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Ancestor worship in contemporary China: An empirical investigation
Abstract
Although ancestor worship has been widely acknowledged as one of the most significant cultural traditions in Chinese society, information about its nationwide popularity and followers’ sociodemographic characteristics is still not clear. Taking advantage of the first nationwide survey on Chinese residents’ spiritual life, this study examines: (1) the extent of popularity of typical ancestor worship practices, (2) the sociodemographic features of ancestor worship individuals, and (3) the “magical” elements of ancestor worship activities. Empirical results suggest that, first, the most popular ancestor worship practices in contemporary China are venerating the spirits of ancestors or deceased relatives and visiting the gravesite of ancestors. Ancestor worship practice participants make up over 70 percent of the adult population. Second, on average, males are more active in ancestor worship than females. Also, economic status is positively associated with ancestor worship participation. Nevertheless, urbanization and migration have a negative effect on people’s propensity of practicing ancestor worship. Third, the magical aspect of ancestor worship is less attractive to welleducated adults, but more likely to be followed by senior individuals.
... Against this background, this exploratory study aims to investigate the potential association between the likelihood of older citizens in China receiving supports from family members and a long-time overlooked but recently reviving cultural tradition: ancestor worship. Ancestor worship has a long history in Chinese society and has become increasingly popular in the Reform Era (Hu 2016;Hu 2012, 2018). As an important cultural or folk religious institutional arrangement, ancestor worship has been serving to maintain the well-being of the older family members (Ahern 1973;Yang and Hu 2012). ...
... Taken together, ancestor worship faces a new socio-political order in the post-Reform Era of China that helps its rapid revival. According to a nationwide survey in 2007, the percentage of Chinese adults who participated in at least one type of ancestor worship activities has reached over 70% (Hu 2016). ...
... 49% of the surveyed households view it to be important, and the percentage of families adhering to the norm of posthumous missing is 47%. Echoing previous studies (Hu 2016;Hu and Tian 2018), these descriptive figures suggest that ancestor worship has been a prevalent cultural force in contemporary China, thus setting the stage for our subsequent investigation into its correlation with older family members' likelihood of receiving different types of supports from the family. The descriptive statistics also report the pattern of eldercare reception where 39% reported to receive economic assistance from family members, and 24% for the household chore support. ...
Practices of intergenerational support are regulated by familial normative imperatives. Ancestor worship has been serving as such a normative force that sustains household eldercare in traditional China. Against the background of the concerted population ageing and reviving ancestor worship practices and beliefs in contemporary China, this study investigates whether or not the positive link between ancestor worship and household eldercare persists in the post-Reform Era. Drawing on data from the 2010 China Family Panel Studies, this study finds that, on average, both practices and beliefs of ancestor worship at the household level have a significant and positive correlation with the likelihood of older family members to be financially supported by family members, but no significant association is detected for the reception of household chore assistance. Moreover, familial ancestor worship beliefs show a stronger association with the reception of monetary support among rural older adults than the urban counterpart. These results suggest that the intergenerational relation in contemporary China still relates to the norms of ancestor worship. As such, this study extends the scholarship on eldercare that mostly focuses on resource transaction and exchange by highlighting the normative aspect of caregiving.
... China is characterized by an extended kinship network, strong family identity, hierarchical intergenerational relations, and a moral obligation of filial piety (Cheng and Chan 2006;Chiang 1995;Cohen 1990;Eastman 1988;Freedman 1966;Ikels 2004;Pasternak 1972;Szonyi 2002;Watson 1982;Watson and Watson 2004). An important cultural force underpinning these familial characteristics is ancestor worship, which is defined as a series of rituals, practices, and beliefs that focus on the perpetuation of the family line and reverence for the ancestors (Hu 2016;Yang and Hu 2012). 3 According to this cultural tradition, intergenerational ties between the living and the deceased are crucial for the wellbeing of kin, so kinship members, especially the males, are obligated to make sure the family line is continued (Ahern 1973;Ebrey 1995;Feuchtwang 2001;Freedman 1965Freedman , 1966Hsu 1971;Jordan 1972;Lang 1950;Weller 1987). ...
