreigners during the Boxer Rebellion.


title: Religion in China

text: After the fall of the Qing, Sun Yat-sen proclaimed that the country belonged equally to the Han, Manchu, Mongol, Tibetan and Hui peoples. In the 1920s, the provinces of Qinghai, Gansu and Ningxia came under the control of Muslim warlords known as the Ma clique, who served as generals in the National Revolutionary Army. During the Cultural Revolution, mosques were often defaced, closed or demolished, and copies of the Quran were destroyed by the Red Guards.


title: Religion in China

text: After the 1980s Islam experienced a renewal in China, with an upsurge in Islamic expression and the establishment Islamic associations aimed to coordinate inter-ethnic activities among Muslims. Muslims are found in every province of China, but they constitute a majority only in Xinjiang, and a large amount of the population in Ningxia and Qinghai. Of China's recognised ethnic minorities, ten groups are traditionally Islamic. Accurate statistics on China's Muslim population are hard to find; various surveys found that they constitute 1–2% of the population of China, or between 10 and 20 million people. In the 2010s they were served by 35,000 to 45,000 mosques, 40,000 to 50,000 imams ("ahong"), and 10 Quranic institutions.


title: Religion in China

text: Judaism ( "Yóutàijiào") was introduced during the Tang dynasty (618–907) or earlier, by small groups of Jews settled in China. The most prominent early community were the so-called Kaifeng Jews, in Kaifeng, Henan province. In the 20th century many Jews arrived in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Harbin, during a period of great economic development of these cities. Many of them sought refuge from anti-Semitic pogroms in the Russian Empire (early 1900s), the communist revolution and civil war in Russia (1917–1918), and anti-Semitic Nazi policy in central Europe, chiefly in Germany and Austria (1937–1940). The last wave of Jewish refugees came from Poland and other eastern European countries in the early 1940s.


title: Religion in China

text: Shanghai was particularly notable for its numerous Jewish refugees, who gathered in the so-called Shanghai Ghetto. Most of them left China after the war, the rest relocating prior to, or immediately after, the establishment of the People's Republic. Today, the Kaifeng Jewish community is functionally extinct. Many descendants of the Kaifeng community still live among the Chinese population, mostly unaware of their Jewish ancestry, while some have moved to Israel. Meanwhile, remnants of the later arrivals maintain communities in Shanghai and Hong Kong. In recent years a community has also developed in Beijing through the work of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.


title: Religion in China

text: Since the late 20th century, along with the study of religion in general, the study of Judaism and Jews in China as an academic subject has blossomed with the establishment of institutions such as Diane and Guilford Glazer Institute of Jewish Studies and the China Judaic Studies Association.


title: Religion in China

text: The Baháʼí Faith ( "Bāhāyī xìnyǎng", "Bāhāyījiào", or, in old translations, "Dàtóngjiào") has had a presence in China since the 19th century.


title: Religion in China

text: Hinduism ( "Yìndùjiào") entered China around the same time as Buddhism, generally imported by Indian merchants, from different routes. One of them was the "Silk Route by Sea" that started from the Coromandel Coast in southeast India and reached Southeast Asia and then southeastern Chinese cities; another route was that from the ancient kingdom of Kamrupa, through upper Burma, reaching Yunnan; a third route is the well-known Silk Route reaching northwest China, which was the main route through which Buddhism spread into China. Archeological remains of Hindu temples and typical Hindu icons have been found in coastal cities of China and in Dali, Yunnan. It is recorded that in 758 there were three Hindu temples in Guangzhou, with resident Hindus, and Hindu temples in Quanzhou. Remains of Hindu temples have also been discovered in Xinjiang, and they are of an earlier date than those in southeast China.


