This is a very fascinating article. When we discuss Hong Xiuquan’s claim to be the Son of God in daily conversation in China, we generally do so in a mocking or playful tone. In contemporary China, although freedom of religious belief is legally recognized, in practice people tend to regard religion as backward thinking, and it has been largely discarded in mainstream discourse.
A few days ago, while looking at the syllabus for a History of Medicine course at Johns Hopkins University, I accidentally noticed that the syllabi for most History of Medicine courses at Chinese universities are almost identical—except that they completely omit the section on the influence of religion on the development of medicine. Later, when I searched on Google Scholar, I found that there is actually a great deal of research in Western medicine on the relationship between religion and clinical medicine, which I found quite astonishing.
China’s indigenous religions and theologies emerged from primitive astronomy, and were closely bound up with agricultural production and the rule of ancient emperors. From the very beginning, they bore a distinctly pragmatic character: if they could not serve a practical function in real life, ordinary people would not believe in them.
Wow, so interesting. Contrary to Kurt, I read this as corroborating Bertrand’s thesis that China had no need for a transcendent being to sustain a moral order. To fit Christianity into China, the transcendent Logos became Shangdi, the heavenly emperor, not transcendent over the natural world, but now a part of the natural world, having a role to play, duties to discharge. The Chinese moral order essentially transcends Shangdi, not the other way round. At least that’s my reading. Cheers.
Catholic priests in sixteenth-century Japan came up against similar translation problems. Japanese related much better to the feminine principle than the masculine one in their approach to divinity.
Hong's short career is fascinating, and I appreciate your explanation of how he solved the translation problem. It is ingenious.
Hi Bill, thanks for bringing this great perspective.
I hadn't deeply considered the 16th-century Japanese context, but it makes complete sense that Catholic priests would hit the exact same cultural and linguistic wall. The adaptation of the Virgin Mary into Kannon/Guanyin to bridge that gap is such an interesting story to tell.
This is very good. It tends to contradict a recent, and highly read and reviewed piece here on Substack by Arnaud Bertrand alleging that Chinese civilization survived and excelled precisely because there was no deity or Supreme Being. Another instance of non-Chinese "explaining" China to Westerners and missing the mark.
We need more of this; China interpreted by Chinese, and put Sinology in the ash bin of past mistaken erudition.
Hi Kurt, I actually lean a bit towards Bertrand's view on this.
To me, the story of Hong Xiuquan actually proves how alien the Western concept of a transcendent 'Supreme Being' was to the Chinese worldview. Because that concept didn't exist natively, Hong essentially had to 'degrade' or translate God into something the Chinese could understand: a literal, physical family patriarch with a first son (Jesus) and a second son (himself).
I enjoyed his piece, I don't disagree with it at all, but the tone was such that it gave the impression that ideas like a supreme being were foreign and dismissed in Chinese civilization. Correct me if I may be wrong, but during Shang, there was a large element of transcendent supreme being in the mix, and Zhou kinda massaged that into a more current idea of the Emperor as a mandate from "heaven", bringing it down to Earth a bit, with subsequent dynasties distilling it.
Hong Xiuquan was a bit of an anomaly, no? I look at that disaster as an aberration, not consistent with Chinese civilization.
A well known Chinese historian once told me that if one were to distill it down into a binary, Chinese revere their ancestors for bringing them to the present, and Westerners look to "God".
Lin Yutang said "To the West, it seems hardly imaginable that the relationship between man and man (which is morality) could be maintained without reference to a Supreme Being, while to the Chinese it is equally amazing that men should not, or could not, behave toward one another as decent beings without thinking of their indirect relationship through a third party."
So, maybe your piece did not contradict Bertrand's piece, but provided nuance.
Also, I just get tired of Westerners explaining China. I've had enough. When people ask me about China, I say I can tell you some things that it is not, but I'll leave it to the locals to tell you what it is.
I feel that 'Tao' or 'Heaven' serves as a sort of 'supreme being' in Chinese culture, but it has a distinctly mysterious and unspeakable nature. I like to think of it like a grain of sand inside an oyster: Chinese culture simply accepts that mysterious 'sand' as a starting point, and focuses all its energy on building the 'pearl' of human morality and society around it, rather than trying to rationalize or dissect the initial grain of sand itself.
As for Hong Xiuquan, he is certainly an anomaly in his specific theology, but perhaps not in his function. If you look at other uprisings during the Qing Dynasty that mobilized under the cover of folk Daoism or Buddhism, Hong's was just the most successful. In terms of mass mobilization, modern China basically tried everything, Daoism, Christianity, Republicanism, Capitalism, Nationalism, and Communism. In that sense of searching for a unifying ideology to mobilize the people, Hong fits right into the broader historical pattern.
