1
The region of Wenzhou, in southeastern China, is known for its pioneering entrepreneurs as well as its vivid religious life. “China’s Jerusalem,” as people often call Wenzhou, has a long history of evangelistic movements that have been an active presence in Chinese Christianity. It is also famous for sending migrants throughout China and abroad: Wenzhounese communities have settled in Europe, the Americas, Africa, and elsewhere.
Until the mid-nineteenth century, however, the region’s geographical isolation (see Map 1.1) made it primarily a destination for migrants seeking a safe haven. Situated on the southeast coast of Zhejiang Province, facing the East China Sea, it is divided from neighboring Fujian Province and from the rest of Zhejiang by the scenic Yandang mountain range.
Most of the events in this book unfold in Rui’an County (Map 1.2), which is located in the heart of Wenzhou. It is transected by the eastbound Feiyun River, which links eastern lowlands with vast mountainous areas in the west, and the southbound Tang canal. Smaller rivers crisscross the lowland plains in the east, carving it into closely populated patches of land. By 1949, Rui’an already had a population of 456,900, covering 1,360 square kilometers of land. That figure has now risen to about 1.19 million in population, covering 1, 271 square kilometers of land, as of the 2010 census.
Map 1.1. Wenzhou.
Map 1.2. Rui’an.
Up to the mid-nineteenth century, most migrants entered by sea routes from Fujian, bringing with them gods from their ancestral homes. Adapting these gods to their new locale was an instrumental part of settling down and establishing new communities in Wenzhou. Territorial temples and ancestral halls set the rhythm of daily life in Wenzhou throughout late imperial times.1 Historically, the most important yearly communal rituals were dragon boat racing (hua longchuan) and “touring the deities” (taifo).2 The first is a ritual boat race between local communities, opening with a ritual procession that tours the head of the neighborhood’s dragon boat to receive the blessing of the deities. The second, taifo, is a type of ritual parade common to southeast China in which participants make a tour of statues of local deities in their own communities. Both dragon boat racing and tours of deities were believed to prevent plagues and other natural disasters and to “bring blessings with great peace” (bao taiping) to the communities.
Villages in Wenzhou typically relied on their land to finance the operation and maintenance of temples, temple fairs, and ritual processions. Territorial temples and Buddhist monasteries were financed by a “common field,” which was farmed or rented out for income (miaozhong and sizhong, meaning “temple common field” and “monastery common field,” respectively). The common field might be purchased and owned by a single village, multiple villages, or a smaller group of people. “The head of affairs” (shoushi) charged with managing the common field was a rotating position, typically chosen from among the founding members and their heirs.
A Watershed Moment in Communal Religion
Throughout the late nineteenth century, religion was at the core of the political sphere and of everyday life. Both locals and the Qing government recognized deities as symbols and sources of power. Local deities were at times co-opted to secure local governance and consolidate the dominance of local elites. In 1855, for instance, the Taiping rebellion provoked a local Qu Zhenhan uprising in Yueqing County against local elites. Members of the elite invoked Lord Yang (yangfuye), the most prominent deity in the territorial cult of the region, as their symbol of resistance against the uprising. At their request, the Qing authorities endorsed stories of Lord Yang pacifying the Qu uprising and recognized the deity by conferring a new title on him in order to curb conflicts between local groups and to remedy governmental relations with local society.3
However, starting from the early twentieth century, village religious activities faced enormous challenges. In a critical change, the government shifted to classifying communal religious activities and referring to them in political discourse as “superstition.” This change affected territorial cults in particular.4 First the Qing, then the Republican government initiated a series of anti-superstition campaigns in the name of modernization. When Western-style education and news media inculcated local students in the discourses of science, democracy, and progress, local deities such as Lord Yang and their temples in Wenzhou became the targets of encroachment and demolition. In the cities, strict prohibitions and lack of patronage ended certain annual rites and temple processions, such as the annual tour of the city god (chenghuang) in Rui’an’s county seat.
This profound change in the relationship between the political and religious spheres shook the foundations of communal religion.5 Local elites were split over whether to remain invested in temple activities or shift to new arenas of power, such as modern education. Nevertheless, traditional communal religion remained active, especially in villages. Rituals and processions continued, though less frequently than before. In villages, government maneuvers to curb religious practices did not gain enough support from local elites to be effective and had very little impact. They only served to “[line] policemen’s pockets.”6
From 1900 to 1937, around 40 percent of Buddhist temples and 12 percent of territorial temples listed in the city’s Republican period gazetteer underwent reconstruction. Most of the reconstruction took place after 1911.7 Because of the “temple-to-school” movement which had started in 1898 to push through religious and educational reforms,8 a small portion of temples and ancestral halls were converted into schools or other public institutions. However, by 1937, out of a total of 609 entries in the temple (miao) entry of the “Religion” (zongjiao) section in the Rui’an Republican gazetteer, only ten territorial temples were being converted for use as schools or for other purposes (less than 2 percent).9 This number likely only refers to cases of complete conversion, as it was more common for temples and schools to coexist in the same religious complex. Despite the “temple-to-school” efforts of the mid-1930s, a significant number of village temples and monasteries in Rui’an kept land holdings ranging from a few mu to several dozens of mu.10 Most temples remained in operation as sites of communal religion.
