7
At the end of the Cultural Revolution, most communal temples in Rui’an were shut down or occupied, typically by state-owned institutions. Yet within a few years of the end of the Cultural Revolution, the situation had changed dramatically. In 1979, after being discontinued for more than a decade, the annual ritual of dragon boat racing resurfaced in a number of communes in Xincheng and in the suburban areas around the Rui’an county seat. The following year, local authorities noted that the ritual revival had spread throughout the plains, even to some communes where the tradition did not formerly exist. The number of dragon boats rose sharply from fewer than 40 to 157, more than four times higher than the previous year.1
Temples also returned to public life. In Mayu District alone, villagers reopened at least eighty village temples before 1983, seventeen of which were rebuilt and eleven of which were taken over from schools.2 In some village temples, it was not uncommon for “[workers to] set up seats for deities in the main hall where incense fire burns all day long, but the aisles on both sides are [still] classrooms where [one can hear] students loudly reading the textbook.”3 One might also see that “at one end [of a temple], artisans are carefully carving statues of divinities whereas at the other end, schoolteachers are intently grading student’s homework. They are face to face but do not interfere with each other.”4
The rapid revival of traditional activities in Wenzhou even caught the attention of officials in Beijing. The Policy Research Office of the Central Party Secretariat wrote in an internal report: “almost every village has rebuilt temples in six out of seven Wenzhou counties. . . . A large number of temples and ancestral halls, which during land reform had been turned into public facilities such as schools, factories, and hospitals, were forcibly seized back and rebuilt.”5 The same report also mentioned that the wave of ancestral hall reconstruction and genealogy compilation, starting in late 1980, had swept through all seven counties in Wenzhou by the spring of 1982.
These familiar scenes echo the time when schools first started to take over temples in China. The campaign to seize and convert religious properties began at the turn of the twentieth century and reached its climax in the 1950s under Communism. But this time the process was turned on its head. The massive reclamation and restoration of temples in the 1980s and 1990s were perhaps smaller in scale than the requisition of temple properties in the Republican and Maoist periods, but they carried with them a powerful symbolic meaning. The wave of temple reclamation was an ideological movement of sorts, mobilizing group actions and seeking to reshape the social and political order in local society.6 As communities reclaimed and reopened temples, they ushered in a new era for communal religion.
This chapter explores the significance and consequences of the wave of temple reclamation in Rui’an in the 1980s and 1990s. I begin with the institutional changes at the start of the reform era, including restitution policies, the collapse of the commune system, and the end of the command economy. The material described here reveals that new institutional environments opened up new possibilities, while also posing new challenges for the restitution of communal temples, particularly issues of political legitimacy. The chapter then looks at local communities’ attempts to cope with these challenges and the consequent proliferation of Elderly People Associations (laoren xiehui; EPAs). I argue that the rise of EPAs not only facilitated the revival of communal religion, but also breathed new life into traditional rural organizations in Rui’an.
Village Temples by the End of the Cultural Revolution
In the late stage of the Cultural Revolution, when local government was preoccupied with factional politics, the loosened social control in rural areas allowed some village communities to start renovating or rebuilding communal temples.7 But as Chapter 3 shows, temple renovation or reconstruction was not a widespread phenomenon at the time. Other communities may have planned to renovate or rebuild their temples but were intimidated by the potential political consequences and the extensive efforts that such an attempt would require. Any attempt to reopen temples, especially reclaiming a temple occupied by state-owned institutions, could easily be construed as a challenge to the political order imposed by the Communist government and could entail punishment.
Though the mass wave of temple reclamation and restoration was yet to come, local society in Rui’an, as elsewhere in the country, was experiencing significant changes at the end of 1970s that prefigured the precipitous dissolution of the collective order. Private business activities began to boom in Wenzhou, which was then still an impoverished region by national standards.8 “Study classes” (xuexiban)—makeshift centers for temporary detention—were packed with peddlers, smugglers, and profiteers (touji daoba fenzi), but were also frequented by Christian preachers, Buddhists, and other “superstition bosses” (mixin touzi).9
Starting in the early 1970s, more and more sojourners from Wenzhou had to travel elsewhere to make a living. Many found ways to leave the collective.10 They went as far as Yunnan, Xinjiang, and the Northeast, doing all sorts of small trades such as cotton quilting, shoe repairing, beekeeping, or peddling cheap wares. The people who stayed behind also often had their side businesses. They set up private handicraft workshops and small factories, many of which were under the umbrella of collective enterprises, often with the tacit acquiescence of cadres.11
In the meantime, the household responsibility system (lianchan chengbao zerenzhi) quickly spread through Rui’an before it was in any way officially sanctioned by the county government. It was in this climate of loosening social control, as the collective order started to fall apart, that village temple reclamation emerged and swept through all of Wenzhou, in a reawakening of traditional community identity.
Property Rights and the Temple Reclamation Wave
When the Cultural Revolution officially ended, in the spirit of “correcting wrongs and returning things to normal” (boluan fanzheng), the government issued new policies on private real estate (such as houses belonging to overseas Chinese) and real estate belonging to “religious organizations.” None of the boluan fanzheng initiatives regarding property or religious policy was devised to benefit sites of “superstition” such as village temples. On the contrary, Document No. 19 even singled out the task of suppressing “superstition.” Yet these new policies created a tense atmosphere that motivated villagers to seek the return and restoration of temples.
When villagers saw the government granting churches the right to reopen and intervening in the restitution of church properties occupied by collective institutions, they raised grievances with local cadres about the unequal treatment of different religious groups. One county official complained, “[Christians] were happy that you helped reopen churches. But if you did not allow the reopening of the niangnianggong [“palace of the princess,” a local term for village temples], people would be mad at you, and [even] act against you. [It was] raucous . . . [we] really don’t want to deal with this situation.”12
Because of the obvious disparity between the government’s treatment of churches and village temples, non-Christians frequently challenged local cadres about the unfairness of state policy. The only answer cadres could give was to tie temples to illegal superstition and churches to legal religion. But non-Christians were not convinced.