I absolutely love that you mentioned Lin Yutang's quote. From a Chinese perspective, it is genuinely hard to believe or feel that 'the relationship between man and man could not be maintained without reference to a Supreme Being.' Is that truly how the West feels fundamentally? I would love to hear more of your thoughts on this.
We could have a long and very interesting conversation in person. For me to try and delineate and describe all the various isms, sects, branches, evangelists, fundamentalists, and the endless list of protestants...and that's not even getting into the Jewish and Muslims in America...it's just too much to write about. It's a vast PhD dissertation.
I've often thought (humorously) that China should have a field of study like the West's Sinology or Orientalism, where Chinese researched and tried to figure out the goofy Americans and why they do the things they do. That field of study would have to start with religion(s). Personally, I'm in the Chinese camp on this stuff, and Lin Yutang's quote perfectly describes my position.
Thanks for the view on Hong Xiuquan. I think you're right.
I think the Chinese have already started 'gazing' back. A perfect recent example of this informal 'Westology' happened just last month with a popular Bilibili influencer named Lao A.
He was a Chinese student based in Seattle who claimed to work part-time as a forensic assistant in a morgue, handling the unclaimed bodies of homeless people. He went viral for coining the term 'Kill Line' (斩杀线), arguing that the American middle class is so fragile that they are always just one illness or accident away from sliding into extreme poverty and death. It triggered a massive, intense discussion on the Chinese internet about the harsh realities of American society.
The narrative gained so much traction that The New York Times even covered the phenomenon in mid-January (Why China Is Suddenly Obsessed With American Poverty). Following the Western media coverage, Lao A claimed he was being targeted by the FBI and staged a dramatic '72-hour escape' back to China, though many are now heavily criticizing him, suspecting his entire persona and escape story were fabricated as a script for traffic.
But to your point, it shows there is a huge, growing appetite in China to analyze, diagnose, and figure out the 'goofy Americans' and the societal flaws. There is no formal 'Westology' departments in the universities yet, perhaps because the academic structures are still largely modeled after the West, but the grassroots version of it is already thriving online.
I had another thought about Lao A... As you are probably aware, Americans get fed a nonstop barrage of stuff about China that is generally nonsense. News sources, government, influencers, whoever...it's nonsense. Not that some specific thing is true or untrue or that some event did or didn't happen, but that the entirety of it is a pile of decontextualized ahistorical nonsense.
Lao A might be the first salvo in the barrage of nonsense from the China side.
I read about Lao A and his Kill Line...blather. I have clients in the FBI, I asked them about it, they'd not heard a thing. He's masterful at creating buzz, but that's about it.
Per poverty in America...sure. Lots of middle class are one emergency away from economic disaster. Lots are also conservative, mind their finances, and can weather storms. I know apparently high net worth folks that can't put their hands on $400USD without their credit card. There's plenty of empty show about money.
Generally, I find young Chinese...like my wife's students...to not have a clue about personal finance. Older Chinese are much better; I'm consistently amazed at the personal savings of my in-laws, who, on a good year, maybe grossed $5k USD. My BIL is one of those one paycheck away from disaster; he's one of those that thinks face is achieved by a fancy car. Other relatives are the opposite.
What the ruckus said to me was Chinese netizens are as goofy as American netizens. Ridiculous narratives get spun out of the ether, folks grab onto them, and in 36 hours it's something new. The only thing it proved is internet-izens lack critical thinking ability.
Trying to encapsulate the immensity of all the ways Western theology and religion function in America requires a doorstop size tome that I am entirely uninspired to write. Per churches...if Jesus came back as foretold, He'd have to be eliminated. He'd look at what's done in his name for the last 2000 years and wonder if anyone was paying attention. I know every flavor and persuasion of Christian, from snake handling Pentecosts to Catholic Opus Dei adherents. It's all nuts AFAIC. I'm not a Christian but I try to live like one is as close as I can get.
One of my several attractions to China is there aren't any Christians to speak of, and of the few that are here, they keep a lid on it. I'm fine with that. Another major attraction is The Dao, which to talk about it is to not practice it, I do my best, so let's move on. I can say I've spent enough time at Wudangshan before it got turned into a semi-Disneyland of tourist retail to feel the magic of The Golden Summit.
The first time my wife came to America (she's a Chinese history professor) she was "OK, churches. Take me to some churches. I want to see what's going on.". After a couple, she was "OK, enough, let's go do something else."
Interesting thought experiment! I was a little surprised to learn that Guanyin is a gender transformed Avalokiteswara and in that form is popular all across East and South East Asia - especially since Goddesses aren’t exactly rare in the Indo-Buddhist/Hindu sphere. Having said that, my sense is that Avalokiteswara isn’t a hyper-masculine deity, more like the Ardhanariswara Siva than Superman.