The exact number of territorial temples and monasteries in the Wenzhou region in 1949 is unknown. A survey of the Rui’an City Government in 2010 recorded around 1,200 “unregistered” territorial temples and 153 “Daoist” temples (about 120 of which were territorial temples registered as Daoist temples).11 It is very likely that the number of territorial temples in Rui’an in 1949 was considerably higher, at least 1,300 or more. A survey of Buddhist monasteries found at least 317 Buddhist sites remaining in 1957,12 which suggests that active Buddhist monasteries were more numerous before 1949.13
Christianity Makes Inroads
While communal religious activities were waning under the influence of government campaigns, Christianity was experiencing a rapid rise. In the first half of the twentieth century, there was a steep increase in the number of churches, missionaries, and Christians in the Wenzhou region.
Some scholars trace the history of Christianity in Wenzhou back to the fourteenth century, when China was under Mongol rule.14 Yet there are hardly any traces of Christianity in local history before the arrival of Christian missionaries in the late nineteenth century.
The 1860 Treaty of Nanking, put in place after the Qing empire’s defeat in the Opium Wars, gave Western missionaries extensive rights to proselytize throughout China. This was when Catholic and Protestant missionaries (re)introduced Christianity to the Wenzhou region. Under the Treaty of Chefoo in 1876, Wenzhou became a treaty port and a stopping point for foreign ships. The China Merchants’ Steam Navigation Company established a branch office there in 1878 and a regular line between Wenzhou and Shanghai. In the years to follow, more shipping lines were established between Wenzhou and places such as Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Fuzhou, and Taiwan. New river lines were also created in the 1900s linking Wenzhou and its counties. These sea routes and inland river routes provided new ways of travel to, from, and within the region. The greater facility of travel would profoundly reshape local society, facilitating the dissemination of Christianity, among other changes.15 In the last years of the Qing dynasty and throughout the Republican era, Protestantism and Catholicism firmly embedded themselves into the life of the region, becoming an integral part of Wenzhou society.16
Catholicism was (re)introduced to Wenzhou in the late 1860s. Among its early converts, many were former members of salvationist groups. A parish was established in 1880, which was then promoted to a diocese on the eve of 1949 in response to the expansion of the Catholic church in Wenzhou. The Methodist Church (of Great Britain) (xundao gonghui) was the first Protestant denomination to arrive in the area and very likely the largest one by 1949. At the eve of the Communist takeover, it had a headquarters and four pastorals consisting of twenty-one churches in all.
The second missionary group to arrive was the China Inland Mission (CIM) (neidi hui), an interdenominational Protestant missionary society founded by British evangelist Hudson Taylor. The China Jesus Independent Church (CJIC; Zhongguo Yesujiao zili hui), the Seventh-Day Adventist Church (anxiri hui), and the Assembly (juhuichu) were all latecomers. The Seventh-Day Adventist Church began its evangelical activities in Rui’an in the 1920s but did not build its first chapel in the county seat until 1930. The Seventh-Day Adventists established a church in Mayu in 1925 and then turned their focus to the Huling District in the northwestern mountains, where they established churches in Zhushan, Zhuyuan, and Dongkeng villages during the 1930s and 1940s.
The CJIC and the Assembly both grew out of the independent church movement in the early twentieth century but appeared in Rui’an during different periods. A group of former members of the Methodist Church created the first independent church in the county seat in 1914. However, the CJIC expanded fastest in Huling in the following decades because there were no established churches to compete with there.17 By 1949, it had established ten churches in Huling. The Shayang Church at Mayu, which was a branch of the Methodist Church, became independent in 1935.18
The Assembly (or Local Churches [difang jiaohui], or Little Flock [xiaoqun]) arrived in Rui’an even later. Its establishment and development occurred after the outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War. It first set up a gathering point with little more than twenty people in the west gate of the county seat. In the 1940s, some former members of the Methodist Church and the CIM founded their own local assemblies in Xincheng and Xianjiang. To the Assembly, Huling was also a major site for evangelization; it continued to expand there, even during the civil war (1946–1949). Local assemblies were established in the villages of Jiangshan, Shangyang, and Kengkouyang in 1947. The town center of Huling and three other neighboring villages also organized local assemblies on the eve of liberation.19
At first, the spread of Christianity in Wenzhou met with fierce resistance. Many early converts, like former sectarians, were members of marginalized or disadvantaged social groups who sought protection in the church.20 As they appropriated the status of church members to reassert themselves in social life, non-Christian locals responded to their presence with hostility against Christianity. Christians refused to participate in traditional communal practices such as dragon boat racing, escalating the tension between Christians and non-Christians. By the turn of the twentieth century, resentment against Christians and the church, mixed with nationalist sentiments, stirred up a series of violent attacks on churches and Christians.21
Yet the Protestant and Catholic churches eventually found ways to reach out to non-Christian local society, through initiatives like ritual healings and exorcisms. Exorcism and ritual healing were common occurrences in evangelical work, though they were rarely recorded in the writings of foreign missionaries in Wenzhou. A native pastor, Chen Shangsheng, wrote: “The church in Rui’an has long been known for opening the door of evangelization by curing illness and expelling demons (yi bing gan gui). . . . When adherents in this county joined the Church, it was most likely (shi you ba jiu) because of either illness or demons.”22
Chen was serving the Methodist Church of Tangxia town center in 1937 when the head of nearby Xiantan Township and his entire family converted to Christianity.23 It was unusual at that time for a local official to become a Christian. Chen recorded their story of conversion: “Early this month, Shaoxian, younger brother of Du Shaofu, the [Xiantan] town head, who is nineteen, suddenly went insane, screaming and swearing aloud, crying and laughing uncontrollably. The doctors’ efforts were to no avail and the deities showed no efficacy. Therefore, they came to our church. People in church willingly accepted their request and prayed all day and night. In the name of Jesus Christ, demons were repelled and the illness was cured.” Shaoxian’s parents and brothers, including Shaofu, who witnessed the miracle, then decided to convert to Christianity.