When the government forcibly demolished a village temple in Mayu Town, villagers raised four “could not understands” (xiangbutong). Two of them complained: “Catholics in the brigade wrote reports [to the government] asking for the removal of the rice factory and the restitution of the Catholic Church. The United Front department sent people to comfort them. Yet the village temple is treated as inferior. We could not understand. . . . The constitution stipulates ‘religious freedom.’ Why aren’t we allowed to believe in niangniang? We could not understand.”13
Even local cadres sometimes questioned the fairness of the religious policy in front of superior officials who asked them to stay away from “superstition” and carry out the directive to destroy temples. Facing direct criticism and pressure from Christians and non-Christians alike, many grassroots cadres were also aggrieved by the new religious policy. “Yesu (Protestants) and tianzhu (Catholics) are the worst headache. Yet they spread all over the place unchecked. Are pusa (local deities) supposed to be demolished only because they are mute? Yesu and tianzhu clamor all the time. But we cannot do anything to them. People are saying that we, the Communist Party, only bully honest people!”14 Some cadres complained and questioned why “believing in fo (local deities, literally Buddha) is inferior to believing in Jesus?” and why “the homegrown (guochande) is inferior to the imported?”15
If new policies aroused the ire of villagers and consequently their passion for temple activities, the dissolution of the commune system—followed by a series of other institutional changes—gave villagers what they believed to be legitimate reasons to engage in temple reclamation and restoration.
The dissolution of the commune system began with the proliferation of the household responsibility system. This new system allowed individual households to sign contracts with their villages and become responsible for their own production profits and losses. Official records show that by February 1981, most of the brigades in Rui’an (9,617 of 12,349, or about 77.3 percent) had spontaneously adopted the household responsibility system without the authorization of upper levels of government.16 The central government formally endorsed the household responsibility system a year later in January 1982, when it issued the “minutes of the national rural work conference” (quanguo nongcun gongzuo huiyi jiyao). By then the household responsibility system had already been adopted in 95 percent of brigades in Rui’an.
The widespread adoption of the household responsibility system was followed by the formal abolishment of the commune system. In the new constitution, also in 1982, the central government stipulated the establishment of town and township governments and village committees in rural areas as entities separate from the organs of the collective economy on a local level. This provision ended the people’s communes. Deprived of their political function as a grassroots institution crucial to the organization and implementation of communal economic planning, they could hardly function as they did during the collectivization period.
The breakdown of the commune system provided a framework for the rapidly emerging quest for temple reclamation and restoration to be positioned as a battle to win rights over real estate (chanquan) historically belonging to communities. A letter from self-appointed representatives of the Jiuli area,17 Xincheng nicely encapsulates this reasoning. Villages in Jiuli were historically the joint owners of Jiuli Temple (jiuli miao). The temple was occupied by the Shangwang division of the Xincheng Supply-and-Sale Cooperative since the 1950s. In their letter to the Rui’an county headquarters of the sale-and-supply cooperative asking for the temple’s return in 1989, the representatives wrote:
Jiuli Temple has long been a public site collectively owned by several thousands of households in our “area” (difang). . . . After liberation, the government uniformly claimed that temples are owned by all the people [of the nation], but this was just rhetoric for the sake of the overall interests [of the country] and the government never went through any [formal] procedures. During the collectivization period, agricultural cooperatives, supply-and-sale cooperatives, and credit cooperatives were integrated into one. [Since supply-and-sale co-ops] became a commune enterprise, we temporarily lent Jiuli Temple to the [Shangwang] supply-and-sale co-op to carry on the business of [managing] agricultural materials and everyday supplies. The nature of the various cooperatives has altered given the current development and situation. In addition, temples elsewhere have been restored to their former appearance. We in the Jiuli area only had one temple and one palace (yi gong yi miao). Without exception, we should also get them back and let the people of the whole area share [them].18
As the letter makes clear, both the temple’s change of ownership after 1949 and the temple’s occupation by the supply-and-sale co-op during the collectivization era were state impositions with which the community had no choice but to comply. Since the commune system collapsed, arrangements related to the commune had to be straightened out. In other words, the supply-and-sale co-op’s occupation of Jiuli Temple was no longer legitimate.
When people dared to request the return and reopening of temples under Mao, their requests could easily be construed as attempts at “feudal restoration” (fengjian fubi) or signs of counterrevolutionary involvement. The same request in the 1980s, now couched as a claim to property rights, might still be turned down as a “restoration of feudal superstition.” This is precisely how the government and occupying entities opposed a number of such requests. However, it was becoming increasingly impractical to intimidate or punish people simply by using coercive measures, as the government had done during the Mao era, particularly as the rhetoric of class struggle was dissipating and the government made economic development its first priority. Furthermore, disputes over property rights were not sporadic cases, but a ubiquitous phenomenon occurring all over Wenzhou. As the government attempted to defuse the hostility toward it in local society, this, too, made coercive measures impractical.
Confronted with repeated requests and even direct encroachment from local communities, many institutions occupying temple buildings found themselves in a tricky situation. They had gained the right to use village temples under extraordinary circumstances, when political campaigns forced local communities to comply. But their occupation of village temples was most often a temporary measure designed to facilitate the collective economy and commune system under Mao. The government never passed legislation to give them permanent ownership of occupied religious buildings.19 So when these occupying institutions were faced with the daily presence of protesters and repeated requests for the temples’ return, they had trouble justifying their occupancy in legal terms. They could, and often did, simply ignore these requests without demonstrating the legitimacy of their use of temple buildings, but doing so only gave villagers an excuse to forcefully retake them. Indeed, some local residents moved into former temples without negotiating with the occupying institutions, or in some cases even demolished the buildings on temple sites and built build new temples there—scenarios bearing an eerie similarity to the forcible expropriation of religious sites in the 1950s and 1960s, but reversing the roles of defender and attacker.
With the dissolution of the commune system and the decline of the planned economy, the relationship between the government and the collective institutions occupying temples was also changing. Among the most common occupants of village temples, supply-and-sale co-ops faced the most delicate challenge. These co-ops bought agricultural products and sold everyday supplies during the collectivization period. But starting in the early 1980s, policy changes and competition from private business meant that the co-ops no longer had a monopoly on agricultural purchase and consumption. Moreover, they had to deal with pressure from the central government to restructure their organization from nominal state-owned enterprises to real collective businesses serving the goal of economic development.
The county grain department was another major occupying presence, and it too was undergoing a structural decline under the new economic regime. While grain remained a key concern for the Chinese government, peasants were becoming less dependent on the grain department due to a series of policy changes in the 1980s. From the start of the reform period in Zhejiang, the government first decreased the grain procurement quota (1979–1981), then fixed it for three years (1981–1984). Then, in 1985, the central government formally abolished the unified purchase-and-sale policy (tonggou tongxiao) that had existed for more than thirty years and replaced it with a contracted procurement system.20 With these changes in place, the government no longer needed the grain department to forcefully enforce agricultural production quotas. Peasants became less dependent on it, and it lost its iron grip on the rural economy.