This is a very fascinating article. When we discuss Hong Xiuquan’s claim to be the Son of God in daily conversation in China, we generally do so in a mocking or playful tone. In contemporary China, although freedom of religious belief is legally recognized, in practice people tend to regard religion as backward thinking, and it has been largely discarded in mainstream discourse.
A few days ago, while looking at the syllabus for a History of Medicine course at Johns Hopkins University, I accidentally noticed that the syllabi for most History of Medicine courses at Chinese universities are almost identical—except that they completely omit the section on the influence of religion on the development of medicine. Later, when I searched on Google Scholar, I found that there is actually a great deal of research in Western medicine on the relationship between religion and clinical medicine, which I found quite astonishing.
China’s indigenous religions and theologies emerged from primitive astronomy, and were closely bound up with agricultural production and the rule of ancient emperors. From the very beginning, they bore a distinctly pragmatic character: if they could not serve a practical function in real life, ordinary people would not believe in them.
Wow, so interesting. Contrary to Kurt, I read this as corroborating Bertrand’s thesis that China had no need for a transcendent being to sustain a moral order. To fit Christianity into China, the transcendent Logos became Shangdi, the heavenly emperor, not transcendent over the natural world, but now a part of the natural world, having a role to play, duties to discharge. The Chinese moral order essentially transcends Shangdi, not the other way round. At least that’s my reading. Cheers.
Catholic priests in sixteenth-century Japan came up against similar translation problems. Japanese related much better to the feminine principle than the masculine one in their approach to divinity.
Hong's short career is fascinating, and I appreciate your explanation of how he solved the translation problem. It is ingenious.
Hi Bill, thanks for bringing this great perspective.
I hadn't deeply considered the 16th-century Japanese context, but it makes complete sense that Catholic priests would hit the exact same cultural and linguistic wall. The adaptation of the Virgin Mary into Kannon/Guanyin to bridge that gap is such an interesting story to tell.
This is very good. It tends to contradict a recent, and highly read and reviewed piece here on Substack by Arnaud Bertrand alleging that Chinese civilization survived and excelled precisely because there was no deity or Supreme Being. Another instance of non-Chinese "explaining" China to Westerners and missing the mark.
We need more of this; China interpreted by Chinese, and put Sinology in the ash bin of past mistaken erudition.
Hi Kurt, I actually lean a bit towards Bertrand's view on this.
To me, the story of Hong Xiuquan actually proves how alien the Western concept of a transcendent 'Supreme Being' was to the Chinese worldview. Because that concept didn't exist natively, Hong essentially had to 'degrade' or translate God into something the Chinese could understand: a literal, physical family patriarch with a first son (Jesus) and a second son (himself).
I enjoyed his piece, I don't disagree with it at all, but the tone was such that it gave the impression that ideas like a supreme being were foreign and dismissed in Chinese civilization. Correct me if I may be wrong, but during Shang, there was a large element of transcendent supreme being in the mix, and Zhou kinda massaged that into a more current idea of the Emperor as a mandate from "heaven", bringing it down to Earth a bit, with subsequent dynasties distilling it.
Hong Xiuquan was a bit of an anomaly, no? I look at that disaster as an aberration, not consistent with Chinese civilization.
A well known Chinese historian once told me that if one were to distill it down into a binary, Chinese revere their ancestors for bringing them to the present, and Westerners look to "God".
Lin Yutang said "To the West, it seems hardly imaginable that the relationship between man and man (which is morality) could be maintained without reference to a Supreme Being, while to the Chinese it is equally amazing that men should not, or could not, behave toward one another as decent beings without thinking of their indirect relationship through a third party."
So, maybe your piece did not contradict Bertrand's piece, but provided nuance.
Also, I just get tired of Westerners explaining China. I've had enough. When people ask me about China, I say I can tell you some things that it is not, but I'll leave it to the locals to tell you what it is.
I feel that 'Tao' or 'Heaven' serves as a sort of 'supreme being' in Chinese culture, but it has a distinctly mysterious and unspeakable nature. I like to think of it like a grain of sand inside an oyster: Chinese culture simply accepts that mysterious 'sand' as a starting point, and focuses all its energy on building the 'pearl' of human morality and society around it, rather than trying to rationalize or dissect the initial grain of sand itself.
As for Hong Xiuquan, he is certainly an anomaly in his specific theology, but perhaps not in his function. If you look at other uprisings during the Qing Dynasty that mobilized under the cover of folk Daoism or Buddhism, Hong's was just the most successful. In terms of mass mobilization, modern China basically tried everything, Daoism, Christianity, Republicanism, Capitalism, Nationalism, and Communism. In that sense of searching for a unifying ideology to mobilize the people, Hong fits right into the broader historical pattern.