Christian preachers such as Pastor Chen, like Buddhist monks and Daoist priests, presented themselves as healers to attract potential converts. Pastor Lin Hongbing of CJIC explained why ritual healing was important: “Fortunately relying on the power of prayers; [people] confessed and repented; illness cured and demons expelled . . . the Holy Spirit must be operating through it.”24 “It is difficult to find a doctor in the countryside when people are sick. They all believe Jesus is a great doctor (da yisheng) and accept the gospel. When someone is ill, they would trust and rely on (xin kao) Jesus [for treatment]; [the sick person] would usually recover.”25
The practice of presenting the church as a local source for healing was sustained by a growing number of indigenous church leaders and preachers. The Protestant Church in Wenzhou was among the most thoroughly indigenized churches in China before 1949. Driven by a considerable group of volunteer native preachers and church leaders, a significant number of financially and administratively self-reliant Protestant communities came into being.
Partly for practical reasons, the Methodist Church and the CIM in Wenzhou were already emphasizing and promoting the self-administration and self-support of local Christian communities before the national wave of independent church movement in the 1920s and 1930s, “All missionaries live in the city of Wenzhou . . . by far the heavier burden of evangelizing this district lies upon the shoulder of the local preachers. These form the backbone of the mission,”26 wrote A. H. Sharman of the Methodist Church in 1917. “These local preachers chiefly represent the farmer class . . . not well educated. . . .” In addition, “another class of men that helps greatly in evangelizing the district is the ‘church leader.’ This is generally one to each church, appointed by the circuit meeting. He is consulted on all local matters, settles troubles between Christians and non-Christians, collects the offerings of the members for church expenses, and frequently preaches when the man appointed does not arrive. His work is always voluntary. He is in fact, as in name, the pillar of the church.”27 With this method, “it will be observed that while the churches of the district have more than doubled, the number of missionaries has not increased since 1900.”28 The CIM used very similar administrative structures, with the only difference being that they probably relied even more on voluntary preachers. In 1920, the CIM branch in Wenzhou had 211 voluntary preachers but only 44 salaried preachers.29
The first independent church in Wenzhou was the CJIC, established in the 1910s. The CJIC’s membership and number of gathering places in Wenzhou made up nearly half of its national organization in the 1920s.30 CJIC churches were financially and administratively independent. All church leaders and preachers were volunteers. Another independent church, the Assembly, adopted a similar system of voluntary preachers; its followers in Wenzhou in the early 1950s accounted for about a quarter of its national organization.31 “Preachers et al. are all voluntary. They are dispatched to and take turns to preach in each place.”32
Indigenization efforts before 1949 left Wenzhou Christianity with a history of financial self-reliance and a large pool of village church leaders, including church elders (zhanglao) and deacons (zhishi) in charge of administering Protestant communities, as well as preachers who were charged with evangelical work. Both financial independence and local leadership were crucial for Protestant churches to withstand the test of the turbulent Mao years, as I will show in the following chapters.
The Catholic Church in Wenzhou also relied very much on local catechists. Their approach developed during the tenure of French priest Cyprien Aroud of the Congregation of the Mission at Wenzhou parish from 1899 to 1929, and, like the Protestant reliance on local preachers, it proved successful.33 However, unlike the Protestant approach, the Catholic strategy was not designed to encourage the self-administration of local Catholic communities. Most catechists started to be educated and trained as young children before being dispatched to out-stations; they were all paid workers, not volunteers selected among active members of the church. The Wenzhou parish set up a hierarchical system among the catechists, the stated purpose of which was to “guarantee complete control over the catechists.”34 In local Protestant communities, church elders played a pivotal role in administrative work and facilitating communication with non-Christians, but they played no role in the official Catholic approach. In finance, administration, and ritual services, all local Catholic groups and stations relied much more heavily on foreign churches in comparison to Protestant churches.
