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MARK LEONG/MATRIX FOR TIME
PROCESSIONAL: Hundreds of villagers parade a statue of the goddess Kuanyin towards the temple in Longgang
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Fortunately for the residents of Longgang in eastern China's Fujian province, Kwanyin is the Buddhist goddess of mercy and not of retribution. Otherwise the ground might open up and swallow the revelers leading a 500-strong parade in Kwanyin's name, punishing them for carrying sawed-off muskets and bottles of beer as they pay their respects to her. But the goddess ought to be in a forgiving mood. After all, for the first time in more than 50 years the village is finally honoring her with a proper festival. During the dark days of communism, villagers were jailed simply for articulating their faith. So now if an elder member of the Zhou clan, Longgang's most prolific family, takes a celebratory sip of beer while shouldering a palanquin bearing Kwanyin's likeness, extenuating circumstances should be taken into account. "Buddhism and the Zhou family have been around a lot longer than communism," says Zhou Daozhen, taking a swig himself. "It's wonderful that we can celebrate our devotion once again."
It's not only the Buddhists of Longgang that are giddy. With China's populace hungering for spirituality and the government easing up on its repressive crusade against faith, this is a country in the midst of an epochal spiritual revival. In the rich coastal cities, yuppies join ad hoc workplace churches that furtively practice Christianity during lunch breaks. In China's hinterland, a host of evangelical sects subscribing to a multitude of beliefs—Jesus is a woman, or Buddha is a chameleon, or there is a wheel turning in your stomach that guides your soul—have sprung up. Taoism, Confucianism, animism and other once dormant belief systems are providing chicken soup for the souls of millions of Chinese previously left with an empty feeling by the secular isms: communism and, in the past decade or so, capitalism and consumerism. "There are far more people who want to join us than we have space for," says Brother G., leader of a Protestant group in Shanghai, who each week has to turn down about a dozen potential worshipers. "I feel terrible that there is such a demand for God that we cannot take them all."
Demand is all the more vigorous because it was pent-up for so long. When the communists came to power in 1949, religion was branded as feudal and superstitious by the nation's rulers, who encouraged the masses to worship Chairman Mao instead. His divine face adorned everything from the entrance of Beijing's Forbidden City to amulets hanging from taxi drivers' rearview mirrors. Mao's successor, the economic reformer Deng Xiaoping, fiddled with the formula slightly, substituting money for Mao as the focus of worship. But veneration of traditional deities was still frowned upon. "We were told that money and science, not God, were modern," says a Buddhist resident of Longgang, who kept a small altar in the back of his house. "No government official could understand why I believed in something so backward as religion."
To be fair, spiritual life in the worker's paradise was never quite as austere as Karl Marx's atheist vision ordained. The government sanctioned five official religions: Buddhism, Taoism, Protestantism, Islam and a version of Catholicism that eschewed relations with the Vatican. Other faiths were vigorously suppressed, however, and even approved, "patriotic" religions were stripped of much of their tradition and meaning. Most official temples and churches were joyless, half-empty caverns that attracted older, socially isolated worshipers. Even today, some congregations act as little more than mouthpieces for official ideology. One state church in Beijing last month worked President Jiang Zemin's tepid "Three Represents" political thought into its services.
Little wonder that truth seekers prefer to find God without any guidance from the Party. Today, they can. Although most religions are still officially banned, the government is taking a hands-off approach as long as religious organizations remain passive and politically pliant. Dozens of spiritual groups, especially Christian ones, practice underground, with little meddling from authorities. "As long as I don't make too much of a fuss, I can do my work without officials getting in my way," says an underground Catholic leader in northeastern Hebei province, who notes that most of the bishops ordained by the Pope are also now approved by Beijing. "That's a complete change from five years ago."
Practically everywhere you look in China there are overt signs of religiosity sprouting up, especially in the countryside where social dislocation brought about by economic reforms has struck hardest. Architects, learning for the first time how to design houses of worship, are dotting the Chinese landscape with lavish temples and concrete, Californian-style churches. Universities are adding religious studies to their curricula. This year, six of China's top colleges have hired theologians. A state-run radio show in the coastal city of Xiamen even preaches Christian doctrine, thinly disguised as a talk show on "family values." A few blocks from the radio station, a home-based church advertises itself with an indiscreet neon sign: "Special church service inside. Come join us and find peace." Among its worshipers are a local government technocrat and a customs director, hardly the types to subvert the government.
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