With their role in rapid decline, occupying entities of the decaying collective economy found that the county government was much less motivated to defending their interests than it had been under Mao. When forced to surrender numerous properties in the 1980s, the supply-and-sale co-op found itself without much government support. A representative of the Rui’an City Supply-and-Sale Co-op even co-drafted a proposal with representatives of the government’s grain and education departments for a 1995 meeting of the people’s political consultative committee, urging city leaders and relevant departments “to take forceful measures” in dealing with “the loss of state-owned and collective assets.”21 Under Mao, each of these institutions was crucial to local governance. They would not have had to go through the people’s political consultative committee—a relatively weak platform in political affairs—to express their grievances. But the economy had changed, and with it the power balance throughout rural Wenzhou.
Temples Restored: A Political Rollercoaster and a Crisis in Legality
As new property legislation came into effect, and as occupying entities retreated from rural life, followers of communal religion were in a fundamentally different position than they had been during the 1950s and 1960s. Yet in spite of these changes, the restitution of village temples never turned out to be an easy affair. Local communities making claims for temple return were dogged by the label of “superstition” and the illegal status of village temples, which forced them into an inferior position in their interactions with the local government.
Due to the complex circumstances surrounding different temples, the restitution of village temples took a variety of forms. In cases where the temples had been left unoccupied or torn down, the task at hand was to renovate or rebuild the temple without needing to evict its occupants, and there were fewer disputes over property rights. However, in many cases, temple buildings or sites were still occupied, and communities first had to seek their return.
The return of an entire temple complex could be a time-consuming affair. When the Universal Salvation Palace (tongji gong) in the Rui’an county seat was restored to its religious role in 1993, the occupying entity—a lock factory—initially returned only the third of five rows of buildings in the temple complex. Local communities only obtained the return of the remaining buildings in the first decade of the 2000s, when a great number of collective and state-owned enterprises (like the lock factory) fell apart, and the local government further loosened its policy regarding communal temples.22
In some cases, the temples were not returned, but the occupants agreed to pay compensation in the form of cash, land, or both, and the communities concerned were thus able to rebuild their temples in a different location. Ye Pan Hall (ye pan tang) in Xingguang Brigade, Xincheng, was given to “five guarantee households” (wubaohu) as housing during land reform.23 Xincheng District Public Health Center then “borrowed” (jieyong) the temple in 1962 with the permission of the district and commune governments. In 1980, a group of elderly men attempted to take over the old houses of Ye Pan Hall to use as a “superstition site” (as the government described it), reportedly invoking their rights to “religious freedom.” While the health center dismissed the men’s claims as an absurd request of uneducated folk, it was more difficult for them to dismiss the Xingguang Brigade government, which by then also claimed ownership rights to Ye Pan Hall. After the health center filed complaints, the Xincheng District Government conducted an investigation and negotiation, and finally recognized the health center’s ownership rights to Ye Pan Hall. Nevertheless, the district government asked the health center to provide Xingguang Brigade with RMB 5,000 in compensation because the center has expanded to land that did not belong to the original Ye Pan Hall.24
In this case, the transition in property rights was comparatively smooth. Yet government records show that in many other instances, property disputes over former communal temples resulted in a tense, sometimes even violent process, with no positive outcome for the claimants. Some temple reclamation efforts ultimately failed after years of stalemate and clashes with occupying institutions and local officials. Temple buildings or sites were not returned, nor did the claimants receive compensation to forgo their property rights.
One such case concerns Rock Head Palace (yantou gong) in Yantou Brigade, Mayu. The temple is dedicated to the worship of Princess Chen Jinggu (Chen Shisi niangniang in local dialect), a popular goddess on the southeastern coast of China. After 1949, the government gave the entire compound to the Mayu District Elementary School. Then in the spring of 1980, a small group of local women, led by the mother of brigade head Wu Shoukui, took over parts of the temple compound,25 with the backing of village cadres and the assistance of other locals. The women made renovations and put up new statues of divinities, turning the Palace back into an active temple.
The Mayu Office of the Rui’an Education Bureau felt that the Mayu Commune and the Mayu District Government did not provide adequate support to protect the former temple from being partially reclaimed, and took their complaint to the county government. On October 4, county executive Peng Kexing and other county and Mayu District officials went to Rock Head Palace and forcefully destroyed the religious facilities. Then, in an act of retaliation said to have been instigated by temple leaders and village cadres, some brigade youths smashed up some of the school’s walls, tables, and windows in the name of defending brigade possessions. The school had to temporarily suspend classes.
The situation only settled down after multiple mediations by the district party committee. Subsequently, the school avoided direct confrontations with the brigade, and villagers once again set up religious facilities in the temple.26
But two years later, the situation changed dramatically once again. On January 22, 1983, after reading an internal report on social and religious issues in Wenzhou, CCP Central Committee Secretary Hu Yaobang sent a special handwritten directive (pishi) to the Zhejiang Party Committee asking them to immediately investigate conspicuous social issues in Wenzhou. In order to carry out Hu Yaobang’s instructions, local authorities launched the biggest anti-superstition campaign since the Cultural Revolution, which shut down hundreds of temples and destroyed hundreds of statues of divinities over the following months.27
The Rui’an County Government chose Rock Head Palace as a major target of the campaign. On January 28, the Mayu District Government dispatched a group of fully armed police officers to Rock Head Palace, along with district officials and county court officers. The police worked unceasingly through the night to tear down the temple and immediately erected a two-level house in its place the following day.
Before the action was carried out, the government apparently convened all the brigade cadres and warned them not to support or instigate any counter-actions. The county government later praised and promoted the attack on Rock Head Palace as a model act of anti-superstition action in response to the special directive from Hu Yaobang.
Oddly, villagers told me that on the very day when Rock Head Palace was razed to the ground, people were able to relocate statues of the goddess and some of their other religious items to the Lords of the Two Offices Palace (erfuye dian), a smaller temple in the same village that was not targeted for demolition. The statue of Lord Yang in Rock Head Palace was also carried to the Lords of the Two Offices Palace. The goddess Chen Jinggu took over the Lords of the Two Offices Palace, and shortly thereafter the village government sold several houses next to the new Rock Head Palace to accommodate more worshippers. In 1997, the new Rock Head Palace was completely rebuilt, with the village government donating a theatre stage. Immediately after the completion of the new temple, villagers registered it with the city Daoist association. Since then, the temple manager told me when I visited the facilities in 2012, the Daoist association and the city religious bureau have selected Rock Head Palace as a model temple (mofan gongguan) almost every year (see Photo 7.1).