By 1949, Zhejiang had about 200,000 Christians, the largest number of any province in China, and 41.5 percent of these were concentrated in Wenzhou.35 In Rui’an, the number of Catholic and Protestant churches jumped from 28 to 108 between 1911 and 1937.36 By 1949, the six Protestant denominations had a total of 8,170 members spread across 59 churches (tang) and 37 gathering points (dian).37 The Rui’an parish of the Catholic Church at the time had a parish church in the county seat and 19 branch churches in the countryside with a total of 3,093 members.38
Salvationist Tradition in Its Heyday
Trans-village and transregional sectarian traditions were not as visible as communal religious traditions, but for a long time they were also an important part of religious communities in late imperial Wenzhou. In the mid-nineteenth century, the crises provoked by the Taiping rebellion led to two local uprisings: the Qu Zhenhan uprising in Yueqing in 1855 and the Golden Coin Association (jinqian hui) in Pingyang in 1861. Both were connected to the sectarian traditions of southern Zhejiang.39
Then, in the first half of the twentieth century, “redemptive societies” burst onto the national stage, seeing immense growth in their number of followers, spheres of activity, and their engagement with local and national politics.40 These new syncretic religious movements, like the Way of Former Heaven (xiantian dao) or the Fellowship of Goodness (tongshan she), inherited elements of the late imperial salvationist and millenarian traditions.41 Yet they were also engaged in a deliberate renewal of Chinese tradition, appropriating and reinventing discourses of science, civilization, and philanthropy, especially from Christian churches.42
During the same period in Wenzhou, these new syncretic movements were flourishing alongside the direct heirs of the salvationist and millenarian traditions: the Seven Stars Teaching (qixing hui), the Yellow Yang Teaching (huangyang jiao), and the Big Sword Association (dadao hui), among others. Local salvationist groups accrued numerous followers, vastly extending their territory. Their growth throughout the Sino-Japanese War and the Civil War likely surpassed even the rapid expansion of Christianity. The Wenzhou government identified about forty sectarian movements that were active in the region in the early 1950s.43
Local branches of nation-wide redemptive societies developed in Wenzhou no earlier than the 1920s. The Way of Pervading Unity (yiguan dao), one of the largest redemptive societies flourishing over most of China, for instance, arrived in Wenzhou during the Anti-Japanese War (1937–1945). They were usually based in or near county seats. As elsewhere in the country, these societies engaged in meditation and the cultivation of morality and tended to appeal to businessmen and local gentry.44
In the countryside, among peasants, traditional salvationist groups enjoyed much greater popularity than redemptive societies. Peasants made up the bulk of believers in salvationist religions. Within each local group, these religious societies had hierarchical arrangements of various forms, such as center-altars (zongtan) and sub-altars (fentan),45 but the groups were basically independent of each other, without close ties. The salvationist religious societies were loosely organized, without a coherent and unified hierarchical structure.
The Yellow Yang Teaching originated in Rui’an and was an important presence there. It also had many unaffiliated factions dispersed across several counties in Wenzhou. The Yellow Yang Teaching is said to have been created during the reign of Guangxu (1875–1908) in the late Qing period by Huang Yaopan, a former follower of the Non-Action Teaching (wuwei jiao) from Shantouxia Village in Mayu District, when Huang secluded himself for meditation in the Daluo Mountains of Tangxia District. In 1922 the Teaching split into two factions, the Zhu (Qimei) and the Li (Binwen), which both brought the teachings to nearby Yueqing County. In 1928, Peng Chongcai, a former follower of the Yellow Yang Teaching, formed his own teaching in Xianjiang District (the eponymous Peng Yang Teaching). In the late 1920s, another follower, Chen Changman, formed another faction in Mayu. Chen took over Tianfu Temple (tianfu miao) in Aodi Village, Shuntai Township, and rebuilt the temple into a regional center of pilgrimage.
Like the Yellow Tang Teaching, the Seven Stars Teaching also originated in Wenzhou. Its history traces back to at least the early nineteenth century. It was reportedly created in Dayang Temple (dayang miao) in the border region of Lishui, Jinyun, and Qingtian Counties in southern Zhejiang, where it initially appeared as the “Dayang Mountains Teaching” (dayangshan jiao), also known as the “Twelve Pace Teaching” (shi’erbu jiao) and the “Non-Action Teaching.”46 By the eve of the second Sino-Japanese War, several different denominations were active under the name “Seven Stars Teaching,” each with its own network of altars covering the whole of the neighboring mountains of Wencheng, Qingtian, and Jingning.
Joining a local religious society was a simple process. To become a member of the Yellow Yang Teaching, one only had to take a vow before an incense table in the presence of an inductor, with a teacher’s guidance. New disciples were sometimes asked to pay a membership fee. Members met at various dates, such as the birthdays of Guanyin, the Buddha, and the founder of the teaching, known as the Yellow Yang Master, to recite scriptures and hold a purification feast (dazhai).47 Like the nation-wide salvationist and millenarian religions, teachers of indigenous societies used revelations, scriptures, and various other tools.
The eschatological messages of the Yellow Yang Teaching came from the famous apocalyptic wugongjing (the Scripture of the Five Lords) as well as from local culture, particularly the shaobingge (“Song of Baked Flatbread”) allegedly written by Liu Ji (also known as Liu Bowen, 1311–1375), a famous minister and local dignitary of the early Ming dynasty (1368–1644). The major prophecy of the Yellow Yang Teaching was the ending of the three kalpas, a term originating in Buddhist cosmology to refer to a long period (an “era” or “epoch”). The Yellow Yang Teaching advertised itself as being able to help people avert the catastrophe that would come at the end of a kalpa. One Yellow Yang message read: “September 23 will be a gloomy day. The seven days and nights [thereafter will be] rainy and dark. Only the pious will be saved. Those who do not believe will lose their lives. A cave at the foot of the Yellow Yang Mountains can hide eighteen thousand people. Only those who arrive early will have a place; those who arrive late will die on the road.”48
The Entanglement of Communist Forces with Religion
In the shifting political sands in the period leading up to 1949, we cannot neglect the rise of two major political players: the Nationalist and Communist parties. From 1911 to 1927, Zhejiang was under the control of warlords, though each region retained strong autonomy. Locals founded the county branches of the Nationalist and Communist parties almost simultaneously at the end of 1926, less than a year before the Northern Expedition army of the Nationalist Party entered Rui’an in early 1927. In this short period, the Communists and the Nationalists worked hand in hand to attack established forces (in particular the powerful county chamber of commerce) and facilitate the arrival of the Northern Expedition army.
