China’s wave of temple visitors

A surge of interest in traditional faiths offers an alternate vision to an imposed set of “civilizational” values by the ruling party.

The Monitor's View

Since the end of COVID-19 restrictions last year, visits by China’s younger citizens to their country’s temples – Buddhist or Taoist – have shot up, according to online travel platforms. As the Sixth Tone news site put it, “Now, many young Chinese have found a new way to unwind from the daily grind: religious sites.”

One commentator, Song Yuqian, says the rush to worship “can satisfy young people’s desire for certainty and give people the possibility to heal ‘spiritual internal friction.’” The article quotes one temple visitor, Yang Jiang, as saying: “We have longed for the waves of fate so much, only to find in the end that the most beautiful scenery in life is calmness – calmness of the heart.”

Dozens of Buddhist temples have seen another kind of surge: elderly people choosing to live out their final years under the care of monks, nuns, and fellow residents – a phenomenon allowed by the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) only over the past decade. Temple leaders encourage the elderly residents to take care of others as well as themselves. Such practices ensure “seniors feel like they are neither fragile nor a burden,” writes Qi Tengfei, a professor of sociology at Shenzhen University, in Sixth Tone.

“During one of my research visits to Bohai Shuangyuan Nursing Home,” he states, “I heard a message broadcast over the loudspeaker calling seniors to attend to a resident who was in hospice. The response shocked me: The seniors appeared in high spirits as if they were going on holiday rather than a deathbed. The ward quickly filled with chanters – an unthinkable occurrence at other nursing homes.”

These stories of spontaneous and grassroots revival in religion run counter to the ruling party’s attempts to define the ideals of the Chinese people. Under party leader Xi Jinping, all religions must be guided by the government, have “Chinese characteristics,” and adhere to socialism and Marxist materialism. For the religions of ethnic minorities – Tibet’s Buddhists and Xinjiang’s Muslim Uyghurs – the crackdown on traditional practices has been particularly harsh.

In March, Mr. Xi began a global promotion of the notion that China has a unique civilization with values distinct from other parts of the world, especially the West. “Countries need to keep an open mind in appreciating the perceptions of values by different civilizations,” he said, “and refrain from imposing their own values or models on others and from stoking ideological confrontation.”

Yet Mr. Xi claims his ideas define the values that the Chinese people should follow. The state-run Global Times even launched a series of articles in April describing “Xivilization,” a play on his family name (pronounced “shee”) and the word civilization.

James Palmer, a deputy editor at Foreign Policy, says China’s traditional religions have genuine global appeal. “But any promotion of traditional Chinese culture under the CCP is stripped of the beliefs once at its core.”

The new wave of templegoers in China is offering an alternate vision to the official version of national ideals – one of inward reflection and outward compassion freely chosen. Such values and practices, found in many faiths, cut across all civilizations. As the commentator Song Yuqian notes, “Paying a visit to a temple opens a new window for people to ... heal from mental exhaustion.”