I absolutely love that you mentioned Lin Yutang's quote. From a Chinese perspective, it is genuinely hard to believe or feel that 'the relationship between man and man could not be maintained without reference to a Supreme Being.' Is that truly how the West feels fundamentally? I would love to hear more of your thoughts on this.
We could have a long and very interesting conversation in person. For me to try and delineate and describe all the various isms, sects, branches, evangelists, fundamentalists, and the endless list of protestants...and that's not even getting into the Jewish and Muslims in America...it's just too much to write about. It's a vast PhD dissertation.
I've often thought (humorously) that China should have a field of study like the West's Sinology or Orientalism, where Chinese researched and tried to figure out the goofy Americans and why they do the things they do. That field of study would have to start with religion(s). Personally, I'm in the Chinese camp on this stuff, and Lin Yutang's quote perfectly describes my position.
Thanks for the view on Hong Xiuquan. I think you're right.
I think the Chinese have already started 'gazing' back. A perfect recent example of this informal 'Westology' happened just last month with a popular Bilibili influencer named Lao A.
He was a Chinese student based in Seattle who claimed to work part-time as a forensic assistant in a morgue, handling the unclaimed bodies of homeless people. He went viral for coining the term 'Kill Line' (斩杀线), arguing that the American middle class is so fragile that they are always just one illness or accident away from sliding into extreme poverty and death. It triggered a massive, intense discussion on the Chinese internet about the harsh realities of American society.
The narrative gained so much traction that The New York Times even covered the phenomenon in mid-January (Why China Is Suddenly Obsessed With American Poverty). Following the Western media coverage, Lao A claimed he was being targeted by the FBI and staged a dramatic '72-hour escape' back to China, though many are now heavily criticizing him, suspecting his entire persona and escape story were fabricated as a script for traffic.
But to your point, it shows there is a huge, growing appetite in China to analyze, diagnose, and figure out the 'goofy Americans' and the societal flaws. There is no formal 'Westology' departments in the universities yet, perhaps because the academic structures are still largely modeled after the West, but the grassroots version of it is already thriving online.
I had another thought about Lao A... As you are probably aware, Americans get fed a nonstop barrage of stuff about China that is generally nonsense. News sources, government, influencers, whoever...it's nonsense. Not that some specific thing is true or untrue or that some event did or didn't happen, but that the entirety of it is a pile of decontextualized ahistorical nonsense.
Lao A might be the first salvo in the barrage of nonsense from the China side.
I read about Lao A and his Kill Line...blather. I have clients in the FBI, I asked them about it, they'd not heard a thing. He's masterful at creating buzz, but that's about it.
Per poverty in America...sure. Lots of middle class are one emergency away from economic disaster. Lots are also conservative, mind their finances, and can weather storms. I know apparently high net worth folks that can't put their hands on $400USD without their credit card. There's plenty of empty show about money.
Generally, I find young Chinese...like my wife's students...to not have a clue about personal finance. Older Chinese are much better; I'm consistently amazed at the personal savings of my in-laws, who, on a good year, maybe grossed $5k USD. My BIL is one of those one paycheck away from disaster; he's one of those that thinks face is achieved by a fancy car. Other relatives are the opposite.
What the ruckus said to me was Chinese netizens are as goofy as American netizens. Ridiculous narratives get spun out of the ether, folks grab onto them, and in 36 hours it's something new. The only thing it proved is internet-izens lack critical thinking ability.
Trying to encapsulate the immensity of all the ways Western theology and religion function in America requires a doorstop size tome that I am entirely uninspired to write. Per churches...if Jesus came back as foretold, He'd have to be eliminated. He'd look at what's done in his name for the last 2000 years and wonder if anyone was paying attention. I know every flavor and persuasion of Christian, from snake handling Pentecosts to Catholic Opus Dei adherents. It's all nuts AFAIC. I'm not a Christian but I try to live like one is as close as I can get.
One of my several attractions to China is there aren't any Christians to speak of, and of the few that are here, they keep a lid on it. I'm fine with that. Another major attraction is The Dao, which to talk about it is to not practice it, I do my best, so let's move on. I can say I've spent enough time at Wudangshan before it got turned into a semi-Disneyland of tourist retail to feel the magic of The Golden Summit.
The first time my wife came to America (she's a Chinese history professor) she was "OK, churches. Take me to some churches. I want to see what's going on.". After a couple, she was "OK, enough, let's go do something else."
Interesting thought experiment! I was a little surprised to learn that Guanyin is a gender transformed Avalokiteswara and in that form is popular all across East and South East Asia - especially since Goddesses aren’t exactly rare in the Indo-Buddhist/Hindu sphere. Having said that, my sense is that Avalokiteswara isn’t a hyper-masculine deity, more like the Ardhanariswara Siva than Superman.
洪秀全