In April 1927, after Chiang Kai-shek unified China, he ordered a purge of Communist influence and leftists within Nationalist organizations. Some Communists in Wenzhou were arrested and killed. Many went into hiding in the mountains. Amid the famine and unrest of 1929 in southern Zhejiang, Communists eventually coordinated a group of peasant militias, the “Thirteenth Division of the Red Army.” They staged a wide range of insurgencies and attacks in southern Zhejiang, including Taoshan and Mayu (Rui’an), before their main force was eliminated in May 1932. Organized Communist activities and guerrilla warfare resumed only when another stream of Communist guerrillas retreated from Jiangxi into the mountains of southern Zhejiang.
In late 1935, after the Nationalist Army defeated Red Army troops in the border area between Jiangxi and Fujian, a group of Communist forces led by Su Yu and Liu Ying went east into Zhejiang to wage guerrilla warfare. They eventually implanted themselves there, setting up revolutionary bases in the mountainous borders of a dozen counties in Wenzhou and Lishui, where there were fewer Nationalist garrisons and they had greater access to the people. Within Rui’an at the time, the Communists were most active in the Gaolou and Huling mountains of Mayu District and the Daluo Mountains north of Tangxia District. Then, in 1938, as the Communist and Nationalist parties joined forces to fight the Japanese, most of the southern Zhejiang guerrillas left to join the New Fourth Army. Liu Ying was imprisoned and died in Wenzhou in May 1942. In spite of this, Communist forces succeeded in expanding to the coastal plains of southern Zhejiang. By the eve of 1949, the southern Zhejiang guerrillas covered eleven counties in Wenzhou and Lishui, south of Taizhou, and a few counties in northern Fujian.49
When Nationalist and Communist forces put down roots in Wenzhou, the prevalence of religious followers and religious sites was such that they inevitably came into contact with them. Communist guerrillas extensively used public spaces, territorial temples, and Buddhist monasteries as a cover for their activities, especially in mountainous areas. Today one can easily find traces of the Communist forces’ encounter with religion before 1949 in the histories of certain territorial temples, Buddhist monasteries, and Three-Self churches. Territorial temples and Buddhist monasteries openly celebrate the history of their engagement with Communism before 1949 (Photo 1.1). The Three-Self movement in some respects also celebrates the history of their engagement with Communism before 1949, though their engagement with the Nationalist Party or the Nationalist government is largely missing from the records.
Photo 1.1. The Palace of Miraculous Blessing (lingyou dian), Yutan Village, Rui’an (2019). The sign on the center reads: “Site of the First Southern Zhejiang Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.”
Source: Author.
Both Communist and Nationalist forces tended to keep religious communities at arm’s length. Some Nationalist Party members even became fervent supporters of local anti-superstition campaigns, and caused the destruction of temples in Rui’an and Yueqing in 1928.50 However, neither the Communists nor the Nationalists excluded members of religious organizations from joining their parties, nor did they refrain altogether from engaging with local religious communities. For instance, You Shuxun, one of the founding members of the CJIC in Wenzhou, was allegedly persuaded to become a member of the Communist Party and also a founding member of the party’s independent division in Wenzhou in 1926. Zhang Dasheng, an Adventist who taught at the Three Cultivation (sanyu) school run by the Adventist Church, was a covert liaison officer for the Communist guerrillas. In the 1930s and 1940s, he turned the Three Cultivation school and his own home into a virtual liaison point for the Communist guerrilla forces. He hosted numerous meetings of the Zhejiang Party Committee there and transferred resources and personnel to guerrilla bases in the mountains.51
The most noticeable interactions between religious communities and Communist forces occurred in Wenzhou’s western mountains, where the Communists established guerrilla base camps in the 1930s and 1940s. In Huling, Gaolou, parts of Mayu, and Tangxia in Rui’an, Protestant preachers and salvationist groups frequently competed with the Communist guerrillas to expand in the same areas.
There was crossover between church membership and Communist activism. Lei Gaosheng, one of the founders of the Southern Zhejiang Red Army (formed in the Wenzhou region in 1928), was from a village in Mayu where Protestants were very active. Many of his family members were Christians. After Lei’s death in 1930, his sons and their families also converted to Christianity.52 In Zhuyuan Village in Huling District, some villagers were active in both the party and the church, and a few even became party cadres. It was not until 1949 that villagers in Zhuyuan had to choose between the church and the party. Five or six Christians eventually withdrew from the party.53
The encounters between Communist forces and salvationist groups were much more intricate. The emergence of the Communist guerrillas certainly eclipsed the expansion of local salvationist groups. When the Communist guerrillas became active in Shuntai Township in Mayu, they used Tianfu Temple in Aodi Village as a shelter and military base. Chen Changman, the founder of one of the Yellow Yang Teachings who had previously taken over the temple as faction headquarters, eventually abandoned the temple out of “anger against” the guerrillas. In 1946 he left for Dragon Pool Temple (longtan si), in the Daluo Mountains, Tangxia, where the Yellow Yang Teaching was said to have originated. One of his disciples, Xie Qingxian, soon followed Chen to the Daluo Mountains.54 Shortly thereafter, Xie founded his own faction, which became the largest Yellow Yang Teaching faction after 1949.