... 4 Ancestor worship has mostly been studied in the field of religious studies, as a type of folk religion (e.g., Yang and Hu 2012). Ancestor worship has also been examined by sinologists and scholars working on Chinese folklore (for a review, see Hu 2016). In this study we are not going to address the nuanced distinctions between the religious and cultural meanings of ancestor worship, but instead we focus on whether ancestor worship practices can be significantly correlated with family life in contemporary China, a subject that has not been fully studied. ...
... The two most prevalent practices of ancestor worship in China are compiling and maintaining the family genealogy and venerating the ancestors at the gravesite (e.g. Ahern 1973;Cohen 1990;Hu 2016;Hu and Yang 2014;Freedman 1966). In particular, family genealogy refers to a book-like record, including, but not limited to, the family tree, anecdotes about ancestors, and a list of family rules and disciplines. ...
Background: Ancestor worship in China used to be an indispensable component of marriage and family life because it fostered an orientation toward perpetuating the family line. However, whether or not ancestor worship still matters in contemporary China is an open question. Objective: This article presents a comprehensive study of the association between ancestor worship practices and 1) the timing of transition to first marriage, 2) the pattern of childbearing, and 3) the orientation toward son preference. Methods: Drawing on the adult sample from the Chinese Family Panel Studies 2010, several multivariate models (Cox proportional hazard model, probit regression model, negative binomial regression models, and ordered probit model) were fitted, corresponding to different types of outcome. Results: All else being equal, involvement in ancestor worship practices is correlated with 1) an early transition to marriage, 2) a larger number of children, 3) a higher probability of having at least one son, and 4) a larger number of sons. Conclusions: The relevance of the kinship tradition to family formation persists in contemporary China and has not faded away. Contribution: By highlighting the demographic implications of ancestor worship, this study illustrates the ongoing connection between culture and demography.
... The ideological foundation underpinning ghost marriage is two primitive beliefs: ancestor worship and the immortal soul. In Chinese culture, the belief in ancestor worship has given rise to a complex set of rituals, practices, and sub-beliefs that aim to sustain the family line and honor the ancestors (Hu 2016;Yang and Hu 2012). The belief in the immortal soul has given rise to a plethora of sub-beliefs, including the existence of a netherworld where deceased ancestors continue to wield considerable influence over their living descendants (Gu and Xu 2014). ...
... While atheism remains RPC's ideological doctrine, religious folk practices are generally no longer labelled as spiritual opium to Chinese people. Apart from the tolerable political and legal environment, socioeconomic upheavals during this period, such as the rise of the market economy, the reduced personal control after the collapse of the work unit and people's commune, and the increasing living standard of Chinese people, to name a few, was also favorable to the revival of traditional religious folk practice, including ghost marriage (Hu 2016;You 2020). ...
As religious folk practice is regarded as a radical departure from Marxist atheism, the abnormal existence of ghost marriages under the Chinese socialist regime has attracted wide scholarly attention in anthropology and sociology. However, few scholars have focused on how Chinese courts treat religious folk practices, such as ghost marriages, despite the official socialist ideology. Based on the typological analysis and case study involving 260 ghost marriage cases, the authors argue about the judicial activism of Chinese courts towards atheist ideology in religious folk practices. The findings of this study are twofold. First, the Chinese courts’ attitudes toward ghost marriage cases are pluralistic, reflecting the Chinese legal system’s selective obedience to the socialist ideology. Through the application of different legal interpretations of relevant laws, Chinese courts have shown three attitudes towards ghost marriages: encouragement, tolerance, and suppression. The first two attitudes can be regarded as supportive supervision of religious folk practice. Three factors tended to affect the courts’ attitudes towards ghost marriages: courts’ hierarchical level, parties’ claims, and whether ghost marriage rituals are performed. Second, further analysis suggests that RPC’s guerrilla-style governance strategy in the Chinese legal system allows it to deal with ghost marriage with more flexibility, even overriding its fundamentalist ideology. The guerrilla-style tactic is often used by the Chinese courts to handle matters of religious folk practices in a pluralistic manner. Overall, the courts’ pluralistic attitudes towards ghost marriage is that of modest tolerance and cooperation of religious folk practices based on the RPC’s model of governance.
