China’s Spiritual Heritage: Its Past and Present | Tea with Erping

Welcome to Tea with Erping. Two weeks before the new year, China celebrated another lunar milestone. In December 2020, China's Chang'e 5 successfully returned from the moon with lunar rock samples. I find these lunar missions quite curious, not only because both China and the US have great interest in space exploration. Chang'e is China's goddess of the moon. Perhaps until now, you haven't paid much attention to the name of China's spacecraft. Chang'e, like the lunar rover Yutu, are legendary names known to virtually every Chinese person. Just like how Western companies draw ethereal inspiration from Greek mythology, the Axis Communist Party also turns to China's spiritual roots to name its space probes. China also has a new mission to Mars reported to have entered its planetary orbit in February. Like Chang'e, it has also been given a philosophical name, Tianwen. Translated into English, Tianwen means questions to heaven. It's named after a famous poem by one of the greatest poets of ancient China, Qu Yuan. This poem has been described as the written treasure of Chinese mythology. These ancient names were not chosen out of nostalgia to the Party. It's a way to subtly suggest that China started its space exploration much earlier than its Western competitors. While the space mission named after Chang'e was much more recent than the US Apollo missions 50 years ago, both names have ancient origins and they have very different stories. According to Chinese legends, Chang'e is the goddess of the moon. Her husband Houyi shot down nine of ten suns so that people would not die of excessive heat. Yu Tu, meanwhile, is the jade rabbit that keeps Chang'e's company on the moon. Most other Chinese space exploration projects have also been given other worldly names. There's Tianzhou, Shenzhou, Tiangong 1 and 2, and a space weather explorer called Kua Fu, a giant in Chinese mythology who died when chasing the sun. But this is just about as far as the Party will go in terms of referencing Chinese divinely inspired past. China has been, how should we put it, much more down to earth when it comes to their actual policies. Taoist and Buddhist organizations today are required to show support for the Party. Underground Christians, Uyghurs, Tibetan Buddhists, and Falun Gong practitioners continue to be arrested or mistreated, and some have become victims of forced organ harvesting. That's not all. Even stage productions about Chinese history are heavily censored. Two years ago, Chinese state media criticized five popular TV dramas for focusing on internal power struggles in the imperial palace and corrupting today's life. Historical epics are the most popular kind of drama in China and will first need to be approved by the authorities before airing. So why the censorship? Beijing seems to be afraid that similar situations are going on inside the Party's top bureaucracy today, that people might start getting ideas. Soon, all five TV dramas are off the air, even though four of them were based on the Qing dynasty 100 years ago, and one from the ancient Warring States period. I seldom watch these TV dramas, but this still bothers me. Why should the government tell us what religion we can follow and what TV drama is good or bad? In that case, will we ever have a chance to decide anything by ourselves? How can we have ambitions for the future if we are without reference to the past? The reason for all this is related to the Communist Party's philosophy. As the Chinese idiom goes, A good example to show this is the infamous Hundred Flowers Campaign from around the time of the Apollo program. There is a famous saying of Mao Zedong, In 1956, Mao began the Hundred Flowers Campaign. He told the people of China, especially intellectuals, to freely come forth to share their criticism of the Party. With these, millions of letters were sent in. A few months later, the campaign was no more. Mao gave the order to crack down on now poisonous weeds. He betrayed the trust of the people. Leading Chinese thinkers, students, and activists were sent to re-education camps. These are the principles that China has promoted to serve the great cause of socialist modernization. The new vision set forth for China extends to all aspects. Its policy on religion, the cultural heritage, and foreign culture, art, science, and technology. Existing ideologies should be replaced. And if needed, force and coercion can always be relied on to instate them. Confucius once said, Today, I want to also show you the rich, divinely inspired Chinese heritage, and what's been missing in Chinese society right now. Like the Greek civilization, China's 5000-year culture believes the world begins with chaos. There are also timeless myths, immortals, demigods, and people who have supernatural powers. The legendary Yellow Emperor, who was widely regarded as the first Chinese ruler, used supernatural powers to fight off enemies. According to the Taoist text Zhuangzi, he later became a Taoist deity. He was said to have created the Chinese lunar calendar that we use today with inspiration from heavens. The book Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon has been treated as one of the most important medical works on traditional Chinese medicine. Taoism is probably as old as Chinese civilization, although it was only after Lao Tzu, the Taoist founder, wrote Tao Te Ching that Taoism became an established mind-body belief system. His teachings include the idea of yin and yang, believing in harmony with the way, or law of nature, and non-action. Such concepts have helped shape centuries of Chinese culture. Eventually, in the Ming dynasty, about 700 years later, Taoism became the imperial state orthodoxy. What about Buddhism, you might ask? Buddhism, in fact, came to China from the West, in the East Han dynasty. In an early episode, I talked about Emperor Ming and his dream about a flying golden person, who his ministers believe is a western sage called Buddha. Because of this dream, the Emperor Ming sent his people to the West to