Brian Griffith's Blog - Posts Tagged "china"

With the skyrocketing value of tigers and pandas, China moved to keep the business going, as Sichuan and Gansu provinces linked up their panda reserves into a 10,476 square mile protected zone. The country also set up a 400-square mile Hunchun Nature Reserve along the Russia-North Korea border, and sent in volunteers to remove thousands of tiger traps that had been strewn like landmines through the forest. After that, sightings of tigers in the area rose from around five to about a hundred per year.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

As the value of wildlife went up, nations around the world increasingly moved to protect the asset. Where Bactrian camels were threatened because their environment was the testing ground for China’s atomic weapons, the government protected a 67,500 square mile Arjin Shan Lop Nur Wild Camel Nature Reserve. War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

My sentimental favorite example of positive influence is from Macau, where the Portuguese government offered the city a farewell present in 1997. It erected a 20-meter-high statue of Guanyin overlooking the harbor. But the artist, Cristina Leiria, clearly melded the goddesses of China and Portugal into one figure. It was both the Virgin Mary and Guanyin at the same time, symbolizing a fusion of the best and most beautiful from both the East and the West. Here, I suspect, is an early sign of a coming planetary religion, in which no tradition, authority, or sex prevails, but all things beautiful and good share the world’s admiration.
A Galaxy of Immortal Women: The Yin Side of Chinese Civilization

Though most Chinese villagers do not display obvious reverence for plants or animals, they tend to feel that success on the farm requires that people, plants, and animals get along. In this part of the world, the gradual domestication of crops and animals was mainly a process of forming friendships, as in the rather stunning friendship of rice farmers with water buffaloes. And then there were all the other symbiotic relations that the villagers encouraged, as when they learned that rice, beans, mulberry trees, ducks, and carp fish all help each other to grow. The humans in this landscape were not just takers, using up finite resources. They acted like matchmakers, trying to foster partnerships between creatures.
War and Peace with the Beasts: A History of Our Relationships with Animals

"Everybody says women are like water. I think it's because water is the source of life, and it adapts itself to its environment. Like women, water also gives of itself wherever it goes to nurture life." -- Xinran, "The Good Women of China."The Good Women of China: Hidden Voices

Thanks to Yowann Byghan for his kind words about my book on the cultures and religions of Chinese women. It's great to hear from a scholar of world mythology, animal lore, goddesses, and Druidism.
He wrote,
"I’ve just finished reading A Galaxy of Immortal Women. It’s a superb book. The content is extremely interesting and very authoritative, but at the same time very readable. Again, you carry your learning very lightly, and the book is organised and structured very cleverly. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, and I will be going through it again with a fine-toothed comb as I continue working on my encyclopedia of goddesses." A Galaxy of Immortal Women: The Yin Side of Chinese Civilization

As popular religion revived in modern China, it mainly grew from the grassroots up, very commonly led by local women. Their home-brewed versions of Confucianism, Daoism, Buddhism, or Christianity offered healing, vitality, harmonious relationships, good fortune, goddess worship, spirit mediumship, or inner peace. No doubt most of these “new religions” involved beliefs in afterlives, deities, spirits, and bonds of loyalty. But in general, these religions were less about meeting sets of requirements than pursuing options for better living. If a spiritual practice made for better relationships in this life, then that spiritual journey might continue beyond death. Michael Saso tried to summarize Daoist common sense about mutual loyalty: “The person who is filled with respect and benevolence for others and compassion for all living things, and who lives in close harmony with nature, lives long and is filled with inner peace and blessing.” Perhaps that would describe modern China’s “popular religion,” however much people still believe in authoritarian order and patriotic solidarity. A Galaxy of Immortal Women: The Yin Side of Chinese Civilization