The expansion of Communist guerrillas halted the growth of the Seven Stars Teaching in the region, as it did with the Yellow Yang Teaching, and even silenced the Seven Stars organization for a time. Huangliao Township in Nantian, where the Seven Stars Teaching had been most active, became a guerrilla base area in the mid-1930s. Long Yue and many other leaders of the southern Zhejiang Communist guerrillas had stayed there. As the Communists and salvationists competed for influence in the same area, both facing attacks by the Nationalists, their relationship was neither entirely hostile nor entirely collaborative. Each organization acted in its own interests. Therefore it was not surprising that some of the Seven Stars Teaching’s leaders even joined the Communist guerrillas.55
Another local group, the Big Sword Association, had a highly dramatic entanglement with the Communist forces. The association was a militarized salvationist group which emerged from the 1940s uprising to resist excessive taxation and the military draft. It was most active in Pingyang (the present-day counties of Pingyang and Cangnan), but also spread to the districts of Mayu and Gaolou in the western and southern parts of Rui’an. As Prasenjit Duara and Joseph Esherick found in the north China plains,56 the Big Sword Association was deeply rooted in the region’s martial arts and sectarian traditions, especially from Pingyang.57 The Nationalist government brutally suppressed the association and killed several thousand people. Following this, the remaining groups of the association split among the Nationalist government, the Communist guerrillas, and the Japanese occupation forces. Communist guerrillas made considerable efforts to absorb the remainder of the association’s forces. They succeeded with part of the group led by Cai Yuexiang and maintained close relations with some of the association’s other groups.58
Conclusion
In the first half of the twentieth century, nation-building efforts by regimes and political groups turned temples into a symbol of the decay of Chinese civilization and made them targets of political and military appropriation. As in much of China, this onslaught on religious activities shook the foundations of traditional communal religion in Rui’an and Wenzhou. Yet local religion continued to brim with vitality. Salvationist religious traditions broadly defined, both local and national, swept through the region at a remarkable pace—largely, perhaps, due to the greater social uncertainty brought about by political turbulence and wars. Protestant churches, the Catholic Church, traditional salvationist groups, and redemptive societies all found a niche. Their numbers of local followers rapidly grew.
Communist forces stayed close to local peasant society, including their religious communities. Though the Wenzhou region was not under Communist rule until 1949, it had been exposed to Communist influence since the late 1920s. The Communist guerrillas there operated like one of many players in a shifting local political ecology. As this chapter demonstrates, the Communists often used religious sites as shelter and competed with religious groups for followers. They both clashed and collaborated with religious groups, depending on the circumstances.
Many other parts of China that were not located in the Communist Party’s major revolutionary bases may have been like Rui’an and Wenzhou at that time. The Communists were hostile to religious groups from an ideological standpoint, but they could not overpower them. Furthermore, they did not make it a priority to subdue religion. Strategically, they were willing to exploit the material and human resources of religious groups when they considered it necessary to do so. The 1949 Communist takeover on the national stage may not have essentially changed the ways that the Communist Party perceived religion. But as Chapter 2 will show, the revolution that it initiated soon brought about fundamental changes to the local religious sphere.
1For religious life in Wenzhou in the late imperial and Republican eras, see Paul R. Katz, Demon Hordes and Burning Boats: The Cult of Marshal Wen in Late Imperial Chekiang (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995); and Xu Hongtu and Kang Bao (Paul Katz), eds., Pingyang Xiang, Cangnan Xiang chuantong minsu wenhua yanjiu (Studies of traditional folk culture in Pingyang and Cangnan) (Beijing: Minzu chubanshe, 2005).
2Though dragon boat racing is mainly performed during the spring in the plains areas of Wenzhou, a similar ritual of Great Peace Dragon [Boat] (taiping long) is observed in mountainous areas, and the ritual of dragon lantern is observed in the winter. The ritual of Great Peace Dragon [Boat] is very similar to dragon boat racing in terms of ritual procedures, rituals texts, and purposes. The major difference is that the main body of the dragon boat in this ritual is made of paper. During the ritual, residents carry this type of paper dragon boat to travel through the community.
3Shih-Chieh Lo, “The Order of Local Things: Popular Politics and Religion in Modern Wenzhou, 1840–1940” (PhD dissertation, Brown University, 2010), Chapter 1.
4Vincent Goossaert, “1898: The Beginning of the End for Chinese Religion?” Journal of Asian Studies 65, no. 2 (2006): 307–335.
5Lo, “The Order of Local Things,” Chapter 5.
6See Paul R. Katz, Religion in China and Its Modern Fate (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2014), 52–56. See also Zhang Gang, Zhang Gang riji (Zhang Gang’s diaries) (Shanghai: Shanghai shehuikexueyuan chubanshe, 2003), 306–307 and Lo, “The Order of Local Things,” Chapter 5.
7These numbers are based on the “Religion” section of Minguo Rui’an Xian zhi gao, a local gazetteer compiled in the period 1924–1948. Out of 352 Buddhist temples and Daoist pavilions in the “Buddhism” entry of the “Religion” section in the gazetteer, 143 were reconstructed between 1900 and 1937 (the year marking the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War), with 129 during the period 1911 (the year of Xinhai Revolution that toppled the Qing empire)–1937 and 14 during the period 1900–1910. Sixty-two out of 609 communal temples in the “temple [miao]” entry were reconstructed between 1900 and 1937, with 62 during the period 1911–1937 and 10 during the period 1900–1910. See Rui’an Xian xiuzhiju, Rui’an Xian zhi gao (Draft gazetteer of Rui’an County), daziben (big character version) (Rui’an: Rui’an Xian xiuzhiju, 1946–1948), 7–45, 58–75.