search for Buddhism. They brought back two Buddhist monks, along with Buddhist scriptures, on the back of a white horse. For the two visitors, Emperor Ming built the famous White Horse Temple. They stayed there and translated 42 scriptures. These were the first Buddhist scriptures in Chinese. Sadly, you won't be able to see much of the treasure from this White Horse Temple if you go there today. The sculptures, palm leaf manuscripts, a jade horse, were all destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. Even the temple was almost burned. In 1973, when Prince Norodon Sihanouk of Cambodia wanted to visit the temple, Chinese officials secretly shipped thousands of items from other temples and museums. The Cambodian visitor, however, didn't know anything about this and was impressed. Also during the Cultural Revolution, religion was called superstition and foreign infiltration. Religious rituals and terms were banned. Some monks were even forced to destroy their own temples. Over the centuries, Buddhism has been held in high esteem in China and revered as a state-sanctioned religion by emperors of many dynasties. Its ideas of karmic relationship and retribution, reincarnation, compassion, and salvation for all predestined sanctioned beings have profoundly changed China's language, fine art, music, and literature. To make offerings to gods is a Chinese New Year ritual. The famous novel Journey to the West is based on the legendary pilgrimage of monk Xuanzang to India to search for Buddhist sutras. In case you ask, the name of his assistant, Monkey King, is now used in another space mission. Of course, we cannot forget Confucianism. Confucius might be one of the most misunderstood sages today in China and abroad. Confucius was also denounced after the Communist Party came to power, and especially during the Cultural Revolution. Nowadays, people remember him as one of the greatest Chinese philosophers. But in traditional China, Confucius was actually known as a spiritual teacher for his role in teaching people to follow the mandate of heaven. Zhao Fasheng, a researcher at China Academy of Social Sciences, wrote about this in his article on Confucius' belief. He said that Confucianism is known as the scholarship of heavenly beings. According to Zhao, even in the book Analects alone, Confucius mentioned heaven, or will of heaven, 19 times. He thinks that the heaven that Confucius spoke of is not an abstract concept, but rather a supernatural divine ruler. But in Atheist China under Mao, religious beliefs like Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism were considered ignorant. Radical revolutionaries criticized Confucius as backward and wanting to bring the country back to the so-called feudal times. Conservatives, because they intended to protect his teachings, tried to prove that he is actually progressive by highlighting his humanist side. The religious aspect has an important role in Confucianism, short of which, we won't be able to comprehend the true spirit of Confucianism, nor would we be able to sort out the sources and characteristics of Confucius' humanism. We would then have a flawed and incomplete picture of Confucius. And this is basically what happened today. In today's Chinese culture, the divine soul and spiritual traditions are no longer there. To the Party, any revival of traditional religious practices and cultural heritage was a threat to its rule, rather than something that could bring the people together in harmony. When the acclaimed New York-based produced a dance program that featured traditional Chinese dance, music, costume, Beijing got nervous. Their diplomats abroad demanded hosting theaters to reject or cancel Shen Yun performances. Under their pressure, a few theaters, such as the Royal Opera House in Madrid, canceled shows scheduled between January 31st and February 2nd, 2019, even though hundreds of tickets had been sold in advance. Just as China used Confucius' institutes to influence education policies in other countries, it is trying to manipulate the world's cultural institutions. The Communist Party believes that the international community should listen to whatever it says. Socrates once said, But the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine. In this digital age, people around the world are still able to find inspiration through some form of spirituality, or from their divine cultural heritage. The Communist Party has done all it could to disconnect 1.3 billion people from their spiritual and cultural heritage. To me, this is the most harmful thing. The Party says it aims to serve the people with its materialistic culture. But I fear the opposite is true, that it has been eroding the very foundations of Chinese society. There is a lack of trust between people and government, and even among people in general. How do we mend from here? Despite Beijing's rigorous repression, religious revival among Chinese does not appear to be abating. A 2017 Freedom House report says that there are more than 350 million religious believers in China. They are primarily made up of Chinese Buddhists, Falun Gong practitioners, Christians, Muslims, and Tibetan Buddhists. In 2012, a Pew Research Center report found that more than 294 million people, or 20% of the Chinese population, practice folk religions. In China, Communist Party members and government employees are not allowed to follow any religious faith. But many privately do, even at the risk of losing their career opportunities. As an old saying goes, you can kill all the roosters, the dawn still comes. Buddhism holds that Man cannot live without a spiritual life. We all believe in something. Everything we do is actually based on something we believe in. Tens of millions of Chinese people are still seeking China's spiritual traditions, or joining underground religions and practices. Their courage gives me hope for China, and I hope you, like me, will support them. St. Augustine once said, Well, where there is tea, there is hope. After all, tea is liquid wisdom. Thank you for watching. Until next time, peace and tea be with you.