Photo 7.1. The meeting room of the Rock Head Palace displays many prizes from the authorities and the city’s Daoist Association (2012).
Source: Author.
Rock Head Palace in many ways exemplifies an issue faced by all local communities in the early 1980s: the issue of legality. The continued existence of temples that had been returned or rebuilt could not be assured because it went against the juridical framework set out by the central government. Framing the quest for temple restitution within the rhetoric of property rights imbued it with a certain level of legitimacy, but the use of temple sites for communal religious activities remained illegal. Village temples were still attacked as a form of “superstition,” though the propaganda was not at the same high pitch as it had been under Mao.28 The continued stigmatization of communal temple activities, along with periodic crackdowns, significantly affected the recovery of communal temple activities. Villagers certainly could and did rebuild shrines and temples, but they could not set aside concerns about the future of their temples until they found a legitimate way to shield everyday religious life from interference.
The temple revival movement was shaped by these legal ambiguities. Temple reclamation and restoration were typically initiated in the name of elderly villagers. The high status of elderly people in traditional Chinese patriarchy may have lent them greater authority and made such actions less subversive in the eyes of local officials, to ward off the threat of political retaliation. Senior village groups in Rui’an and Wenzhou dated back at least as far as the Mao era,29 but they could only operate in a loose form due to the difficult political environment at the time. Any attempts to further institutionalize and formalize these societies without government authorization could be labeled as a politically motivated action and therefore could face serious consequences. Thus, however they portrayed themselves, societies and ad hoc organizations created to fight for temple restitution were all caught up in the issue of legitimacy, and the problem came up again and again when they represented villages in negotiations with the government and the collective organizations occupying temples.
Groups fighting for temple restitution could easily be dismissed as a small handful of people (yixiaocuo ren)—in the rhetoric of the Chinese government—who were engaged in a deliberate subterfuge to restore feudal superstition.30 Local communities therefore urgently needed a legal institutional framework for temple restitution. In this context, the EPAs suddenly emerged in the villages of Rui’an and the wider Wenzhou region beginning in the mid-1980s. In the decades that followed, it was EPAs that sustained the existence and development of village temples.
The Rise of the Elderly People Associations and Village Religion
The EPAs were originally established to encourage self-government and self-support among the elderly after the breakdown of collective institutions. During the Mao era, collectives were responsible for providing support for elderly villagers, but when these disintegrated in the late 1970s and early 1980s, many senior village residents could no longer adequately provide for themselves, especially those who were too old to farm. Some reportedly sued their children for failing to support them.31
Thus, starting in the early reform era, the central government promoted organizations for the elderly in the countryside as one measure to address the problem of an aging rural population lacking adequate support. Other measures included the introduction of the pension system and the construction of nursing homes.32 Following China’s participation in the International Conference on Aging in 1982, the government also created a permanent national committee on aging issues. From then on, provincial and lower levels of government throughout China started to set up institutions for the elderly at a local level.33 The state planned the EPAs to create a sense of community and to allow elderly people to take care of each other. To show its support, the central government also asked local governments, from provincial to village governments, to provide space and funding for EPAs.34
The timely appearance of the EPAs provided a convenient platform for the temple restitution movement, equipped with new narratives and a sustainable organizational form that could justify actions to retrieve and restore village temples. In temple restitution claims, villagers soon replaced abstract self-descriptions such as “the elderly people of our village/place” (ben cun/difang laoren) or “the entire village” (quancun) with “the village EPA” (cun laoren xiehui, also abbreviated as cun laoxie). They repackaged the mission of resurrecting traditional ritual sites as an effort to find space for elderly people’s activities.
In a petition for the return of a Lord Chen Temple, representatives of Zhupaitou, a semi-urban neighborhood, wrote: “That we want our temple to be returned is not so we can carry out the superstitious activities of burning incense and worshipping deities but to have a place for elderly people’s activities. This is indisputable and should be supported by all of society.”35 The new narrative framed the call for temple restitution into a harmless request for space to house the apolitical activities of the elderly, drawing on state rhetoric to forestall accusations of a revival of “superstition.”
These claims did not invent the concept of the temple as a public recreational space, but rather revived it from previous eras. Village temples historically were and still are the most important place for senior villagers to rest and drink tea. The long-standing label of “superstition” imposed on village temples since the turn of the twentieth century had overshadowed their use as a multifunctional public space, but the appearance of the EPAs allowed the concept to resurface in public narratives, as it was appropriated to give a legitimate cover for their main function as a ritual space.
The narrative of providing space and support for elderly residents added a crucial element to the existing ideas that local communities could legitimately invoke in dealing with occupying institutions. Previously, two main ideas had dominated the quest for the return or reconstruction of temples. One was the discourse of property rights, which, though viable in some cases, encountered significant government interference and resistance from occupying institutions. The other set was the idea of temples as monuments of sorts, such as “historical relics” (lishi wenwu) or “revolutionary sites” (geming yizhi), that needed to be preserved. Getting them recognized as historical sites, however, meant dealing with time-consuming procedures at various levels of government.
The rhetoric of the EPAs provided a narrative that was more compelling and more legitimate in the eyes of the state than either historical preservation or the tenuous claim to religious property rights. Every village was eligible to create its own EPA and thereby demand space for its activities. To register an EPA, moreover, was an easy process. Because the central government considered the EPA to be part of the “old-age enterprise” (laoling shiye), the registration of a local EPA was placed under the jurisdiction of the local old-age commission (laolingwei). Thus, communities could avoid the rather complex procedures required for the approval of other types of civil associations, which were attached to the local civil affairs bureau. As the old-age commission’s only purpose was to promote support for the elderly, it lacked administrative oversight and had no incentives to regulate or control the boom in local EPAs.36
A major difference between the EPAs and the elderly people’s organizations that came before them lay in their legal status. From the time when the EPAs first appeared in the early 1980s, they had the status of a state-sanctioned civic association. Local communities engaged in temple restitution could not entirely avoid the suspicion that they planned to conduct superstitious activities, but no one could deny the legitimacy of the EPA, which was endorsed and promoted by the central government itself. The EPA absorbed most, if not all, preexisting elderly people’s organizations, such as those attached to tea pavilions, elderly people’s pavilions, and those providing ritual and burial services for the elderly. It supplied a convenient yet sustainable organizational form that fundamentally altered and accelerated village temple revival.
