Restoring religion through collective memory: How Chinese Pentecostals engage in mnemonic practices after the Cultural Revolution

2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 79-96
Author(s):  
Ke-hsien Huang
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
Chinese People ◽  
National Community ◽  
Collective Representation ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Religious Revivals ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

China has experienced remarkable religious revivals since the Cultural Revolution. I argue that the revivals rely on religious elites summoning collective memory to restore religion, among other factors. In addition, a micro-level perspective is taken, to see how collective memory, more than a group’s collective representation, is the product and resources of religious elites in pursuit of their own interest; the remembrance of the sacred past is a contested, unfolding process of key actors engaging in varied mnemonic practices. Through data collected from long-term fieldwork, I demonstrate how Chinese Pentecostals, after lengthy political suppression, use religious collective memory to rebuild the national community, strengthen the leadership by proving their orthodox character, and fight against mystical separatists. In conclusion, I explain why religious collective memory matters in the case of China in particular, where the state tends to repress religious institutionalization, and Chinese people emphasize the importance of orthodoxy lineage.

The Return of Advertising in China: A Survey of the Ideological Reversal

1990 ◽  
Vol 123 ◽  
pp. 485-502 ◽  
Author(s):  
Randall Stross
Keyword(s):  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
Political Messages ◽  
The Third ◽  
Socialist System ◽  
Advanced Capitalist ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

During the 1980s, bracketed by the Third Plenum in 1978 and the suppression of the democracy movement in 1989, China edged, step by step, away from the orthodoxies of the Cultural Revolution, and each reversal excited a certain amount of commentary both within and without China. As time passed, and the list of reintroduced institutions and practices grew ever longer, habituation reduced the surprise of succeeding announcements. But the reintroduction of advertising, a cental totem of advanced capitalist culture, occupied a particularly significant place on the list because its reappearance in China forced the Chinese to reconsider distinctions that had formerly been drawn between capitalist and socialist societies. For most of its history, the People's Republic had castigated advertising as the apotheosis of the capitalist religion of consumption. This was especially so in the late 1960s during the height of the Cultural Revolution. Afterwards few commercial billboards or newspaper advertisements interrupted the skein of relentlessly political messages that crossed public space. When advertising was officially reintroduced in 1979, and its sanctioned scope expanded beyond industrial goods, the state faced a daunting ideological task: rebuilding a case for advertising in a socialist system that had long defined itself as one that did not need commercial exhortation. In essence, it had to sell the legitimacy of selling.

China and International Relations

1988 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 297-302
Author(s):  
Michael B. Yahuda
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Academic Writing ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The Other ◽  
Open Door ◽  
Research Institutes ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

These last ten years have witnessed a remarkable development of Chinese academic writing on International Relations. The late Premier Zhou Enlai had recommended the expansion of such studies in 1964 on his return from a tour of Africa after having found the relevant Chinese expertise weak and ill-informed. But the Cultural Revolution of 1966–1976 not only prevented that development, but along with most other intellectuals those few scholars engaged in the subject were humiliated and persecuted. Since 1977, in common with the other social sciences, International Relations has begun to flourish. Although it is a fairly new independent subject of study more than five hundred scholars are engaged in a variety of research institutes and several universities offer courses in it. As in the other social sciences, research in International Relations is carried out under the general guidelines of serving China's long term policies of modernization and the open door.

Beyond Nostalgia

2020 ◽  
pp. 66-92
Author(s):  
Jing Meng
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
Self Awareness ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Dominant Ideology ◽  
Individual Agency ◽  
Narrative Mode ◽  
Film Making ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

In Chapter 3, 11 Flowers represents personal and fragmented memories of the Cultural Revolution from an 11-year-old boy’s perspective. These memories challenge the monolithic narrative of history and the Maoist rhetoric of revolution. At the same time, this fragmented narrative mode enables individual agency in narrating and constructing history. In addition, through portrayals of everyday life in the Maoist era, the film reveals how the dominant ideology at that time was strategically misinterpreted by ordinary people and was dispersed in everyday life. Socialism, in this context, becomes a mystery, a joke, and a traumatic awakening. In the lm, art possesses enlightening power for the 11-year-old boy, who begins to obtain self-awareness through painting. The film thus conveys the director’s authorial enunciation and his belief in art as a form of liberation, not only for a boy in the Cultural Revolution but also for Wang Xiaoshuai as a film-maker. The shifting trajectory of Wang’s film-making—from independent to art house—alludes to the shifting relations between film-making, the state, and the market. In 11 Flowers, personal memories become the hallmark of Wang’s auteur expression.