title: Religion in China

text: Hindu texts were translated into Chinese, including a large number of Indian Tantric texts and the Vedas, which are known in Chinese as the "Minglun" or "Zhilun", or through phonetic transliteration as the "Weituo", "Feituo" or "Pituo". Various Chinese Buddhist monks dedicated themselves to the study of Hindu scriptures, thought and practice. In the Sui (581–618) and later Tang dynasty (618–907), Hindu texts translated into Chinese included the "Śulvasūtra", the "Śulvaśāstra" and the "Prescriptions of Brahmin Rishis". The Tibetans contributed with the translation into Chinese of the "Pāṇinisūtra" and the "Rāmāyaṇa".


title: Religion in China

text: In the 7th century there was an intellectual exchange between Taoists and Shaktas in India, with the translation of the "Daodejing" in Sanskrit. Some breathing techniques practised in Shaktism are known as "Cīnācāra" ("Chinese Practice"), and the Shakta tantras that discuss them trace their origin to Taoism. Two of these tantras report that the Shakta master Vaśiṣṭha paid visit to China specifically with the purpose of learning Cīnācāra from the Taoists. According to the Tamil text "Śaivāgama" of Pashupata Shaivism, two of the eighteen "siddha" of southern Shaktism, Bogar and Pulipani, were ethnically Chinese. Shaktism itself was practised in China in the Tang period.


title: Religion in China

text: The effect of Hinduism in China is also evident in various gods, originally of Hindu origin, which have been absorbed into the Chinese folk religion. A glaring example is the god Hanuman, who gave rise to the Chinese god "Hóuwáng" ( "Monkey King"), known as Sun Wukong in the "Journey to the West". In the last decades there has been a growth of modern, transnational forms of Hinduism in China: Yogic ("Yoga" is rendered as "Yújiā", literally the "Jade Maiden"), Tantric, and Krishnaite groups (the "Bhagavad Gita" has been recently translated and published in China) have appeared in many urban centres including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Wuhan and Harbin.


title: Religion in China

text: Manichaeism ( Móníjiào or Míngjiào, "bright transmission") was introduced in China together with Christianity in the 7th century, by land from Central Asia and by sea through south-eastern ports. Based on Gnostic teachings and able to adapt to different cultural contexts, the Manichaean religion spread rapidly both westward to the Roman Empire and eastward to China. Historical sources speak of the religion being introduced in China in 694, though this may have happened much earlier. Manichaeans in China at the time held that their religion was first brought to China by Mōzak under Emperor Gaozong of Tang (650–83). Later, the Manichaean bishop Mihr-Ohrmazd, who was Mōzak's pupil, also came to China, where he was granted an audience by empress Wu Zetian (684–704), and according to later Buddhist sources he presented at the throne the "Erzongjing" ("Text of the Two Principles") that became the most popular Manichaean scripture in China.


title: Religion in China

text: Manichaeism had a bad reputation among Tang dynasty authorities, who regarded it as an erroneous form of Buddhism. However, as a religion of the Western peoples (Bactrians, Sogdians) it was not outlawed, provided that it remained confined to them not spreading among Chinese. In 731 a Manichaean priest was asked by the current Chinese emperor to make a summary of Manichaean religious doctrines, so that he wrote the "Compendium of the Teachings of Mani, the Awakened One of Light", rediscovered at Dunhuang by Aurel Stein (1862–1943); in this text Mani is interpreted as an incarnation of Laozi. As time went on, Manichaeism conflicted with Buddhism but appears to have had good relations with the Taoists; an 8th-century version of the "Huahujing", a Taoist work polemical towards Buddhism, holds the same view of the Manichaean Compendium, presenting Mani as Laozi's reincarnation among the Western barbarians.


