The Tragedy of Liberation: A History of the Chinese Revolution 1945-1957 (33 page)

Buddhism was only loosely organised and therefore made an easy target. Monasteries were destroyed, monks were beaten or killed, copies of the Buddhist canon were burned and sacred images were melted down for their metal. Land was confiscated and Buddhist properties broken up. In some places the clergy was reduced to ‘a state of terror’, in the words of a contemporary. Some became targets in the vast persecution designed to break the power of traditional elites during land reform. ‘In most cases they would strip the clothing from the upper half of a man’s body and bind his hands behind his back and his feet too, and then he would kneel facing the masses and confess his crimes,’ remembered one monk from a monastery near Nanjing. In the Lingyin Temple, the largest in Hangzhou, a crowd of 4,000 assembled in front of a makeshift platform made of tables piled on to each other. Five monks were forced to face the crowd. The verdict was always the same: ‘You see how fat and pretty he is. Why is he so fat? He has been eating the blood and sweat of the people. He is an exploiter, an evil person. Everyone says he should be killed. But the People’s Government is magnanimous. It will send him to labour reform.’ In the large cities the tone was more subdued, and some of the most devout followers among the elderly were allowed to keep their faith. But no new converts were accepted. In Shanghai, for instance, a quarter of all 2,000 monks and nuns were dispersed by February 1950.
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Particularly vulnerable were the country’s minorities. The ancient town of Lijiang in Yunnan, crisscrossed by bridges and canals, was dominated by the Nakhi, who had their own language, literature and customs. They built houses that looked deceptively simple, but had delicate patterns on the interiors of casements and doors. Their temples, too, seemed rather plain from the outside, but were richly decorated with carvings on poles, arches and statues of gods. Revolution, in Lijiang, followed the same pattern as elsewhere. ‘All the scamps and the village bullies, who had not done a stroke of honest work in their life, suddenly blossomed forth as the accredited members of the Communist Party, and swaggered with special red armbands and badges and the peculiar caps with duckbill visors which seemed to be the hallmark of a Chinese Red,’ noted one long-term resident. Old Nakhi dances were prohibited and replaced by the rice-sprout songs which nobody recognised. Learning them after work became compulsory, as did attendance at interminable indoctrination talks at daily meetings. There were continual arrests, often in the dead of night, and secret executions. Local priests were banned. The lamaseries were desecrated, priceless tankas burned or smashed, sutras destroyed and lamas either arrested or scattered. The lamasery halls were converted into popular schools, ‘as if there were not enough buildings elsewhere for this purpose’.
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Similar scenes occurred all over Yunnan, an ethnically diverse province in the far south-west bordering Burma, Laos and Vietnam. In Kangding county the army occupied several lamaseries. One monastery in Mao county was converted into a prison. Sometimes the local monks and nuns were treated as counter-revolutionaries; some were killed in denunciation meetings. The entire family of a woman selling herbal medicine was put to death. In another case a nun was forced to cut out her tongue. She choked to death on her own blood.
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A more inclusive approach was tried after the Great Terror. A Chinese Buddhist Association was formed in Beijing in November 1952. It was a servant of the state. Instead of exhorting its followers to practise quiet contemplation and introspective meditation, it demanded that Buddhists participate in land reform, struggle against counter-revolutionaries and take a lead in the ‘Resist America, Aid Korea’ campaign. Thought reform was mandatory. Monks, like teachers, professors, engineers or entrepreneurs, had to reform themselves, denounce each other, abandon their ‘feudal ideology’ and demonstrate their hatred towards class enemies. Gone was the idea of compassion and kindness extended to all living beings without discrimination. And once the monks, too, were civil servants, the Buddhist Association, in 1954, worked hard at discouraging the burning of paper money, celebration of festivals and sacrifices to the spirits. Accepting pious donations was denounced as ‘cheating the masses’. Heads of monasteries had to pledge that they would not provide hospitality to travelling monks, who should be engaged in production instead. Deprived of all their traditional sources of income, monks were forced to work, often on plots of poor land. Already in 1951 the monks of Baohua Shan, the most famous ordination centre in central China, ‘were suffering virtual starvation – there was not even diluted congee to eat’. In Yunmen Shan the monks had to manage on one meal of thin gruel a day.