Did local officials believe in the EPAs’ co-option by villagers engaged in temple reclamation efforts? For a time, they did. County officials and rural and urban cadres had been supportive of the organization and encouraged villages to create local EPAs. Indeed, assigning former temples to the EPA allowed local officials to get around a tiresome and commonplace occurrence which they called “demolish today, rebuild tomorrow” (jintian chaimiao, mingtian jianmiao).37 That is, immediately after officials damaged or demolished temples facilities, these would be rebuilt or repaired by locals. The same cycle could be repeated every time local officials were ordered to destroy sites of superstition.
Local officials were constantly questioned about the fairness of religious policies, and the questions were sometimes mixed with insults and even physical attacks. Urban and rural cadres whose family members worshipped local deities could face family pressure to allow temples to be reclaimed. In some cases, cadres themselves feared divine retaliation and respected religious taboos.
The emergence of the EPAs gave grassroots cadres a legitimate way of dealing with temples without incurring retaliation from upper levels of government or the wrath of local communities. Instead of destroying and shutting down temples, they could “remodel [them] into Elderly People’s Pavilions (laorenting), carry out normal recreational activities, and enrich the latter years of the elderly.”38 Cadres were certainly aware that Elderly People’s Pavilions and Old-Age Palaces would soon house the worship of local deities. Yet the coexistence of religious sites and EPA activities gave them room to accommodate government directives while avoiding the “demolish today, rebuild tomorrow” phenomenon and other conflicts with local communities.
Because the leadership of EPAs consisted mainly of veterans and retired cadres,39 local officials hoped to use them as intermediaries in dealing with village issues such as controlling and curbing the spread of village temples and communal rituals. A report by the Rui’an Cultural Bureau in 1982 depicted the EPA of Xiyi Village, Meitou, as the defender of, and contributor to, a “socialist spiritual civilization.”40 The Xiyi EPA, it was said, helped destroy the village’s dragon boat by sawing it into pieces, citing the fact that villagers rowing in this dragon boat had previously had fights with dragon boat teams from other villages. Not only this, they also persuaded a group of elderly women who had previously collected some funds to restore the Great Yin Palace not to spend the money on re-erecting statues of divinities but to instead set up the palace site as a “cultural activity room” (wenhua huodongshi) for young people. In a 1986 document, the county government explicitly stressed that “letting elderly people fully exert their special influence” should be a central strategy in regulating that year’s dragon boat racing.41
EPAs were certainly not just tools of the government, as these official reports seemed to suggest—and local officials were aware of this. The elderly people who assisted the government by sawing up dragon boats or destroying temples and shrines were often the same people who initiated ritual and temple activities. Actions like destroying dragon boats or ritual sites are better interpreted as a strategic retreat or a temporary compromise. Once an anti-superstition initiative drew to a close, it was quite common for the same group of people to build new dragon boats or sites of worship. However, given the importance of EPA leaders in temple and ritual activities, local cadres had to rely on them to perform a double game that seemed designed to fool only superior levels of government.
Since the mid-1980s, EPAs have proliferated in Rui’an and the Wenzhou region.42 In Rui’an, local communities started to establish and register their EPAs with the government around 1985. Within a few years, EPAs became popular throughout the region. In the Tangxia District alone, more than 85 percent of all villages (115 out of 135) had established and registered local EPAs by the end of 1987.43 There are numerous records of the construction of “latter-year palaces” (wannian gong) in government publications after 1985, some of which were built on former village temple sites. In 1990, the Taoshan District Government granted permission for the construction of a latter-year palace in Xitu Village on the site of the village’s Xidian Palace (xidian gong), which had previously been demolished or abandoned.
The term “latter-year palace” refers to a type of cultural center for elderly people that is omnipresent throughout rural and urban China. Similar centers go by different names such as “old-age palace” (laoniangong), “activity room for the elderly” (laoren huodongshi), or “activity center for the elderly” (laonian huodong zhongxin), and so on. These old-age centers were not created merely as a disguise for village temples. Rather, they allowed people to embed ritual space within recreational space and therefore secure its continued existence. In most instances, old-age centers serve a dual purpose as recreational and ritual sites. Sometimes a temple and old-age center are housed on different floors of the same building. In other instances, they are located in separate buildings close by. In Rui’an and Wenzhou today, old-age centers are practically a synonym for village temples.
Elderly People Associations in Contemporary Village Politics
Three decades on, the EPA has firmly established itself in the villages of Rui’an and Wenzhou. Local EPAs have taken on their mandated responsibility of providing old-age support, turning themselves into financial caregivers through sustained economic planning. In Rui’an, almost every village EPA initially received some financial support from the village government. This came in various forms, such as a share of management fees for local markets, a plot of farmland, or a house. Later, as the village economy flourished, many village EPAs—especially those in Xincheng and Tangxia, two of the wealthiest districts in the semi-urban areas around the county seat—were allocated more properties or privileges as a source of income.44
Some EPAs have actively expanded their scope of business to maximize revenue or acquire more assets. The EPA of Yantou Village, for instance, owns a plot of land that was provided by the village. The EPA later helped take back the building that served as a movie theatre for the town, which had previously been a temple, and persuaded the village government to give it to them. They redecorated the building to host commercial song and dance performances, which became an important source of revenue for their association. They also revived a festival fair held on the twenty-third of the first lunar month in the town center of Mayu, which is now mainly for the sale of merchandise. They receive the organizing fees from the fair. Each year Yantou Village EPA has more than 200,000 RMB total income.45
Financially independent EPAs are more and more frequently involved in village affairs other than old-age support and religion, in part due to the weakening of the two most powerful village institutions: the village party committee and the village residents committee. Following the disintegration of collectives and the widespread adoption of the household responsibility system, the central government abolished the agricultural tax (nongyeshui) in rural China in 2003. Thus, the village residents committee is no longer in charge of regulating agricultural production and collecting taxes on behalf of the government, and its power has inevitably waned.
In Rui’an, the high mobility of some villagers no longer engaged in agricultural production makes it difficult for the village residents committee to convene a village meeting or even a meeting of village representatives. The corruption of village cadres, especially in construction, land issues, and village elections since the mid-1990s, has aggravated the relationship between village leaders and civilians, further damaging the legitimacy of village government.