... Within the death studies literature, three major works stood out: Zygmunt Bauman's Mortality, Immortality, and Other Life Strategies (1992); Tony Walter's The Eclipse of Eternity: A Sociology of the Afterlife (1996); and Michael Hviid Jacobsen's edited volume Postmortal Society: Towards a Sociology of Immortality (Jacobsen, 2017b). These works were then complemented with other sources previously known to this paper's author that discussed some forms of postmortality and immortality within the following themes: digital immortality (Bassett, 2018;Savin-Baden & Burden, 2018;Savin-Baden & Mason-Robbie, 2020), transhumanism (Huberman, 2018;Kurzweil, 1999;Rothblatt, 2014), world religions and death (Moreman, 2008) and ancestor veneration (Gould et al., 2019;Hu, 2016). ...
... This future's main worldview would be Ancestor Veneration, comprised of two dimensions: the recognition of how past generations have shaped current societal conditions and cultural values, and the influence ancestors have in the world of the living, including offering assistance to solve problems (Reuter, 2015). While Ancestor Veneration is a common and contemporary practice in some regions and has been combined with modern technologies and dynamics in the Asia-Pacific (Gould et al., 2019;Hu, 2016), in this future, Ancestor Veneration would expand to other parts of the world and become integrated with other belief systems. ...
Death is a core feature of the human experience and a main driver of civilisational endeavours. Attempts to transcend it have propelled the emergence of a postmortal society in the twenty-first century, where people have looked into the various possibilities to achieve some form of immortality. While research on the postmortal society and the futures of death have examined the social practices for death transcendence in the present and outlined some possibilities for the future, discussion remains rare on the various ways this quest for immortality can reconfigure societal worldviews, institutions and practices. By analysing data obtained from a literature review on the sociology of immortality and the futures of death, an expert roundtable and 18 semi-structured interviews, six archetypal postmortal futures were developed: Digital Recreation, Transhumanism, Memorialisation-based Postmortality, Biological Life-extension, Back to the Earthly Realm, and Unity with the Cosmos. This article argues that paradigmatic societal changes shape the immortality-seeking practices that emerge in a given spatiotemporal context. The future-oriented perspective contributes to the literature on the sociology of immortality by discussing both how some postmortal futures may increase inequalities in the pursuit of immortality and how these futures, as a whole, represent future societal attitudes towards death.
... In rural China, the influence of gender could be similar because men have stronger adherence to traditional values due to their advantageous status in patrilineal families. This is indicated by the observation that older men's filial expectations lag behind those of older women (Cong & Silverstein, 2012), and that females are less likely to participate in ancestor worship (Hu, 2016). In addition, older women are more likely than older men to worry about how their deaths would affect their loved ones (Missler et al., 2012). ...
... Since 1979, a revival of religious beliefs and practices has transformed China, especially in rural China (Fan, 2003). For example, more than 70% of the adults participated in ancestor worship practice (Hu, 2016). Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism are not only the main religions but also the main philosophies in Chinese cultures that have been influencing Chinese people for thousands of years (Hsu et al., 2009). ...
Objectives
The aim of this study was to examine how the factors suggested by the Terror Management Theory are associated with death anxiety among rural Chinese older adults.
Method
Data were derived from a longitudinal survey of older adults aged 60 and above, had at least one living child, and were living in rural areas of Anhui Province. The working sample included 1,362 older adults. Two-level random effects models were used.
Results
Children’s financial support was negatively related to death anxiety, whereas emotional closeness with children was positively related to death anxiety. Older women reported more death anxiety than older men. Functional limitations were positively associated with death anxiety, and the widowed reported less death anxiety than the married. We did not find a significant association between religious belief and death anxiety.
Discussion
The study highlights the importance of culture in shaping death anxiety among older adults in rural China.
... In China, the traditional society is an extended kinship network with obvious family identity, hierarchical intergenerational relations, and moral obligations of filial piety (Cheng and Chan 2006;Cohen 1990;Watson 2004). One important cultural dynamic of Chinese familial characteristics is ancestor worship, which embraces activities which include a series of rituals, practices, and beliefs that focus on the perpetuation of the family line and reverence for the ancestors (Hu 2016;Yang and Hu 2014). Kinship membership, especially for the man, is regarded as the continuing family line which contains the crucial intergenerational ties between the living and the deceased (Feucht wang 2001;Weller 1987). ...
