Temples as enterprises

Abstract

Introduction Religious revitalization may be a phenomenon of the mind and heart, but it also requires physical spaces and buildings for religion-related activities, and religious specialists to animate these religion spaces and fill them with staff and worshipers. Temples, churches, mosques, and monasteries provided the main spaces for religious activities in China before 1949, but many of those sites were converted to secular uses or destroyed between the 1950s and the 1970s. As religious activity revived from the early 1980s, some of the surviving buildings were returned to the officially approved religious associations. Many new religious sites were also built in cities, towns, villages, and rural areas. We can now investigate religious revitalization partly through observing the renovation and use of older sites and the construction of new religious sites. But there is no simple, linear relationship between religious revival and the construction or restoration of religious buildings. Some of these sites are regularly thronged with worshipers on worship days. Space is inadequate, and religious activities are constrained by the lack of space for such activities. On the other hand, some other old and new religious sites remain mostly quiet and empty, even though they are supported by state organizations. In short, there is not enough space for some religious activities, and too much space for other religious activities. Demand and supply are not well balanced. Religious organizations can occasionally use public spaces for their events (see especially Dean 1998; Feuchtwang 2004), but opportunities for such public space activities are highly constrained. Most religious activities have to occur within the walls or in the grounds of approved religious activity sites (zongjiao huodong changsuo). Thus shrines, temples, churches, monasteries, and mosques are important for religious revitalization, but the relation between religious sites and revitalization, between religious demand and the supply of space to serve that demand, is uneven and problematic. This is especially so because the party-state limits the construction of new religious sites, and may terminate new sites if they violate state regulations or displease local authorities. An important part of the story of the revival of religion at these sites is the activity of the developers, managers, and promoters of these religion sites. We can observe the construction of these sites, and count the number of new religious buildings which appear every year, but behind these construction events and the eventual flow of visitors and worshipers is a maze of activity, “behind the scenes,” which is the key to the emergence of these sites, and to their later successes and failures in attracting visitors. Examining how these religious places are constructed and managed is an important part of the study of religious revitalization and of the constraints on revitalization. Our studies are a bit different from most existing research in which the revival of religion is shown to have been mainly triggered and sustained by the efforts of different individuals in the local community. Researchers discovered that locals revive and reinvent popular religion for various purposes, such as healing wounded cultures and recovering the status of individuals and clans (Jing 1996; Aijmer and Ho 2000), rediscovering cultural and historical meanings of local communities (Feuchtwang and Wang 2001), resistance against the state (Feuchtwang 2000; Dean 1998; Anagnost 1987, 1994), enforcing peasant values and desires for mutual help (Chau 2006), demonstrating competition among new local elites (ibid.: 3; Dean 1998: 281), and revealing a new dynamic between peasants and local officials (Chau 2006; Flower and Leonard 1998: 274; Ho 2000: 285). Our study in the two temples suggested that in some cases of temple revivals the developers, managers and promoters are outsiders who predominantly treat temples as enterprises. The two temples discussed in this chapter are managed respectively by a Canadian-Chinese man and a Taiwanese woman, both also residents in Hong Kong. The Taiwanese temple manager now spends most of her time in Jinhua and lives in her own temple together with other Daoist priests. She treats the temple in Jinhua as one of her homes and has devoted most of her time to developing the temple. In contrast, the Canadian-Chinese manager for the temple in Guangzhou does not live in Guangzhou, although he stays there occasionally for business reasons.1 In this context it will be interesting to ask: How are these new religious sites initiated? Who provides the funds, management, and energy to build them? How do managers run the temples as enterprises and interact closely with three groups of people: temple visitors, religious specialists, and local government officials? What is the role of the planners, builders, and managers of such sites in dealing with cadres and clergy, and in attracting worshipers? Why have some of these new sites been used skillfully to promote further religious revitalization, while other sites seem to have little impact and attract little interest? In the study of religious revitalization, it is not enough merely to look at religious activities, or religious beliefs, or the numbers of active worshipers. We must also look at how the physical sites for revitalization are built and managed to attract worshipers. This chapter is a story of the creation and management of some of these new spaces for religious activity, and of the people who made them successful. We focus briefly on the construction and more extensively on the management of new temples to one particular Daoist deity, Huangdaxian (Immortal Huang), in two provinces, Guangdong and Zhejiang.