The village party committee has also lost its former importance. In recent years, it has barely been active in some villages, and the same goes for its offshoot organizations, the youth league and the women’s association.46
Amid the changing power dynamics of village life, the EPA has further inserted itself into village affairs. Local EPAs in Rui’an are commonly involved in charity and public works. Projects such as the cleaning and maintenance of rivers, roads, and public facilities were often entrusted to them. During natural disasters or other difficult events, the EPA in the Rui’an area and beyond would respond to government calls for action by mobilizing its members to donate funds to the affected families.
EPAs also served as a liaison between village cadres and residents, facilitating the implementation of administrative matters such as birth control and funeral reform. Village cadres needed the assistance of EPAs in mediating domestic issues or inter-village disputes. Also, it is not rare for EPAs, village residents committees and village party committees to be housed in the same building, suggesting EPAs’ proximity to the village’s power center (Photo 7.2).
Photo 7.2. The Elderly People Association in Hushi Village, near the center of Gaolou District, is set in a village temple (2012). The signs on the door indicate that the temple is also the offices of the village’s government and party committee.
Source: Author.
The greater presence of EPAs in village affairs manifests in their interactions with incumbent village cadres. Because many EPA leaders are party members, they still attend village party committee meetings. Being embedded in the committee affords the EPA a measure of participation in village governance, such as providing consultation on the village economy and infrastructure projects, or handling some village affairs—though this sometimes results in tension between EPA leaders and incumbent cadres.47 The EPA has even allegedly interfered in elections in a handful of villages in Shacheng and Tianhe, Longwan District, in Wenzhou municipality. A 2007 proposal to the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Wenzhou to strengthen the regulation of the EPAs described tensions and conflicts between local EPAs and two village committees (the village party committee and the village residents committee) as the most prominent problem regarding the EPAs.48 Statistical data reveal that more than one-quarter of EPAs in Rui’an, Yueqing, Ouhai, and Longwan in Wenzhou municipality are on bad terms with their local village party committee and village residents committee. Though these figures may or may not be accurate, they reveal a difficult dimension of the relationship between the EPAs and village authorities.49
In recent decades, EPAs have taken on an increasingly prominent role as grassroots political pioneers, whether fighting the corruption of village cadres or encroachments on village land by outside parties.50 The rapid urbanization of China since the mid-1990s has exacerbated corruption in Wenzhou and elsewhere. Across the country, village cadres have sought to profit from land acquisition and construction projects to benefit themselves, allies, family, and friends. As the EPA is the most important organization in village life apart from the village party committee and the village residents committee, villagers often rely on it to defend their rights. For instance, since 2009, the EPA in Zhuangquan Village, Longwan District, repeatedly filed reports with various relevant offices about village cadres who embezzled compensation fees for land requisition until the cadres were prosecuted.51
In other cases, EPAs served as a channel through which villagers expressed discontent with the government, especially when village cadres, due to their position, are reluctant to appear in person. There are a growing number of cases where EPAs are involved in organizing collective petitions and protests over land-related disputes. In one recent incident, the EPA in Zhongxing Village, Haicheng Street (formerly Meitou Town, Rui’an), in the Longwan District of Wenzhou municipality, sent several dozens of elderly people to hold a protest about issues related to land acquisition. The protest occurred in front of the Wenzhou municipal government during the first world Wenzhounese diaspora symposium of 2013. In November of that same year, they sent twenty-eight elderly people to Beijing to make a petition.52
Conclusion
The temple restitution movement of the 1980s was a highly symbolic moment in several ways. Since 1898, the Qing, Nationalist, and Communist governments had been engaged in the destruction and expropriation of communal temples. Now, local communities were able to seek the return of traditional ritual sites on a massive scale.
The movement for temple return capitalized on the disintegration of collective institutions and the weakening of the planned economy to reclaim sites that had been expropriated by public enterprises and organizations. Reversing the expropriation of ritual space, urban and rural residents taking over temple sites ushered in a new era for communal religion.
This was also a time of reinvention in the social life of villages. The wave of temple reclamation in the 1980s was not just about religion. It occurred as a social response to a larger issue: the instability of property rights during decollectivization. In the post-Mao era, because land was not privatized, the debate about property rights has mainly centered on land reallocation, usufruct, and agricultural and economic development under a regime of common property rights.53 Beyond agriculture and the economy, unstable property rights have prompted a crucial transformation in the politics and organization of village life.
The co-option and repackaging of EPAs as a proxy for temple reclamation allowed local residents in Rui’an to reinvent communal religion, circumventing the problem of legality and securing a stable existence for territorial temples. However, local EPAs have grown beyond their early role as a cover for religious activities. As they grow socially and economically, drawing retired cadres and other village elites, they are moving toward the center of village politics. There are echos of imperial times, as ritual organizations once more take on a pivotal role in village life.
1“Guanyu hualongzhou de dongtai” (Current situation of dragon boat racing), March 27, 1981, Rui’an City Archives 29-33-5: 45.
2“Mayu Qu quanmian shaochu fengjian mixin huodong changsuo” (Thoroughly eliminating feudal superstition activity sites), March 18, 1983, Rui’an City Archives: 1-31-38: 18. Schools of various levels had been a major, if not the largest, occupant of temples and monasteries, most of which were village temples. As statistics indicate, schools were using 270 temples and monasteries in 1970. See Rui’an Shi jiaoyu weiyuanhui jiaoyu zhi bianzhuanzu, ed., Rui’an jiaoyu zhi (Rui’an education history) (Nanchang: Jiangxi renmin chubanshe, 1992), 275.
3Rui’an City Archives: 1-31-38:18.
4Ibid.
5See the report: “Wenzhou nongcun shehui zhian yu dangfeng buzheng de yanzhong qingkuang” (The serious situations of public security and incorrect Party ethos in rural areas of the Wenzhou region). It was published in Qingkuang jianbao, January 21, 1983, 2-7. Qingkuang jianbao is an internal journal edited by the Policy Research Office of the Central Party Secretariat.
6For a study that compares religious revival in China since late 1970s to a social movement, see David Palmer, “Religiosity and Social Movements in China: Divisions and Multiplications,” in Social Movements in China and Hong Kong: The Expansion of Protest Space, eds. Gilles Guiheux and Khun Eng Kuah-Pearce (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2009), 257–282.