title: Religion in China

text: In the early 8th century, Manichaeism became the official religion of the Uyghur Khaganate. As Uyghurs were traditional allies of the Chinese, also supporting the Tang during the An Lushan Rebellion at the half of the century, the Tangs' attitude towards the religion relaxed and under the Uyghur Khaganate's patronage Manichaean churches prospered in Nanjing, Yangzhou, Jingzhou, Shaoxing and other places. When the Uyghur Khaganate was defeated by the Kyrgyz in 840, Manichaeism's fortune vanished as anti-foreign sentiment arose among the Chinese. Manichaean properties were confiscated, the temples were destroyed, the scriptures were burnt and the clergy was laicised, or killed, as was the case of seventy nuns who were executed at the Tang capital Chang'an. In the same years all foreign religions were suppressed under Emperor Wuzong of Tang (840–846).


title: Religion in China

text: The religion never recovered from the persecutions, but it has persisted as a distinct syncretic, and underground movement at particularly in southeastern China. Manichaean sects historically have been known for resurfacing from their hiding from time to time, supporting peasant rebellions. The Song dynasty (960–1279) continued to suppress Manichaeism as a subversive cult. In 1120, a rebellion led by Fang La was believed to have been caused by Manichaeans, and widespread crackdown of unauthorised religious assemblies took place. During the subsequent Mongol Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), foreign religions were generally granted freedom, but the following Ming dynasty (1368–1644) renewed discriminations against them. Despite this, small Manichaean communities are still active in modern China. Manichaeism is thought to have exerted a strong influence on some of the currents of popular sects, such as that which gave rise to Xiantiandao.


title: Religion in China

text: Zoroastrianism ( "Suǒluōyàsīdéjiào" or "Xiānjiào", "Heaven worship teaching"; also named "Bōsījiào", "Persian teaching"; also "Bàihuǒjiào", "fire-worshippers' transmission"; also "Báitóujiào", "old age teaching") was first introduced in northern China in the 4th century, or even earlier, by the Sogdians, and it developed through three stages. Some scholars provide evidences that would attest the existence of Zoroastrianism, or broader Iranian religion, in China, as early as the 2nd and 1st century BCE. Worship of Mithra was indeed performed at the court of Emperor Wu of Han (157-87 BCE).


title: Religion in China

text: The first phase of Zoroastrianism in China started in the Wei and Jin dynasties of the Northern and Southern dynasties' period (220–589), when Sogdian Zoroastrians advanced into China. They did not proselytise among Chinese, and from this period there are only two known fragments of Zoroastrian literature, both in Sogdian language. One of them is a translation of the "Ashem Vohu" recovered by Aurel Stein in Dunhuang and now preserved at the British Museum. The Tang dynasty (618–907) prohibited Chinese people to profess Zoroastrianism, so it remained primarily a religion of foreign residents. Before the An Lushan Rebellion (756–763), Sogdians and Chinese lived as segregated ethnic groups; however, after the rebellion intermarriage became common and the Sogdians were gradually assimilated by the Chinese.


title: Religion in China

text: In addition to the Sogdian Zoroastrians, after the fall of the Sasanid dynasty (651), through the 7th and 8th centuries Iranian Zoroastrians, including aristocrats and "magi", migrated to northern China. Fleeing the Islamisation of Iran, they settled in the cities of Chang'an, Luoyang, Kaifeng, Yangzhou, Taiyuan and elsewhere. In the Tang period it is attested that there were at least twenty-nine Zoroastrian fire temples in northern urban centres. During the great purge of foreign religions under Emperor Wuzong of Tang also Zoroastrianism was target of suppression.


title: Religion in China

text: The second phase of Zoroastrianism in China was in the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period (907–960), and saw the development of an indigenous Chinese Zoroastrianism that lasted until modern times. During this period, the gods of Sogdian Zoroastrianism were assimilated into the Chinese folk religion; Zoroastrian currents of the Chinese folk religion were increasingly practised by the Chinese and survived until the 1940s. Chinese Zoroastrian temples were witnessed to be active in Hanyang, Hubei until those years.


title: Religion in China

text: The third phase started in the 18th century when Parsi merchants sailed from Mumbai to Macau, Hong Kong and Guangzhou. Parsi cemeteries and fire temples were built in these coastal cities, in east China. The Parsis were expelled when the CCP rose to power in 1949. A Parsi fire temple was built in Shanghai in 1866, and was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Starting in the 1980s there has been a new wave of Parsis settling in China.