8For the “temple-to-school” campaign in the late Qing, see Vincent Goossaert, “1898: The Beginning of the End for Chinese Religion?” For the campaign in the early Republican period, see Prasenjit Duara, “Knowledge and Power in the Discourse of Modernity: The Campaigns against Popular Religion in Early 20th Century China,” Journal of Asian Studies 50, no. 1 (1991): 75.
9Rui’an Xian xiuzhiju, Rui’an Xian zhi gao, daziben, 58–75.
10Ibid., volume 9: “Religion.”
11These numbers do not include the number of temples/churches in Xianyan, Li’ao, and Meitou—three religiously very important towns that were incorporated into the municipal area of Wenzhou Prefecture in 2001.
12These numbers perhaps only refer to those churches/temples that were still active at the time. See “Guanyu dangqian zongjiao huodong qingkuang de baogao” (Report on current religious activities), April 4, 1957, Rui’an City Archives 1-9-85: 65–68.
13In 2010, the city had 228 registered Buddhist temples. This number does not include the number of temples/churches in Xianyan, Li’ao, and Meitou.
14Mo Fayou, Wenzhou Jidujiao shi (History of Christianity in Wenzhou) (Hong Kong: Alliance Bible Seminary Press, 1998), 1–7.
15Xiaoxuan Wang, “Yixiang, guxiang, qiaoxiang: liudong de Wenzhou shehui—yige lishi de kaocha” (Foreign land, native land, adoptive land—a fluid Wenzhou society from historical perspective), in Jiangyi ji (Collected writings in pursuit of learning), eds. Chen Ruihuan and Wu Tianyue (Shanghai: Fudan daxue chubanshe, 2016), 1–14; Zhang Zhicheng, ed., Wenzhou huaqiao shi (History of overseas Wenzhounese) (Beijing: Jinri Zhongguo chubanshe, 2009); Philip Kuhn, Chinese among Others: Emigration in Modern Times (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009), 335–341.
16Mo Fayou, Wenzhou Jidujiao shi; Li Shizhong, “Wanqing jiaohui shili de qieru yu difang quanli geju de yanhua” (The intrusion of Christian churches and the evolution of local power dynamics in the late Qing), Shilin 5 (2005): 39–47; and Lo, “The Order of Local Things,” Chapter 3.
17For example, Tangxia and Xincheng are both in the plain areas, and were respectively the strongholds of the Methodist Church and the CIM. Mayu to the south of Feiyun River was the base of the Catholic Church. The CJIC had other competitors such as the Seventh-Day Adventist Church and later the Assembly.
18Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi (A history of Rui’an church), internal document, 1998, 6–9.
19Ibid., 10–11.
20Lo, “The Order of Local Things,” Chapter 3, especially 102–135.
21Lo, “The Order of Local Things,” Chapters 3 and 4; Li Shizhong, “Wanqing jiaohui shili de qieru yu difang quanli geju de yanhua”; Wang Lei, “Shangdi yu zuzong: Yongjia Xian Fenglinzhuang de Jidujiao, zongzu yu shequ zhengzhi (1860–1896)” (God and ancestors: Protestant churches, lineages, and communal politics in Fenglinzhuang, Yongjia County, 1860–1896) (MA thesis, East China Normal University, 2013).
22Chen Shangsheng, “Xiantan Xiang xiangzhang quanjia guizhu” (The whole family of Xiantan Township head converted). Xiaduo yuekan 1, no. 6 (1937): 36.
23Ibid.
24Lin Hongbin, “Wenzhou Aojiang Rui’an budao zhi jieguo” (The fruits of sermons in Aojiang and Rui’an of Wenzhou), Tongwenbao: Yesujiao jiating xinwen, 1550 (1933): 7.
25Ibid.
26A. H. Sharman, “Rural Evangelism in the Wenchow District,” in China Mission Year Book 1917 (Shanghai: The Christian Literature Society for China, 1917), 358–359.
27Ibid., 360.
28Ibid., 364.
29“Work in the Wenchow Prefecture (Chekiang Province),” China’s Millions (North American Edition) (Toronto: China Inland Mission, 1921), 86–87.
30Zhi Huaxin, ed., Wenzhou Jidujiao (Wenzhou Christianity) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang Sheng Jidujiao xiehui, 2000), 20.
31Zhu Yujing, “Guojia tongzhi, difang zhengzhi yu Wenzhou de Jidujiao” (State rule, local politics and Christianity in Wenzhou) (PhD dissertation, Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011), 76–77.
32Yu Guozhen, Zhongguo Yesujiao zilihui dagang (The charter of China Jesus Independent Church), 26. Cited by Zhu Jianzhong, “Cong Wenzhou kan chuantong de jicheng he chuangxin” (The inheritance and innovation of tradition from the vantage of Wenzhou), http://www.chinesetheology.com/ZhuJZh/WenZhouChurchesNTraditions.htm#_ftn17 (accessed on May 4, 2018).
33Wenzhou parish was promoted to Wenzhou diocese in March 1949.