“Defacing the Leader’s Portrait and Quotations”: An Archival Study of Four Cases

Rural China ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-292
Author(s):  
Wenzhi Huang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Theoretical Issues ◽  
Modern Form ◽  
Archival Study ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

During the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s portrait and quotations were everywhere in China. This modern form of cult was manifested in two ways: the cult of the Leader’s personality through the use of his likenesses and quotes by government authorities and the populace, and the defilement of the objects emblematic of the Leader by certain individuals. Based on an analysis of newly discovered archives on a number of cases involving defaced portraits, photos, and quotations of the Leader, this article reveals the micro-level mechanisms of political events, by which the “enemies” were identified and treated, and further tackles some theoretical issues concerning defacement, stigmatization and de-stigmatization, and the allegation of counter-revolutionary crimes in political campaigns.

Public Space for Memory in Contemporary Civil Society: Freedom to Learn from the Mirror of the Past?

1999 ◽  
Vol 160 ◽  
pp. 1019-1035 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary G. Mazur
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
The Past ◽  
30Th Anniversary ◽  
Great Wall ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

On 17 May 1996 at the 30th anniversary of the beginning of the Great Cultural Revolution, a group of about 40 people met in the number two crypt at Babaoshan national cemetery on the western outskirts of Beijing where the ashes of China's highest elite are interred. They met at that particular time in memory of four men who had been declared traitors and enemies of the state in 1966 at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. In this crypt are kept the ashes of three of the men, Deng Tuo, Wu Han and Liu Ren. The ashes of the fourth, Liao Mosha, were scattered, according to his wishes, at the foot of a tree beneath the Great Wall.

scholarly journals The Fragility of Identity and the Imagination of Otherness in Bai Hua’s novel The Remote Country of Women

2020 ◽  
pp. 72-91
Author(s):  
Tânia Ganito ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
The State ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Chinese Author ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

Drawing on The Remote Kingdom of Women (1988), the novel written by Chinese author Bai Hua (1930-2019), this essay examines how post-Mao China articulated the notions of memory and identity, as well as of belonging and othering, as an attempt to overcome the state of fragility caused by the trauma of the Cultural Revolution and the post-revolutionary growing influence of Western culture. It proposes to explore the way some of the literary works produced during this period were to promote an encounter between a fragmented yet hegemonic culture and the cultures of the internal ethnic Other, and how this encounter between majority and minority subjects was to highlight precisely the condition of fragility that underlies the very concept of identity. Keywords: China; Literature; Bai Hua; Identity; Majority; Minorities.

Curb that Enticing Tone

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hon-Lun Yang
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
People’S Republic Of China ◽  
The Internet ◽  
Rock And Roll ◽  
People's Republic Of China ◽  
Republic Of China ◽  
Open Policy ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

This chapter examines music censorship in the People’s Republic of China and its relationship to socialist ideology. After assessing the ideology of socialist music in the PRC, the chapter provides some examples of music censorship during the country’s history. It then highlights some of the intricacies and complexities in present-day music censorship in the PRC, including censorship on the Internet. It considers the musical genres that were taken out of the PRC’s soundscape, including Shanghai pop, and the return of pop-style songs after the Cultural Revolution following the adoption of the Reform and Open Policy. It analyzes the factors that explain why rock and roll never quite overcame its marginalized status in the PRC and has always been treated with caution by the state. The chapter concludes by focusing on music censors and censored music in the PRC.

Questioning the Revival

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-33
Author(s):  
Douglas M. Gildow
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Revolution ◽  
The State ◽  
Modern China ◽  
Ritual Performance ◽  
Republican Period ◽  
Recent Developments ◽  
Basic Facts ◽  
Year 2000 ◽  
Buddhist Monasticism ◽  
The Cultural Revolution

A common narrative of Buddhist monasticism in modern China is that monastic institutions were virtually eliminated during the Cultural Revolution period (1966–1976) but have undergone continuous revival since that time. This simplistic narrative highlights differences in state-monastic relations between the Maoist and post-Maoist eras, even as it oversimplifies various developments. In this article, I analyze the notion of revival and assess the state of Han Buddhist monasticism in the prc. My focus is on clarifying the “basic facts” of monasticism, including the numbers and types of monastics and monastic institutions. I draw on studies published since Holmes Welch’s works as well as on my own fieldwork conducted in China since 2006. This article questions the revival metaphor and shows that it is misleading. First, as Welch noted for the Republican period, recent developments are characterized by innovations as much as by revivals. Second, evidence for the growth of monasticism from around the year 2000 is weak. Yet in two aspects, monasticism today revives characteristics of Republican-period monasticism: ritual performance is central to the monastic economy, and Buddhist seminaries are important for monastic doctrinal education.

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