title: Religion in China

text: In Classical Chinese, Zoroastrianism was first referred to as "Hútiān", which in the Wei-Jin period became the appellation of all northern nomads. In the early Tang, a new character was invented specifically for Zoroastrianism, "xiān", meaning the "worship of Heaven". Curiously, in the Far East the Zoroastrians were regarded as "Heaven worshippers" rather than "fire worshippers" (in Japanese the name of the religion is "Kenkyō", the same as in Chinese). At the time it was rare for the Chinese to create a character for a foreign religion, and this is an evidence of the effect of Zoroastrians in Tang Chinese society.


title: Religion in China

text: Between 1931 and 1945, with the establishment of the Japanese-controlled "Manchukuo" ("Manchu Country") in northeast China (Manchuria), many shrines of State Shinto (, Chinese: "shénshè", Japanese: "jinja") were established in the area.


title: Religion in China

text: They were part of the project of cultural assimilation of Manchuria into Japan, or Japanisation, the same policy that was being applied to Taiwan. With the end of the Second World War and of the Manchu Country (Manchukuo) in 1945, and the return of Manchuria to China under the Kuomintang, Shinto was abolished and the shrines were destroyed.


title: Religion in China

text: During Japanese rule also many Japanese new religions, or independent Shinto sects, proselytised in Manchuria establishing hundreds of congregations. Most of the missions belonged to the Omoto teaching, the Tenri teaching and the Konko teaching of Shinto.


title: Religion in China

text: The government of the People's Republic of China officially espouses state atheism, and has conducted antireligious campaigns to this end. Many churches, temples and mosques were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, which also criminalized the possession of religious texts. Monks were also beaten or killed. As such, China has the most atheists in the world.


title: Religion in China

text: China has a history of schools of thought not relying upon conceptions of an absolute, or putting absolutes into question. Mark Juergensmeyer observes that Confucianism itself is primarily pragmatic and humanist, in it the "thisworldliness" being the priority. Given the differences between Western and Chinese concepts of "religion", Hu Shih stated in the 1920s what has been translated in Western terminology as "China is a country without religion and the Chinese are a people who are not bound by religious superstitions".


title: Religion in China

text: The "Classic of Poetry" contains several catechistic poems in the "Decade of Dang" questioning the authority or existence of the God of Heaven. Later philosophers such as Xun Zi, Fan Zhen, Han Fei, Zhang Zai, and Wang Fuzhi also criticised religious practices prevalent during their times. During the efflorescence of Buddhism in the Southern and Northern dynasties, Fan Zhen wrote "On the Extinction of the Soul" ( "Shénmièlùn") to criticise ideas of body-soul dualism, "samsara" and "karma". He wrote that the soul is merely an effect or function of the body, and that there is no soul without the body—after the death and destruction of the body. He considered that cause-and-effect relationships claimed to be evidence of "karma" were merely the result of coincidence and bias. For this, he was exiled by Emperor Wu of Liang (502–549).


title: Chloé Zhao

text: Chloé Zhao, born Zhao Ting (, born 31 March 1982), is a Chinese filmmaker, known primarily for her work on independent films. Zhao's debut feature film, "Songs My Brothers Taught Me" (2015), premiered at Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim and earned a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature. Her second feature film, "The Rider" (2017), was critically acclaimed and received nominations for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Film and Best Director.


title: Chloé Zhao

text: Zhao garnered international recognition with the western film "Nomadland" (2020), which won numerous accolades, including the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, the People's Choice Award at the Toronto International Film Festival. Earning four Academy Award nominations for the film, Zhao won both Best Picture and Best Director, becoming the second woman in history to win the latter after Kathryn Bigelow in 2010, and the first woman of color to win the category. She also won awards for directing at the Directors Guild of America Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and British Academy Film Awards, becoming the second female winner of each of them. The film has not received a theatrical release in China, with speculation that it was due to her past comments on the nation, and news of her Best Director win at the Academy Awards was also censored.