34Cyprien Aroud, “Catechist Work in Wenchow,” Catholic Missions, 1917, 153. See also “Wenzhou jiaoqu de chuanjiao sishi” (Catechists of Wenzhou diocese). http://www.tzjwzjq.com/Look_History.aspx?MID=22 (accessed on May 4, 2018).
35Ying Fuk-Tsang, “Zhongguo Jidujiao de quyu fazhan: 1918, 1949, 2004” (The regional development of Protestant Christianity in China: 1918, 1949 and 2004), Hanyu Jidujiao xueshu lunping (Sino-Christian studies), 3: 171. Ying’s data come from new local gazetteers published by the local government.
36Rui’an Xian xiuzhiju, Rui’an Xian zhi gao (Republican Rui’an gazetteer), daziben, 1–6.
37Rui’an jiaohui, Rui’an jiaohui shi, 11.
38“Tangqu lishi” (Parish history), http://www.tzjwzjq.com/Look_History.aspx?MID=30 (accessed on November 20, 2019).
39Lo, “The Order of Local Things,” Chapter 2.
40Chan, Religious Trends in Modern China; Thomas David Dubois, The Sacred Village: Social Change and Religious Life in Rural North China (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2005); David A. Palmer, “Dao and Nation: Li Yujie—May Fourth Activist, Daoist Cultivator, and Redemptive Society Patriarch in Mainland China and Taiwan,” in Daoism in the Twentieth Century: Between Eternity and Modernity, eds. David A. Palmer and Xun Liu (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 173–195.
41Prasenjit Duara uses “redemptive societies” to refer to those syncretic religious movements in the twentieth centuries. See Prasenjit Duara, “The Discourse of Civilization and Pan-Asianism,” Journal of World History 12, no. 1 (2000): 117–126. In this book I use “salvationist religion,” suggested by David Palmer as an umbrella category to contain redemptive societies and traditional salvationist groups. Though both pursued self-salvation and held millenarian beliefs, they are significantly different, especially in ways of operation and proselytization, organizational structure, and theologies. For “salvationist religion,” see David Palmer, “Chinese Redemptive Societies and Salvationist Religion: Historical Phenomenon or Sociological Category?” Journal of Chinese Ritual, Theatre and Folklore 172 (2011): 21–72.
42Ibid.
43Longwan Qu shizhi bianzuan weiyuanhui and Longwan Qu zhi bianjibu, Longwan Qu zhi (Longwan District gazetteer) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2013), 458.
44Chen Murong et al., eds., Qingtian Xian zhi (Qingtian gazetteer) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 1990), 64; Yang Dianzhong et al., eds., Yueqing Xian gong’an zhi (A history of public security in Yueqing) (Beijing: Haiyan chubanshe, 1993), 34; Zhan Rujian et al., eds., Qingtian Xian gong’an zhi (History of public security in Qingtian County) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang renmin chubanshe, 2006), 176.
45Tan is literally an altar. Here it refers to a branch.
46It is unclear whether these names were self-referential or state-imposed labels. Most names of popular sects appearing in official documents of the late imperial period, according to Barend ter Haar, were just generic terms or labels. This discovery should apply to traditional salvationist groups in the twentieth century. See Barend J. ter Haar, The White Lotus Teachings in Chinese Religious History (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1992).
47“Pingyangkeng Qu fandong huidaomen qingkuang chubu diaocha zongjie baogao” (Concluding report on the preliminary investigation of reactionary societies, teachings and sects in Pingyangkeng District), October 30, 1952, Rui’an City Archives 45-2-4: 86–87. See also Zhan, Qingtian Xian gong’an zhi, 177–178.
48“Fandong Qixing hui cankao ziliao” (Reference materials on the counter-revolutionary Seven Stars Teaching), 1952, Wencheng County Archives 1-4-8: 56.
49Gregor Benton, Mountain Fires: The Red Army’s Three-Year War in South China, 1934–1938 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 209–233.
50Lo, “The Order of Local Things,” Chapter 5, especially 226–227 and 265–272.
51http://www.wzscnxx.com/Art/Art_74/Art_74_2087.aspx (accessed on May 4, 2018).
52“Zhongguo Jidujiao xundao gonghui Wenzhou jiaoqu Pingyang lianqu ge hui dengjishu” (The register of churches of the Pingyang affiliated district of the Methodist Church’s Wenzhou ecclesiastical district), July 24, 1954, Pingyang County Archives 10-6-100: 88–89. Lei’s sons listed in this document have the surname of Shi, which is Lei’s original surname.
53Shu Chengqian, Wushi nian jiaohui shenghuo huiyi (Memoirs of fifty years’ life in the church), internal reference materials (“neibu cankao ziliao”), 2002, Chapter 15.
54Rui’an City Archives 45-2-4: 83–89.
55Wencheng County Archives 1-4-8: 51, 55.
56Prasenjit Duara, Culture, Power and the State: Rural Society in North China, 1900–1942 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1988), Chapter 5; Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988).
57Lo, “The Order of Local Things,” 154–155 and Chapter 2.
58For a detailed history of the Big Sword Association, see Tao Dagong, ed., Dadao hui shimo (Cangnan Xian wenshi ziliao di qi ji) (A concise history of the Big Sword Association [Cangnan historical materials, volume 7]) (Cangnan: Cangnan Xian zhengxie wenshi ziliao weiyuanhui, 1992).