... Under the framework of social orientations, emphasis in Chinese society is placed especially on family, relationship, authority, and personal reputation social orientations. In particular, past work has shown a large significance compared to American culture in familistic collectivism and harmony (Ch'eng-K'Un, 1944;Yang, 1988;Campos et al., 2014), relational determinism (Chen and Chen, 2004;Chua et al., 2009), and authority worship (Yang, 1970;Thornton and Fricke, 1987;Hu, 2016), among other factors, in influencing social behavior. Critical reviews of past cross-cultural work have criticized weaknesses in study design and their overly broad generalizations (Voronov and Singer, 2002), in favor of a more fine-grained analysis. ...
... Under the framework of social orientations, emphasis in Chinese society is placed especially on family, relationship, authority, and personal reputation social orientations. In particular, past work has shown a large significance compared to American culture in familistic collectivism and harmony (Ch'eng-K'Un, 1944;Yang, 1988;Campos et al., 2014), relational determinism (Chen and Chen, 2004;Chua et al., 2009), and authority worship (Yang, 1970;Thornton and Fricke, 1987;Hu, 2016), among other factors, in influencing social behavior. Critical reviews of past cross-cultural work have criticized weaknesses in study design and their overly broad generalizations (Voronov and Singer, 2002), in favor of a more fine-grained analysis. ...
Designing systems that can reason across cultures requires that they are grounded in the norms of the contexts in which they operate. However, current research on developing computational models of social norms has primarily focused on American society. Here, we propose a novel approach to discover and compare descriptive social norms across Chinese and American cultures. We demonstrate our approach by leveraging discussions on a Chinese Q&A platform-Zhihu-and the existing SocialChemistry dataset as proxies for contrasting cultural axes, align social situations cross-culturally, and extract social norms from texts using in-context learning. Embedding Chain-of-Thought prompting in a human-AI collaborative framework, we build a high-quality dataset of 3,069 social norms aligned with social situations across Chinese and American cultures alongside corresponding free-text explanations. To test the ability of models to reason about social norms across cultures, we introduce the task of explainable social norm entailment, showing that existing models under 3B parameters have significant room for improvement in both automatic and human evaluation. Further analysis of cross-cultural norm differences based on our dataset shows empirical alignment with the social orientations framework, revealing several situational and descriptive nuances in norms across these cultures.
... This patriarchal system also imposed a heavy burden of labor on women, whose role was to uphold the family's economic and social standing. This gender inequity extended to mortuary rites as well (Liu 1999;Hu 2016). ...
Catholic missionaries were active among rural populations in Manchuria, in northeast China, around the turn of the 20th century. Their presence influenced everything from the role of women in religious and family life, to the adoption of new material culture, to local burial customs. This investigation of the Pianliancheng cemetery in Jilin Province, in use from the 1890s to the 1930s, reveals the material and embodied traces of this history. Archaeological, bioarchaeological, and historical evidence for cultural hybridization and transnational connections are presented. Specific findings include the history of individual Catholic priests in the mission, the hybridization of Catholic and Confucian burial practices by the Chinese converts, material connections to Chinese immigrant communities abroad, the labor burden and nutritional status of various members of the community, the continuation of foot binding in rural Manchuria, and the influence of conversion on gender roles and family life.
... By studying the cases mentioned above, we could see that those women who died unmarried and young can be sacred. The bonds between the living and the dead are intertwined and asymmetrical in that the living people can do nothing for the dead, but the dead have the power to support the living (Klass and Goss, 1999;Hu, 2016;Yang and Hu, 2012;Feuchtwang, 2001). ...
In Vietnam, a country where religious expression is widespread, many gods and goddesses are commonly worshipped. Among those, Bà Tổ Cô (Family Goddess) is widely worshipped in the North of Vietnam due to her exceptional background as unmarried, young, and having spiritual roots, unlike other national and heroic figures. This article examines the sanctity of the Family Goddess by decoding the terms, worshippers, beliefs and practices, sacred encounters and supports. The research is a final result of decade-long field trips, archival study, and in-depth interviews with various stakeholders. The research findings show that the veneration of the Family Goddess in Northern Vietnam is a continuity of a long-standing tradition of worshipping female deities in Asia and thus emphasising the need to maintain this unique intangible heritage as a crucial part of Vietnamese cultural diversity.