title: Chloé Zhao

text: Zhao's latest film is the Marvel Cinematic Universe superhero film "Eternals", which she co-wrote and directed, and which was released on 5 November 2021.


title: Chloé Zhao

text: Zhao Ting () was born on 31 March 1982 in Beijing. Her father Zhao Yuji () was an executive at Shougang Group, one of the country's largest state-owned steel companies. After amassing significant personal wealth, he later moved on to real-estate development and equity investment. Yuji was tied to a number of offshore companies during the Panama Papers leaks. Zhao's mother was a hospital worker who was in a People's Liberation Army performance troupe.


title: Chloé Zhao

text: In an interview with "Vogue", Zhao described herself as "a rebellious teen, lazy at school" who drew manga-influenced comics and wrote fan fiction. She loved films growing up, especially "Happy Together" by Wong Kar-wai. From an early age, Zhao was drawn to influences from Western pop culture. After her parents separated, her father married comic actress Song Dandan, whom Zhao had grown up watching on television.


title: Chloé Zhao

text: Although Zhao was still learning English at the time, her parents sent her to Brighton College, a private boarding school in the United Kingdom at the age of 15. She later moved to Los Angeles by herself, living in a Koreatown apartment in 2000, and attended Los Angeles High School. She next attended Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, where she majored in politics and minored in film studies, graduating in 2005. Bartending and working odd jobs after graduating helped her realize that she enjoyed meeting people and hearing about their lives and histories, giving her the push to attend film school. A "Vulture" article reported that "Four years was enough to turn her off of politics...she found herself drawn more to people than to policy". Following up on her undergraduate film minor, she next joined the Kanbar Institute of Film and Television Graduate Film Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. While attending Tisch, Zhao studied under director Spike Lee, who has directed popular films such as "Malcolm X" (1992) and "Old Boy" (2013). She told "USA Today" that she appreciated Lee not sugarcoating anything, saying that "he will just tell you as it is", something that she claims she needed. After enrolling in the Graduate Studies film program at NYU in 2010 she made her first short film "Daughters".


title: Chloé Zhao

text: Chloé Zhao's first work is her 2009 short film "The Atlas Mountains", the story about Helen Thomas who develops a brief yet passionate relationship with an immigrant worker who comes to fix her computer. She also released a second short film titled "Daughters," a film about a 14-year-old girl Maple, living in rural China, who is forced into an arranged marriage and takes a dangerous path trying to break free. This short won First Place Student Live Action Short at the 2010 Palm Springs International Short Fest and Special Jury Prize at the 2010 Cinequest Film Festival.


title: Chloé Zhao

text: In 2015, Zhao directed her first feature, "Songs My Brothers Taught Me". Shot on location at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, the film depicts the relationship between a Lakota Sioux brother and his younger sister. An already existing reservation, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation has approximately 2.1 million acres, around 46,855 members, and occupies the Oglala Lakota, Jackson, and Bennet counties. In Zhao's film, the brother Johnny plans to leave home and move to Los Angeles with his girlfriend when he graduates high school, but struggles with the thought of leaving his sister Jashaun at home with their troubled mother who is grieving the loss of their father. Focusing on the real lives and struggles of the surrounding community, the film showcases the realness of people and problems they are faced with. In a "Filmmaker" article, Zhao stated that her rebellious years in her childhood is what pushed her to leave China and study abroad, helping her connect to the plot of the film which focuses on a character struggling in this environment. Half improvised, around 100 hours of footage was collected as Zhao worked with the real residents of the reservation to draw inspiration from their lives and personalities in order to help shape her story. She was able to utilize the natural landscape around her in this film in order to create a place of revelation, where people can be closest to God. Using wide and long shots, she created a documentary-like film that feels authentic, the desolate beauty of the Great Plains creating a story that depicts both freedom and hopelessness. It premiered in 2015 as part of the U.S. Dramatic Competition at Sundance Film Festival. It later played at Cannes Film Festival as part of the Director's Fortnight selection and was nominated for Best First Feature at the 31st Independent Spirit Awards.


