Master Miao Jiang,
Wutaishan through successive regimes,
and religious life around Datong under Maoism

I got to know the Buddhist monk Kuan Guang 宽广 (b.1974) while he was doing his PhD at SOAS—guided by Tim Barrett—about the mountain temple complex of Wutaishan, epicentre of Buddhism in north China, where he trained.

Originally from Baoding south of Beijing, he is blessed with a calm and benevolent nature—such as one doesn’t always find among clerics, or indeed among the household ritual specialists whom I have consulted in north China. In addition, his deep, sonorous voice conveys his authority and wisdom.

So it’s wonderful to catch up with him. Apart from furthering his research on the history of Wutaishan in the Ming dynasty, he has created the Qingliang Buddhist Centre at a former church in Peckham, south London. Inspired by his venerable master Miaojiang 妙江法师 of the Bamboo Grove temple 竹林寺 on Wutaishan, Kuan Guang has undertaken this complex enterprise in the spirit of “expedient means” (Sanskrit upāya, Chinese fangbian 方便).

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In both old and new societies, entering the clergy was often ascriptive, rather than a spiritual choice; poor families would routinely give a young son to a local temple as relief from adversity. However, in the case of Miao Jiang, his parents (surnamed Liu) were devout lay believers (the following account is based on this online biography; in English, see here).

Liu Jiang (his original name) was born in 1953 in a village in Yanggao county (home of the Li family Daoists!) just east of the grimy coal city of Datong. * The daily domestic worship of his family environment made a stark contrast with the escalating political campaigns of the 1950s. When he was only 3 years old, his parents, busy with agricultural chores for the collective, sent him to a nearby temple, where his master Chang Rong 常荣, himself only 15, lavished exceptional care on his bright young disciple.

In 1959, just as food shortages were becoming desperate, Liu Jiang’s mother took him to Datong to pledge allegiance at the Shanhua temple 善化寺. ** While receiving a rudimentary secular education at his village primary school, he prudently refrained from divulging that he was devoting most of his energies to his parallel cultivation of the dharma—praying with his mother before the family shrine, studying Buddhist texts such as the Pumen pin 普门品 scripture, and learning to recite the Dabei zhou 大悲咒 mantra. At a time when villagers were desperately foraging for food, when the meager crop from the autumn potato harvest was being divvied out among the brigade team, he would only take home his share after the others had chosen the best ones. As he later recalled, “I would eat whatever Old Budda Elder ate” (老佛爷吃啥我吃啥).

The Shanhua temple during the 1933 fieldtrip of the architectural scholar Liang Sicheng.

Lin Huiyin, architect wife of Liang Sicheng, Wutaishan c1937.
Source: Sixth Tone.

In Datong after the Japanese occupation and civil war, the extensive buildings of the imposing Upper and Lower Huayan temples 上下华严寺 were under restoration through the 1950s, and were designated as national cultural relics in 1961. As the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966, while religious sites and clerics all over China were being assaulted, some of the major Datong temples were safeguarded under the aegis of a Bureau Chief, a Buddhist believer from Wutaishan. *** Although the Red Guards chased off most of the remaining monks, the Bureau Chief gathered some former monks—in plain clothes—to keep watch over the temples. So amidst all the chaos, the Upper Huayan temple became a clandestine meeting place where youngsters like young Liu Jiang and his fellow believers could seek instruction in the dharma. 

The Huayan temples, 1939:
left, Lower temple; right, grounds of Upper temple.
Source (colourized).

It was at the highly unlikely time of 1968 that he had his head shaved to become a monk, at the behest of his master in the Shanhua temple. With a group of senior monks officiating, they locked the gate early, and around midnight held his formal ceremony. Shortly afterwards, when his master returned from the nearby Buddhist cave complex of Yungang, the teenager was given the Buddhist name Miao Jiang.

Such biographies require us to adjust our simplistic view of the blanket destruction of religion though Maoism and the Cultural Revolution (for another instance, see Kang Zhengguo‘s account of his Buddhist grandfather).

After the liberalizations around 1980, five more members of Miao Jiang’s family over four generations joined the clergy: both his parents (in 1983), followed by two sons and a granddaughter in his older sister’s family. Popular opinion was full of praise for their exceptional devotion.