7Yu Binghui, “Zhengzhi, jingji, shehui: dui Wenzhou moshi de zaikaocha” (Politics, economy, society: a revisit to the Wenzhou model) Zhongguo nongcun guancha 2 (1988): 11–12.
8Average income for rural residents in Wenzhou had never exceeded RMB 60 before 1978, which is far lower than the national average income of RMB 133 as of 1978. See Zhongguo shehuizhuyi yanjiuyuan malie yanjiusuo diaochazu, “Yitiao juyou Zhongguo tese de fazhan shehuizhuyi nongye de xinluzi—Zhejiang Wenzhou nongcun diqu diaocha baogao” (A Chinese-character new way of socialist agricultural development—an investigational report on rural areas in the Wenzhou region of Zhejiang), Makesizhuyi yanjiu 2 (1984): 288.
9Interview with Buddhist leader Po Yiha, May 15, 2013. See also Wenzhou Protestant leader Zheng Datong’s experience in the study class. See Zheng Datong, Mengfu zhi lu—Jidu li shiyi de rensheng (The path of blessing—poetic life in Christ) (Hong Kong: Xundao weili zhongxin, 2010,) 62–83.
10Interview with Zou Zeiyi, May 12, 2013. People would pay a certain amount of money to the collective. The latter then would either buy grains from the black market or hire other people to farm the land of those who left.
11Yu, “Zhengzhi, jingji, shehui,” 13.
12Zhu 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), 120.
13Rui’an City Archives 66-35-4: 140.
14Rui’an City Archives 1-31-38: 25.
15“Rui’an Xian Mayu quwei guanche Yaobang tongzhi pishi: xindong xunsu, xiaoguo xianzhu” (Mayu District Government of Rui’an County implemented the instruction of comrade Yaobang: the action was swift and the effect was remarkable), March 22, 1983, Rui’an City Archives 1-31-36: 12–22.
16Zhonggong Rui’an shiwei dangwei yanjiushi, ed., Zhongguo Gongchandang Rui’an lishi dashiji 1949–1999 (A chronicle of the Chinese Communist Party in Rui’an 1949–1999) (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 2001), 106.
17Difang literally means area. A difang here refers to a geographical area that is roughly equal to the center of a town[ship] and surrounding villages.
18“Guanyu shouhui Xincheng Qu Jiuli miao de baogao” (Report on retrieving Jiuli Temple of Xincheng District), August 15, 1989, Rui’an City Archives 25-24-38: 37–39.
19The Land Reform Law did not stipulate to seize and distribute real properties of religious organizations. Temples and churches were not included in what ought to be confiscated (muoshou) and expropriated (zhengshou) for they “usually belong to public (gongyou) properties and shared (gongyou) properties of a certain group of people,” according to a supplementary explanation by the Zhejiang provincial government in 1953 to the Land Reform Law (“Duonian wuren zhu guan zhi citang miaoyu deng fangwu chuli wenti fu xi zhizhao you” [Reply on the handling of ancestral halls and temples uninhabited and unmanaged for years], July 9, 1953, Yueqing City Archives 30-12-34). Common real properties might be leased, but occupying entities had to pay rent (“Zhejiang Sheng gongyou fangdichan guanli shixing banfa” [Zhejiang Province tentative regulations on common real properties], June 1952, Rui’an City Archives 4-4-91: 76–80). In reality, though, these laws and regulations were a mere scrap of paper at that time. Temples and churches were taken over at no cost.
20For the grain marketing system reform, see Yuk-shing Cheng and Tsang Shu-ki, “The Changing Grain Marketing System in China,” The China Quarterly 140 (1994): 1080–1104.
21“Zhou Sifa deng weiyuan guanyu guoying jiti zichan bei feifa qinzhan xuyao zhuajin chuli de ti’an” (Consultative Committee member Zhou Sifa et al’s proposal on hurrying up in the handling of state-owned collective assets illegally trespassed), March 4, 1995, Rui’an City Archives 109-14-23: 52.
22Ying, Rui’an Shi Daojiao zhi, 7. I visited the temple in May 2012.
23“Five guarantee household” is a special program for those families without the capability to make a living.
24“Guanyu dui Xincheng weishengyuan fangwu bei zhan gao mixin huodong wenti de laixin diaocha chuli qingkuang baogao” (Report on investigation and handling of the question in an incoming letter of Xincheng Public Health Center’s houses occupied for superstition), March 27, 1981, Rui’an City Archives 162-2-1: 1–2.
25I did not learn this from the government reports, but from Zui Zhanluo, one of ladies who initiated the actions to restore Rock Head Palace. Zhanluo gave up her job at the supply-and-sale co-op and has served in the temple since the early 1980s.
26“Chaichu Mayu jizhen fengjian mixin changsuo—Yantou ‘niangniang’ gong qingkuang zongjie” (Demolishing feudal superstition sites in Mayu Town—the summary of the situation of Rock Head ‘Princess’ Palace), March 17, 1983, Rui’an City Archives 66-35-4: 136–142.
27“Guanyu guanche Yaobang tongzhi pishi jingshen de qingkuang baogao” (Report on implementing the spirit of comrade Yaobang’s special directive), March 5, 1983, Rui’an City Archives, 1-31-63: 48.
28Besides the 1983 actions, there was an anti-superstition campaign in May 1986, with hundreds of temples shut down and thousands of statues of divinities destroyed in Rui’an. See “Jiji caiqu cuoshi ba hualongzhou huodong yin shang jiankang guidao” (Take active measures to channel dragon boating race into a healthy track), May 21, 1986, Rui’an City Archives 1-34-8: 101–105.
29In Yuecheng Town, Yueqing County of Wenzhou, during the Mao years, for instance, there were organizations of elderly people who frequented tea pavilions (chating), which provided tea for passengers in transportation juncture points. Its history can be traced back to the pre-1949 period. See Gao Yideng and Nan Xian, eds., Yuecheng Zhen zhi (Yuecheng Town gazetteer) (Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo chubanshe, 1990), 301–302. See also Wang Ximing, “Zuzhi wangluo, jingji shiti yu laoren fuli—Zhejiang Rui’an Zhaozhai laonian xiehui diaocha” (Organizational networks, economic entities and elderly people welfare—an investigation of senior resident association in Zhaozhai Village, Rui’an, Zhejiang), Wenzhou Luntan 3 (2009): 48–55.