title: Chloé Zhao

text: In 2017, Zhao directed "The Rider", a contemporary western drama, which follows a young cowboy's journey to self-discovery after a near-fatal accident ends his professional riding career. The film was executive produced by her father, Yuji Zhao. As with her first feature, Zhao engaged a cast of non-actors who lived at the filming location, in this case on a ranch. Her inspiration came from Brady Jandreau—a cowboy she had met and befriended on the reservation where she shot her first film—who suffered a severe head injury when thrown from his horse during a rodeo competition. Jandreau would star in the film, playing a fictionalized version of himself as Brady Blackburn. According to an "Indiewire" article, this film discovers a new side of the Western theme, revolutionary because a Chinese immigrant changing the nation's "oldest genre." The article stated that the film became "the type of film it is because of a man and a woman, because the two of us wanted to work together and understand where we were coming from."


title: Chloé Zhao

text: The film premiered at Cannes Film Festival as part of the Directors' Fortnight selection and won the Art Cinema Award. It earned her nominations for Best Feature and Best Director at the 33rd Independent Spirit Awards. At the same ceremony, Zhao became the inaugural winner of the Bonnie Award, named after Bonnie Tiburzi, which recognizes a mid-career female director. The film was released on April 13, 2018, by Sony Pictures Classics and was critically acclaimed. Peter Keough of "The Boston Globe" wrote: "[The film] achieves what cinema is capable of at its best: It reproduces a world with such acuteness, fidelity, and empathy that it transcends the mundane and touches on the universal."


title: Chloé Zhao

text: In 2018, Zhao directed her third feature film, "Nomadland", starring Frances McDormand. The adaptation from Jessica Bruder's "Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century" was shot over four months traveling the American West in an RV with many actual nomadic workers. Bruder's book revolved around characters that can be found in the film, such as Linda May, a 64-year-old living in her van and scrounging for jobs in order to buy land for a permanent home. Other characters, such as Bob Wells, a nomad vlogger of the CheapRVliving YouTube channel and website and in charge of the annual nomad meet-up featured in the film, are real people that Bruder encountered when writing her book and Zhao included in her movie. The film tells the story of a widow who lost everything in The Great Recession and decides to travel in her van across the American Midwest, beginning a journey of self-discovery. Star Frances McDormand and Zhao bonded quickly and inspired each other, and McDormand became a huge element of the filmmaking process and its success. They met a day before the 2018 Independent Spirit Awards, where McDormand was nominated for Best Actress and Zhao received a $50,000 grant for women directors. During the event, they hinted at their future project together. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it received critical acclaim and won the Golden Lion award, and subsequently played at the 2020 Toronto International Film Festival, where it won the People's Choice Award. The film was released on February 19, 2021, by Searchlight Pictures. Zhao won the Golden Globe Award for Best Director for "Nomadland", making her the first woman of Asian descent honored, and only the second woman to win a Golden Globe for directing since Barbra Streisand in 1984. In April 2021, Zhao won the Academy Award for Best Director, becoming the second woman to do so (Kathryn Bigelow being the first).


