It’s a saying that I have heard repeated time and time again by people who study China or work there on issues of human rights: Anything that you want to say about religion in China is true, somewhere in China.
You want persecution of minority religions? Check. You want look-the-other-way toleration of minority religious groups? Check. You want gigantic underground Pentecostal house-church networks and loyal-to-Rome Catholic parishes? Check. You want strict enforcement of laws that push believers toward the state-recognized religious bodies? Check.
So where did this gigantic earthquake hit, on the religion-in-China map?
So far — in my rush through the New York Times reports — I have not seen the kinds of, yes, theodicy questions that you would expect to see in stories about a similar tragedy in predominately Christian or Islamic settings. So if there are people there crying out to God, what are they crying out and to whom?
It is a real struggle to work through this story, in particular, that ran with the headline, “‘No Hope’ for Children Buried in Earthquake.” This focuses on the collapsed school in Dujiangyan where hundreds of children are dead:
Little remained of the original structure of the school. No standing beams, no fragments of walls. The rubble lay low against the wet earth. Dozens of people gathered around in the schoolyard, clawing at the debris, kicking it, screaming at it. Soldiers kept others from entering.
A man and woman walked away from the rubble together. He sheltered her under an umbrella as she wailed, “My child is dead! Dead!”
As dawn crept across this shattered town … it illuminated rows and rows of apartment blocks collapsed into piles, bodies wedged among the debris, homeless families and their neighbors clustered on the roadside, shielding themselves from the downpour with plastic tarps. The earthquake originated here in the lush farm fields and river valleys of Sichuan Province, killing almost 10,000 people and trapping thousands more.
Click here for the longer Times report containing even more basic facts about the tragedy. But the story, again, lacks a second layer. It’s that “Why?” question that would be asked in some cultural contexts, but not in others.
Is that a statement about China? This part of China? Mainstream media assumptions about China? Are the people simply weeping, with no cries to the heavens for answers? Is that kind of silent acceptance — that that is the reality on the ground in China right now — a piece of some larger religious or secular view of life and death?
I have questions. I’ll keep looking for some answers. Right now, if you search Google News for “China, earthquake, God” this is what you get. Notice the reactions from Iran and from Catholic leaders. Notice that Los Angeles Times report on earthquakes as expressions of the “wrath of God.”
The silence is unnerving, to me. Then again, I am a traditional Christian in a culture where the “Why?” question would be automatic.
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Comments (7) |
May 13, 2008, at 9:21 pm
Terry,
You missed the AP story you were looking for last night: substitute ‘paper money’ for ‘God’ in your search terms.
I suspect that your, and the western reporters’, results show our inexperience with another culture.
Chip
May 14, 2008, at 10:29 am
It also might be interesting to replace “God” with “Buddha” in your search.
May 14, 2008, at 11:37 am
http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/05/13/china.scene/index.html#cnnSTCText
The firecrackers, a tradition to ward off evil spirits, sounded each time a child’s body was found, a reporter at the scene said.
Closest I can find. Otherwise, we have coverage of the Prime Minister talking through a bullhorn about how they would be able to rebuild the destroyed factories so they are even better than they were before. I found that bizarre.
May 14, 2008, at 11:24 pm
This angle was briefly covered by NPR in several different stories. I’m not surprised that the religious angle has not been further explored in the Western media—-attempting to understand the layered complexity and religious instutions of Chinese culture is difficult for scholars, much less lay journalists. Chinese indigneous polytheism, is, by the number of adherents, the FIFTH largest religious tradition in the world, yet remains very poorly understood in Euroamerican media. Theodicy in Chinese religion is addressed, like in many polytheistic traditions, as a breakdown of reciprocal relationships between humans and Sacred Persons. Politically, it can also be seen as challenging authorities, since natural disasters are often seen as a sign not only of imbalance, but a loss of the “Mandate of Heaven,” necessary for political legitimation among the vernacular Chinese (audio) As for the families, these dead relatives and children signal a mass migration into the Ancestral realm and celestial bureaucracy, and therefore much orthopraxic ritual and material items will be burned/consumed in order to equip them in the Ancestral world. Kudos to “Get Religion” for even asking the questions, even if there are few on staff with training in this area. And kudos to NPR for attempting to answer at least some of these questions.
May 15, 2008, at 9:38 am
Jason writes:
I saw a PBS News Hour report that some quake survivors were venting anger against “construction cowboys” who put together buildings on the cheap. The PM may have been promising indirectly that this would not be repeated.
May 18, 2008, at 8:56 pm
The classic way that Chinese governments have avoided being seen as having lost the “Mandate of Heaven” was to be seen doing something to alleviate misery, pronto. Also, to be seen punishing corrupt officials or merchants who were involved in Bad Stuff Being Made Worse. Sometimes religions also got punished; sometimes lots of money and support was thrown to every religion in sight.
(Of course, some of this is not so different from Western reactions to disasters. People often like to know that the people in charge are there and aware of what’s going on.)
Given the huge popularity of “punishing untouchable but corrupt high officials” dramas on Chinese tv (notably the Judge Bao mysteries), I would say we’re gonna see heads roll. But I’m not sure even that will be a just enough settlement to satisfy people.
Since so many schools were destroyed, and so many people only have one child… there is a lot of popular anger to appease.
May 19, 2008, at 8:49 pm
tmatt, you may have finally gotten some part of the story you were looking for. NPR’s ATC finally ran a story today that was literally interrupted by the earthquake, a piece on the growing Protestant Christian community in China. I highly recommend checking it out. Melissa Block observes a post-quake service where the pastor is trying to take on exactly the type of theodicy questions one would expect to see in a Christian community. Interestingly enough, the prime reading and reflection for the service seems to have been the destruction of the city of Sodom in the Hebrew Bible.