In 1973, when Miao Jiang was miraculously unscathed by an accident while repairing a reservoir, he considered it a sign of the protection of the Bodhisattva Mañjuśrī (Wenshu pusa 文殊菩萨). This was the inspiration for him to turn further south in Shanxi towards Wutaishan, around which his mature life has revolved. He has been based there since 1980, as the mountain opened up to a massive reinvigoration of “incense fire” (xianghuo 香火) after the depression of the Maoist era. Through those early reform years, he served as abbot in several temples, which thrived under his leadership. As Wutaishan became ever more commodified by tourism and heritagification, he was fêted with official titles—but he has remained aloof from worldly affairs.

Miao Jiang’s reputation grew, not by preaching but through the influence of his practice—”bodily instruction” (shenjiao 身教) rather than “verbal instruction” (yanjiao 言教). Still, after the challenges of practising Buddhism under Mao, it has been a very different kind of test to spread the dharma and maintain its integrity in the brash, mercenary new society. Eschewing the lifestyle of official banquets, he adheres to a simple Buddhist diet, while sponsoring charitable and relief projects.

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Kuan Guang formally joined the Buddhist order under the guidance of Miao Jiang in 1993. After Maoism and the reforms in China, nurturing the dharma in multicultural Peckham presents yet another kind of challenge. Apart from a programme of events at the Qingliang centre, such as guided meditation and calendrical rituals, Kuan Guang now plans to open a Buddhist vegetarian canteen there. He was always wise, but he too has now become a veritable master, whom his disciples can look up to. While I’m not generally predisposed towards Buddhist centres in Britain, this is a most admirable enterprise. In praising Kuan Guang, I’m reminded of the old Krishnamurti paradox: his efforts are selfless, devoted entirely to promoting the dharma (cf. Paths for the reluctant guru).

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It also occurs to me that while I often come across devotional sects in my fieldwork (such as the Bright Association 明会 in Yanggao, scrolling down here), I have had little contact with jushi lay Buddhist adherents. In Yanggao since the 1980s, rather few temples have been restored: but in those temples which are active, their keepers were often ordained as Buddhist monks or spent time “roaming the clouds” in Wutaishan or Datong—such as the gentle Zhang Zheng, who helped Li Manshan decipher a stele at the Zhouguantun temple in Yanggao. ****

Having immersed myself in Zen in my teens, I rather lapsed, but for several years after first visiting China in 1986 I would regularly kowtow before the altar on entering a Buddhist or Daoist temple—mainly the grander ones of the cities and sacred mountains (Wutaishan was one of my first ports of call in 1986). But I came to feel a bit of a poseur, and later, frequenting small village temples, it hardly seemed appropriate…

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In another post I explained why field studies of folk ritual in China mainly focus on household Daoists. While they dominate the rural ritual scene, when we find Buddhist ritual specialists, they may also perform similar rituals; the toolbox required to study the two is similar, and we shouldn’t compartmentalise our studies. Buddhism is more dominated by institutions (the major temples); formerly, Buddhist clerics worked mainly from their temples, and the 20th-century waves of laicization and temple destruction were more of a blow to the Buddhists than to the Daoists. The Buddhists perhaps tended to cater more for elite patrons, and were less able to survive during times of economic recession; state policies of the 1950s came as a double blow to them, as apart from laicizations and temple destruction, their former patrons also vanished. Conversely, the Daoists had long lay and household traditions, alongside any institutional base; they were more adaptable to local religious life, more all-embracing. The difficulty of regulating them has always been their hidden strength.

So I rarely encounter exalted Buddhist masters like Miao Jiang and Kuan Guang. But when I do, I am deeply impressed. While I have the utmost respect for the wisdom of more down-to-earth peasant ritual specialists like Li Qing and Li Manshan (see my film), around whom my fieldwork has revolved, in the presence of great temple clerics I feel a certain embarrassment that my path has led me away from the quest for spiritual enlightenment towards documenting the “heat and noise” of folk ritual; yet somehow my early background in that quest has formed an enduring foundation.

See also A Tang couplet, and Buddhism tag.

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* Indeed, his disciple Kuan Guang was able to give me valuable help in 2011 when I struggled to decipher the dialect of Yanggao peasants on my fieldtapes. I am consoled and amused that when I screen my film for urban Chinese students, with Li Manshan’s own voiceovers, most of them have to rely on the English subtitles!

** Not long before Li Manshan’s trip to visit his father Li Qing at the Datong Arts Work Troupe…

*** Around Datong the worst vandalisations only occurred in 1968; still, the Huayan temples soon resumed life as a museum—until the 1980s’ reforms, since when religious observances have had to compete with tourism.

**** My film, from 36.01; cf. my Ritual and music of north China: shawm bands in Shanxi, pp.71–8, and Daoist priests of the Li family, pp.50–51.