... Vulgarly rather than philosophically, spirits sometimes begin to resemble gods (Hemmat, 2016). As of result, it may clarify why Chinese people can inject religions into ancestral worship (Hu, 2016). Whiteley (2001) also observes, "In some sort of strange way, the religious tenets become part of the selfgenerating cosmos" (р. ...
Introduction. Alignment between the philosophical value of the Western parent company and the structure of the local organization is essential to improve managing effectiveness and worker productivity. The alignment may need adjustment while considering whether a Western model is fitted into the Chinese workgroup. This study examines the philosophical value concerning business management within an organization and then explores which value is applicable to the modern Chinese structure in the context of Taiwan. Purpose and methods. The purpose is the holistic view of the Chinese model, as opposed to the separated approach of the West. It does not attempt to find the best philosophical framework of business management for local Chinese structure in Taiwan, as such a framework probably does not exist. Instead, it explores the specific phenomena considered during the process of emergence of business management framework when comparing philosophical value for both selected cases of Western and Chinese enterprises. The case study and PATOP model were used. Results. As a result, there has no single model that is absolutely appropriate to both business and people in one way or the other. Both Chinese and Western philosophical ways of doing business have merits and weaknesses, as illustrated. The implication of the results is the emerged PATOP model. The model indicates an ideal work environment where the Western approach is applicable to the Chinese structure in Taiwan. Conclusions. It concludes that the philosophical approach in doing business within the Chinese structure is erected in a way of “Middle of the Road” according to the PATOP emerged from the study. However, it should be noted that there will be drift as this emerged PATOP model used in the Chinese structure with western approach, indicating another issue “what an acceptable time for drift would be”?
... Scholars of religion have been interested in religious change but are usually focused on aggregate movements in one direction. Quantitative studies on the United States and Europe have been motivated by trends of religious decline (e.g., Argue, Johnson, and White 1999;Bengtson et al. 2015;Hayward and Krause 2013;Hill 2011;Schwadel 2018;van Ingen and Moor 2015), while quantitative studies on China have been motivated by trends of religious awakening (e.g., Han et al. 2017;Hu 2016;Leamaster and Hu 2014;Stark and Liu 2011). ...
Religiosity appears to be rising in China. However, this trend hides the extent of fluidity in religious beliefs and behaviors. Within‐person changes in religiosity across time are not random but patterned in systematic ways. In this article, we examine the predictors of religiosity in a longitudinal sample of Chinese adults from 2012 to 2016. Religious outcomes are correlated with sociodemographic, political, and health variables. Notably, all religious outcomes are positively associated with household income and also with the unfair treatment index, a measure of negative personal experiences with the government. Measures of health problems are positively associated with religious importance, though not with religious identification or behavior.
... Secondly, instead of simply repeating the scheme from 2014, the 2018 questionnaire added two additional belief responses: "ghosts" and "geomancy" (fengshui). Previous research has found that the worship of gods, ghosts, and ancestors and the belief in geomancy and destiny are the most important components of Chinese folk religion (Hu, 2016;Tang, 2014;Yang, 1961;Yang and Hu, 2012). However, these beliefs were largely ignored by many previous social surveys. ...
Folk religion, as the basis of the religious landscape in traditional China, is a highly syncretic system which includes elements from Buddhism, Daoism, and other traditional religious beliefs. Due to the shortcomings of denomination-based measurement, most previous social surveys have documented a very low percentage of folk religion adherents in China, and found almost no overlapping among religious beliefs. This study offers a quantitative portrait of the popularity, the diffuseness, and the diversity of Chinese folk religion. With the improved instruments in the 2018 China Family Panel Studies, we first observe that nearly 50% of respondents claim to have multiple (two or even more than three) religious beliefs and the believers of folk religion account for about 70% of the population. By using latent class analysis, this article explores the pattern of inter-belief mixing and identifies four typical classes of religious believers: “non-believers and single-belief believers”, “believers of geomancy”, “believers of diffused Buddhism and Daoism”, and “believers embracing all beliefs”. Finally, we find that the degree of commitment varies across these religious classes. Believers of folk religion are found to be less committed than believers of Western institutional religions, but as committed as believers of Eastern institutional religions.