title: Chloé Zhao

text: In September 2018, Marvel Studios hired her to direct "Eternals", based on the comic book characters of the same name. The film follows the events of the 2019 Marvel movie "Avengers: Endgame," featuring a new team of superheroes that must reunite in order to fight an ancient enemy of the human race, the Deviants. Zhao was heavily influenced by Ridley Scott's "Prometheus" (2012) and Nick Cassavetes' "The Notebook" (2004) in crafting the MCU film. It was released on November 5, 2021. Zhao is both the director and one of the four writers of the film, the others being Patrick Burleigh, Ryan Firpo, and Kaz Firpo. "Eternals" received mixed reviews. "The New Yorker" stated that Zhao's style of directing dialogue scenes "reveals the absurdity of the script," saying "it might as well have been done via green screen, for the little tangibility and texture that it offers the characters and viewers alike." The article also claimed that the film has reportedly been banned in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait due to the relationship between two male characters, Phastos and Ben. In spite of negative reviews, it still made $161.7 million during its opening weekend and became No. 1 at the box office.


title: Chloé Zhao

text: On February 15, 2021, "Variety" reported that with "34 awards season trophies for directing, 13 for screenplay and nine for editing, Chloe Zhao has surpassed Alexander Payne ("Sideways") as the most awarded person in a single awards season in the modern era." In 2021, she appeared on the "Time" 100, "Time"s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world.


title: Chloé Zhao

text: In April 2018, it was announced that Amazon Studios greenlit Zhao's untitled Bass Reeves biopic, a historical Western about the first black U.S. Deputy Marshal. Zhao is set to direct the film and write the screenplay. In February 2021, "Variety" confirmed that Zhao is tackling the classic Universal monster "Dracula", as the writer, producer and director of a new take on the character in the vein of a futuristic sci-fi western. In August 2022, actor Patton Oswalt revealed that a sequel to "Eternals" was in development with Zhao returning to direct. However, later actor Kumail Nanjiani stated that he had not heard anything about a sequel and believed that Oswalt was wrong.


title: Chloé Zhao

text: Throughout her filmography, Zhao carries relatively the same styles and techniques. The main actress in her film "Nomadland", Frances McDormand, told "Rolling Stone" about Zhao's process, saying "she's basically like a journalist... she gets to know your story, and she creates a character from that" and that she "draws a razor-sharp line between sentiment and sentimentality". A Filmmaker Magazine article quoted Zhao saying "I want to find new ways to place the camera to evoke more of a feeling. My goal is to put the camera inside of [the character]". An example of her process can be found in her newest film, "Eternals," when she saw the connection between actors Lauren Ridloff and Barry Keoghan who play Makkari and Druig in the film. The article said Zhao saw them interacting and thought "Okay, we've got to write more moments", stating "It's the same as I did with "Nomadland" and "The Rider". I would see how they interact and I would write that into the film". She believes that everyone wants to feel a connection, that filmmakers tell their stories because they don't want to feel alone, which is why she focuses on the themes of authenticity and places an emphasis on real stories.


title: Chloé Zhao

text: Zhao cites Wong Kar-wai's romance "Happy Together" as the "film that made me want to make films". She was also influenced by Spike Lee, who was her film professor while she studied at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. She cited Ang Lee as an influence as well, saying, "Ang Lee's career has been very inspiring to me — how he's able to bring where he comes from to all the films that he makes". She also has mentioned Werner Herzog and Terrence Malick as key influences.


title: Chloé Zhao

text: Zhao stated her earliest introductions to American cinema were "The Terminator", "Ghost" and "Sister Act".


title: Chloé Zhao

text: After Zhao became the second woman to win a Golden Globe Award for Best Director (for "Nomadland"), many Chinese viewers, as well as state media in China, celebrated her win and "sought to claim Zhao's glory for China". Shortly afterward, however, some Chinese internet users began to question Zhao's citizenship and debated "whether it is appropriate to claim Zhao's victory as China's", with "Variety" calling the claim "a common move by state-backed outlets to drum up nationalism". Much of the controversy hinged around two sets of remarks: a 2013 "Filmmaker" magazine interview in which Zhao described China as "a place where there are lies everywhere", and a late 2020 interview in which Zhao was mis-quoted as saying "The US is now my country" (she had actually said "The US is not my country," and the error was corrected about two months later). References to Zhao in Chinese media were censored following her Oscar win.