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Many took the path of least resistance and disrobed. Some became farmers, others joined the army. Sometimes the former monks and nuns continued living at their monasteries, but let their hair grow. A few of them abandoned their vows, married and raised livestock. But the regime kept the decimation of the Buddhist clergy carefully hidden from public view. The official policy was to claim the same monastic population year after year – half a million in 1950 and still half a million in 1958. But the pressure never abated, and already in 1955 a party official in a secret meeting commended the fact that the number of monks had declined to a mere 100,000.
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The same duplicitous approach was adopted towards the buildings themselves. As tens of thousands of monasteries were converted into barracks, prisons, schools, offices or factories, in Beijing vast amounts of money were lavished on the Yonghegong Temple. It stood bright and spotless, its joss sticks smouldering away in their jars of sand, leaving no ash. The conservation work was carried out to support the government’s policy towards the border areas. There were 6 million Buddhists in China and another 7 million in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet. And at the heart of Tibet was religion, tightly organised and pervasive. Mao cautioned his colleagues to proceed slowly, as the loyalty of the lamas must first be won over. In total, about a hundred monasteries and pagodas were repaired between 1951 and 1958 – out of the 230,000 places of worship that had monks and nuns in residence before liberation. Some were part of a conservation programme, a few were even protected by law, but most served as showcases for foreign dignitaries. The United States supported Buddhism in South-east Asia, forcing the People’s Republic into quiet competition for the allegiance of its religious neighbours. The ever suave Zhou Enlai regularly invited Buddhists from Burma, Ceylon, Japan and India to visit the country’s beautifully repaired temples, occasionally offering a relic bone or a tooth of the Buddha in religious ceremonies that would have been decried as the height of superstition under different circumstances.
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Despite the atmosphere of regimentation, the party never managed to stamp out popular Buddhism. Villagers continued to turn towards religion in times of hardship. In 1953, following widespread disease and famine in Henan, thousands of pilgrims flocked towards the White Horse Temple in Luoyang, one of the cradles of Buddhism in China. On 25 March 1953 alone, some 20,000 people converged on the temple, queuing quietly to benefit from the healing touch provided by monks. Two years later, Wang Feng, in charge of the Ethnic Affairs Committee, expressed his surprise at the fact that in some cities ‘crowds of over 100,000 ceaselessly assemble to worship, pray for rain, burn incense or bow to Buddha’. Much of it was tolerated, as the days of brutal suppression still lay ahead.
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No such patience was shown towards Taoism, which had no fellow believers outside China. Taoist belief in magic and divination was decried as superstition. And because of its association with secret societies in past rebellions, it was also identified as a political threat. Priests, monks and nuns were sent to orientation centres to train as carpenters and seamstresses, while shrines to ancestors and local deities were destroyed. In a village south of Guangzhou, temples were indiscriminately smashed immediately after liberation. Community festivals ceased and sacrificial ceremonies were curtailed; what religious activity was tolerated was driven from public view back into the homes of the villagers. The power of religion to unite and strengthen community bonds was broken.
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But the amorphous, scattered and independent nature of many of these millenarian societies continued to bother the regime, as they reappeared under different guises after their dispersal by the authorities. During the Great Terror of 1951 their leaders were ruthlessly persecuted. They seemed to be everywhere. In Hebei the provincial boss estimated that 8 per cent of the population belonged to some cult or another, amounting to some 2 million people. He arrested 3,500 ringleaders within the first few months of 1951. Followers were given a chance to withdraw. In Beijing, according to one observer, more than 100,000 members of the Yiguandao, the Way of Pervading Unity, had apostatised by June 1951. Huanxingdao, Shengxiandao, Baguadao, Xiantiandao, Jiugongdao – there were dozens of popular religious sects and societies that were ruthlessly persecuted. And the pall of superstition seemed to hang with particular weight on people in the south. In the ports along the coastline of Guangdong, up to half the residents apparently followed one cult or another. In Shenzhen, a small fishing village just across the Hong Kong border, nineteen secret societies were counted, the most powerful one being the Yellow Ox Party, whose members were accused of smuggling, robbing and carrying out intelligence work for the enemy. Many were rounded up and executed. But despite all the killings, in 1953 head of security Luo Ruiqing could still list hundreds of leaders in counties from Yunnan, Sichuan and Zhejiang to Anhui.
