China is exactly like any other bustling commercial city I have ever been in and at the same time on a daily basis completely foreign. These differences range from the way you address people older than you are, to the sanitary precautions you must take (can't drink the tap water, and you'd better be prepared for squat toilets and trees tagged for public urination) and include the way people are reverent in their daily lives.
I say reverent because in Chinese cities since the Cultural Revolution and the economic opening policies of Deng Xiaoping, there is very little organized religion. As anyone familiar with the current and recent persecution of the Falun Gong is aware, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is vehemently opposed to any group that requires people to congregate in large groups without government supervision.
Hence, while in other countries, churches, or other houses of worship would be common, here they are hard to come by. Because Harbin is the closest Chinese city to the Russian boarder, Russian influence is seen everywhere. Most notable is the Saint Sophia Chapel, but even it is not used for organized religion; instead it was declared one of China's national historical sites charging visitors 10 renminbi for admittance. It's almost impossible to find anywhere where religion is practiced: a thorough search through the phone book, city maps, and tour books yielded a Korean Christian church, a Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and three small Christian chapels. There is also a mosque as well as two Buddhist temples, but all in all these are sparsely attended and populated primarily by the foreigners (Russians, mostly) who come to Ha Gong Da and Harbin Normal University to study.
So what I've observed is that there is a space in people's lives that isn't being filled by organized religion, isn't being filled by God or faith-based communities. What's filling this gap? Is it money, modernization, the race against the West, their cultural practices, Confucianism, or family? Are the Chinese as a people just waiting for something that they can believe in? Do all humans need religion, need God, need something larger than themselves, or is this just how I was brought up?
What I have begun to discover is that there are many things that fill that gap.
There's the CCP, whose bylines are memorized by all. While not everyone may agree with every policy, most have an eerie kind of reverence for the party that in recent years has raised their standard of living. In my "Business Chinese" class today, we discussed the government's newest modernization policies which allow the state to tear down an individual's house to build a new factory and pay the owner less than half of the home's worth. While the five Americans in the classroom stared at our teacher with shocked expressions and asked her how the government could get away with such practices, she shrugged and said that it might not be fair, but it was the government. We found it difficult understanding how a company could own the building housing their business, but not own the earth underneath it. This kind of reverence for an authoritarian power is fascinating to see, even if it is mind boggling for me.
The Chinese also have a reverence for their families and their elders. There is a reverence for one's parents that dictates how college students act when they are together or when they are studiously doing their homework. As the product of the one child policy, our generation in China is under enormous pressure to succeed, in order to bring honor to their families or loosely translated as "having face." Should any person act in a way that would cause them to lose face (diu mianzi), their parents, their families, and their teachers also lose face. I can see this kind of reverent respect for the community in the way children speak about their parents, in how they address their teachers, and how they speak differently to those older than them.
On the same train of thought, this kind of reverence and respect for the history of the Chinese culture is particularly obvious in the language itself. Not only is there a different and politer way to speak to your elders, but there is a sacredness of classical Chinese that is roughly similar to the structure of sacred texts in English, or the somewhat archaic language of the Lord's Prayer. This is why children are taught Chinese calligraphy as an art form that is more than just learning how to write your letters and study shu mian yu or written language instead of the vernacular. It can also be seen at the temples and historic places, where the modern fonts are eschewed for the flowing brushstrokes of a learned calligraphist.
Okay, so Chinese culture has a reverence for its language, for the family, and for the government. But while this quiet reverence is understated in most social situations, where is personal spirituality? Religion to me means not just respect for things around you, it also encompasses belief and a joy in creation or in life and a thankfulness for what we are given. That is what I'm still waiting to find here. I think it's somewhere in this culture and in this country, because my own faith leads me to believe we all need something bigger than ourselves. The problem is where to find it, amidst this culture where friends and family do not even hug or touch each other, how do I reach out to try to understand something as deeply personal as spirituality?
Hence, while in other countries, churches, or other houses of worship would be common, here they are hard to come by. Because Harbin is the closest Chinese city to the Russian boarder, Russian influence is seen everywhere. Most notable is the Saint Sophia Chapel, but even it is not used for organized religion; instead it was declared one of China's national historical sites charging visitors 10 renminbi for admittance. It's almost impossible to find anywhere where religion is practiced: a thorough search through the phone book, city maps, and tour books yielded a Korean Christian church, a Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and three small Christian chapels. There is also a mosque as well as two Buddhist temples, but all in all these are sparsely attended and populated primarily by the foreigners (Russians, mostly) who come to Ha Gong Da and Harbin Normal University to study.
So what I've observed is that there is a space in people's lives that isn't being filled by organized religion, isn't being filled by God or faith-based communities. What's filling this gap? Is it money, modernization, the race against the West, their cultural practices, Confucianism, or family? Are the Chinese as a people just waiting for something that they can believe in? Do all humans need religion, need God, need something larger than themselves, or is this just how I was brought up?
What I have begun to discover is that there are many things that fill that gap.
There's the CCP, whose bylines are memorized by all. While not everyone may agree with every policy, most have an eerie kind of reverence for the party that in recent years has raised their standard of living. In my "Business Chinese" class today, we discussed the government's newest modernization policies which allow the state to tear down an individual's house to build a new factory and pay the owner less than half of the home's worth. While the five Americans in the classroom stared at our teacher with shocked expressions and asked her how the government could get away with such practices, she shrugged and said that it might not be fair, but it was the government. We found it difficult understanding how a company could own the building housing their business, but not own the earth underneath it. This kind of reverence for an authoritarian power is fascinating to see, even if it is mind boggling for me.
The Chinese also have a reverence for their families and their elders. There is a reverence for one's parents that dictates how college students act when they are together or when they are studiously doing their homework. As the product of the one child policy, our generation in China is under enormous pressure to succeed, in order to bring honor to their families or loosely translated as "having face." Should any person act in a way that would cause them to lose face (diu mianzi), their parents, their families, and their teachers also lose face. I can see this kind of reverent respect for the community in the way children speak about their parents, in how they address their teachers, and how they speak differently to those older than them.
On the same train of thought, this kind of reverence and respect for the history of the Chinese culture is particularly obvious in the language itself. Not only is there a different and politer way to speak to your elders, but there is a sacredness of classical Chinese that is roughly similar to the structure of sacred texts in English, or the somewhat archaic language of the Lord's Prayer. This is why children are taught Chinese calligraphy as an art form that is more than just learning how to write your letters and study shu mian yu or written language instead of the vernacular. It can also be seen at the temples and historic places, where the modern fonts are eschewed for the flowing brushstrokes of a learned calligraphist.
Okay, so Chinese culture has a reverence for its language, for the family, and for the government. But while this quiet reverence is understated in most social situations, where is personal spirituality? Religion to me means not just respect for things around you, it also encompasses belief and a joy in creation or in life and a thankfulness for what we are given. That is what I'm still waiting to find here. I think it's somewhere in this culture and in this country, because my own faith leads me to believe we all need something bigger than ourselves. The problem is where to find it, amidst this culture where friends and family do not even hug or touch each other, how do I reach out to try to understand something as deeply personal as spirituality?
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