30“Tangxia Fengshan Gongshe yaoqiu dui qinzhan gongyou sufo zaodian mixin zuo’an de chuli baogao” (Investigational report on the request of Fengshan Commune, Tangxia, to handle the criminal case of encroaching public [properties] to build temples and set up statues of divinities), September 23, 1981, Rui’an City Archives 49-33-9: 33–34.
31Liu Shuhe, “Lun biange zhong de nongcun yanglao shiye” (On transforming old-age support enterprise in rural areas), Renkou yu jingji 4 (1988): 23–28.
32Liu Shuhe, “Yingjie nongcun renkou laolinghua de yixiang zhongda juece—lun fazhan nongcun laonian xiehui” (A major measure for the aging problem in rural areas—on developing old-age associations), Renkou xuekan 5 (1993): 61–64.
33Deng Yanhua and Ruan Hengfu, “Nongcun yinse liliang heyi keneng? Yi Zhejiang laonian xiehui weili” (How is gray power in rural China possible? A case study of elderly people associations in Zhejiang), Shehuixue yanjiu 8 (2008): 136.
34Instead of giving money periodically, most villages in Wenzhou chose a one-time solution by giving a piece of land or houses to EPAs, which turned out to be more sustainable, as the latter could make profit from them and provide for old villagers.
35“Guanyu yaoqiu luoshi Zhupaitou Chenfu miao fangchan zhengce de baogao” (Report on implementing real estate policies in the case of Lord Chen Temple in Zhupaitou), June 7, 1993, Rui’an City Archives 32-N/A-13: 85–86.
36Deng and Ruan, “Nongcun yinse liliang heyi keneng?”; Chen Xun, “Xiangcun shehui liliang heyi keneng? Jiyu Wenzhou laonian xiehui de yanjiu” (How is rural social power possible? Research on elderly people association in Wenzhou), Zhongguo nongcun guancha 1 (2012): 80–88.
37“Guanyu qingli miaoyu jianjue shazhu fengjian mixin he fengjian zongzu waifeng de tongzhi” (Notification on suppressing village temples and decisively stopping the bad ethos of feudal superstition and feudal lineages), January 20, 1981, Rui’an City Archives 1-7-20: 21.
38“Daomiao gantan pochu mixin” (Demolishing temples and driving away fortune tellers to eliminate superstition), May 21, 1986, Rui’an City Archives 1-35-40: 41.
39To give one example, when in 1987 villages in Tangxia Town established their EPA, their registrations were submitted to a Tangxia Retired Cadres and Retired Factory Worker Association (Tangxia li tui xiu ganbu zhigong xiehui) because the town did not yet have an old-age commission (laolingwei). This arrangement suggests strong connections between retired cadres and EPAs.
40The group head and two vice heads were retired cadres and old party members. Two former village party secretaries were among fifteen council members elected.
41Rui’an City Archives 1-34-8: 2.
42For EPA in other provinces, see Gan Mantang, “Cunmin zizhi, zuzhi fazhan yu cunji zhili—yi Fujian Sheng xiangcun diaocha weili” (Village autonomy, organizational development and village governance—a case study based on the investigation in rural Fujian), Fuzhou daxue xuebao 3 (2007): 98–106, and “Xiangcun caogen zuzhi yu shequ gonggong shenghuo: Yi Fujian xiangcun laonian xiehui wei kaocha zhongxin” (Rural grassroots organizations and communal life: a case study of elderly people associations in rural Fujian), Fujian xingzheng xueyuan xuebao 107 (2008): 17–21; Mette Halskov Hansen, “Organising the Old: Senior Authority and the Political Significance of a Rural Chinese ‘Non-governmental Organisation.’” Modern Asian Studies 42, no. 5 (2007): 1057–1078.
43Rui’an nianjian (1988) (Rui’an yearbook 1988), internal document, 249.
44Economic activities, in spite of differences among mountainous, plain, and urban areas, are the major source of income for most village EPAs in Rui’an. Though an annual membership fee is required in some villages, membership fees are almost never the main source of income of EPAs. The temple is not the main source of income for EPAs neither. In places where village temples have a stable income, as far as I was told, EPAs and temples always keep separate finance systems. Sometimes when the latter does not have a stable income, they tend to need financial help from the former.
45Interview with Ou Zhanwu, May 12, 2013.
46Hu Qiting, “Zhuanxing shiqi cunzhuang quanli jiegou bianhua de shizheng fenxi—Wenzhou Shi Dingtian Zhen X Cun ge’an yanjiu” (Empirical analysis of village power structure in transitional period—a case study of X village in Dingtian Town, Wenzhou). Liaoning xinzheng xueyuan xuebao 4 (2006): 9–12.
47Chen Xun, “Xiangcun shehui liliang heyi keneng?”
48Chen, Weiwen, “Woshi nongcun laoren xiehui guanli queshi yinfa zhuduo shehui wenti, jidai zhongshi guifang” (The lack of regulation over elderly people associations in our city has caused many social issues, urgently needing attention and regulation), a proposal to the Wenzhou the People’s Political Consultation Assembly in 2007, http://220.191.204.205/taya/new2007/showzx.asp?CASE_NO=555 (accessed on May 4, 2018).
49Ibid.
50Deng Yanhua and Ruan Hengfu, “Nongcun yinse liliang heyi keneng?”; Gan Mantang and Xiaoting Zhang, “Chuantong shequ ziyuan dongyuan yu nongmin de you zuzhi kangzheng” (Mobilization of traditional community resources and organized peasant resistance), Liaodong xueyuan xuebao 12, no. 5 (2010): 58–65; Deng Yanhua and Kevin J. O’Brien, “The Society of Senior Citizens and Popular Protest in Rural Zhejiang,” China Journal 71 (2014): 172–188.
51Chen, “Xiangcun shehui liliang heyi keneng?” 84; see a petition letter from the Zhuangquan Village EPA: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_6074b7d40100e2ng.html (accessed on May 4, 2018).
52Zhonggong Rui’an shiwei dangwei yanjiushi, Zhongguo Gongchandang Rui’an lishi dashiji, 91.
53James Kai-sing Kung and Shouying Liu, “Farmers’ Preferences Regarding Ownership and Land Tenure in Post-Mao China: Unexpected Evidence from Eight Counties,” The China Journal 38 (July 1997): 33–63; Jonathan Unger, “The Decollectivization of the Chinese Countryside: A Survey of Twenty-eight Villages,” Pacific Affairs 58, no. 4 (Winter, 1985–1986): 585–606; Jean Oi and Andrew Walder, eds., Property Rights and Economic Reform in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999).