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In the face of repression, people either dropped all visible signs of allegiance or went underground – quite literally. In north China underground chambers were built with tunnels long enough to connect strategic places throughout entire villages. In Shaanxi alone, in 1955 the police uncovered over a hundred subterranean hiding places. In Hebei province, some sectarian leaders took refuge in tunnels for more than four years. In Sichuan the hated Yiguandao did not even have to hide: it flourished to the extent that in 1955 it was recruiting local cadres and members of the militia. In Gansu province, Taoist sects appeared to rule entire regions. And folk religious practices also had great staying power in other ways. There were endless reports of secret stones, holy water, sacred tombs, magic trees or ancient temples around which village people crowded in times of need, often in the hundreds if not thousands.
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Before liberation there were approximately 3 million Catholics and 1 million Protestants. Their faith was singled out for slow strangulation. Brutal persecution, at least in the first years of the new regime, was not compatible with a policy of toleration. But in September 1950, a National Christian Council set up by the communist party issued a
Christian Manifesto
requiring all believers to sever foreign connections. Some termed this a ‘Manifesto of Betrayal’, but those who refused had to face accusations of aiding and abetting imperialism. Gradually the pressure increased. Cadres and activists questioned believers, at home, in church, at the market place or in the police station, day and night. They were cajoled, threatened, pressed, nagged and prodded, sometimes for days on end. Like all other people in China they were called upon to reform themselves and provide accusations against others. They had to join daily study sessions, examine their links with foreign imperialists and renounce their faith at public meetings. Everywhere religious networks crumbled, as people left the church in droves.
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Protestants were further isolated by the rise of a ‘Patriotic Church’ in 1951. It received funds from the state, preached according to the state and followed every command from the state. Those who refused to join were put under house arrest and sent to labour camps. In parts of the country Christians were forbidden to have rosaries, patron-saint medals or crucifixes. Homes were searched and prayer books, catechisms and holy pictures destroyed. Churches were stripped of sacred objects. Troops carried away altars and benches. Seminaries for training clergy were banned. Zhang Yinxian, a nun in Yunnan, remembers how her church was left empty. ‘It used to be so glorious. Overnight, everything was gone. Rats took over the place. We used to have four hundred people working at the church. Only three were left – me, my aunt, and Bishop Liu Hanchen.’ All three were ordered out but refused to leave. They were allowed to stay for a few months, but were then taken away by the militia, paraded through the village and put on public trial.

We faced hundreds of villagers with raised fists shouting revolutionary slogans. Some spat at us. Such hatred. As the leader worked up the crowd, a peasant activist came up and slapped Bishop Liu in the face. My aunt stepped forward. ‘How dare you slap him.’ The activist used to be a poor farmer, and when the Communists confiscated the property of landlords, he was one of the beneficiaries. He pointed at my aunt and yelled back, ‘You are a counter-revolutionary and we have defeated you. You are the lackey of the imperialists who exploited us.’ My aunt said, ‘We are not. We came from poor families and we’ve never exploited anybody.’ The activists shouted again, ‘You are still stubborn and won’t admit your defeat. You need to be punished.’ Fists were raised and the crowd began chanting, ‘Down with the counter-revolutionary nun!’ My aunt wouldn’t back down. She said to her abuser, ‘Slap me if you want. If you slap me on the left side of my face, I will give you the right side too.’