This study delves into the acculturation process among Chinese Peranakans in Serui City, Papua, Indonesia, specifically focusing on transitioning from a bicultural to a monocultural identity. This research uses interpretive phenomenology and in-depth interviews to gather individual experiences. This research found two distinct forms of Chinese acculturation: one driven by Security-Economic factors and the other by Social-Political influences. Furthermore, it found that cultural art traditions, including the traditional dances of Papua as the host culture, play pivotal catalysts in facilitating acculturation within the Peranakan community. The study underscores the dynamic interplay of internal factors, such as economic motives and security concerns, and external factors, including political structures, in driving the shift from biculturality to monoculturality. This research highlights the significance of social and cultural activities as powerful tools for fostering intercultural communication competence among diverse communities.
Cross-cultural studies of religion have consistently treated ancestor worship as a specific, narrow practice that is found in many traditional societies but far from all of them. In contrast, Steadman, Palmer, and Tilley (1996) have proclaimed that ancestor worship was a universal behavior in traditional, small-scale societies and that the practice is found in societies where it was previously thought to be absent. In this paper, we describe one such society, the Iban, whose religious practices are often claimed to not include the worship of ancestors, despite ancestors being central to their religion. We demonstrate that many of the gods and spirits of the Iban supernatural pantheon are most clearly understood as ancestors. Furthermore, we argue that the Iban example may not be an outlier, and that ancestor worship may be prevalent in many more societies than previously claimed. We end by describing the weaknesses of some of the common reasons used to downplay the ubiquity of the practice in previous ethnographic treatments and cross-cultural studies.
Whether one opts to refer to it as filial piety, filial obedience, family reverence, and family feeling, or filiality, the concept of xiào 孝 has been widely studied throughout history. However, to this day, the religious dimension of xiào is far too often ignored. This article intends to demonstrate that beyond merely having a religious dimension to it, the very concept of xiào cannot be removed from the realm of Chinese popular religion. More specifically, this article constitutes an ethnographic examination of the beliefs and practices pertaining to xiào of undergraduate university students in Beijing. These beliefs and practices will be compared and contrasted with how xiào is regarded by the parents of these students. By demonstrating that xiào essentially constitutes a religious belief that has deep meaning and importance to all the interviewees of this study, this article adds to the growing corpus of scholarship that seeks to contrast the popular view that China is a deeply irreligious country. I will also assert that there is a notable generational difference in how xiào is conceived.
In this book the author describes the Ancestors Ceremonies as practiced in the Taiwanese Catholic Church. The author’s point is to demonstrate how the Chinese symbolic universe made a deep translation of the "new" symbolic system represented by the Catholic doctrine. At the same time the effort of the Catholic Church in order to adapt the Gospel message to the local situation built up a particular phenomenon that the author defined as cultural dialogue. It is this dialogic relationship the process that the author defines as Culture.
As the state has shifted its priorities towards social harmony and poverty alleviation, this study finds rhetorical resonance, combined with strong lineage solidarity, as an emerging strategy for villages to compete for government resources and investments. By articulating grassroots needs as being in line with local cadres’ performance goals, villages have successfully converted their needs into development proposals and mobilized lineage solidarity to persuade local cadres of the feasibility of such proposals. Drawing on three villages’ school-saving efforts in Fujian province, our fieldwork illustrates how one village retained its school by mobilizing lineage solidarity and converting education into a “model” village project to boost cultural tourism. Others failed to do so and lost their schools. Under the target-based cadre management system, the bottom-up competition for government support is largely shaped by the villages’ pre-existing development and resource structures, which may maximize management efficiency but may also reinforce socioeconomic inequalities between villages.
Religion plays an active role in rural societies in China. Most research on the religious resurgence in China since the 1980s has focused on the restoration of temples and the resumption of rituals, how religious services and commodities were commercialized, and how local elites or religious specialists have fuelled the revival. This study focuses on the motivation of rural believers and aims to explore how they practice religion in their daily life. Within this local context, popular religion is defined as the set of religious practices embedded in rural life and contrasted with the Buddhist and Christian institutional forms of religious revival. During 11 months of fieldwork in a northern county, I observed people's religious practices in temples and churches. There was a distinction between people's informal practices and the institutions' formal teachings and rites. My findings suggest that religious revival first took place through the religious practices of daily-practical modality in order to meet people's need for immediate results in their everyday lives. At a later point religious revival followed the desire for institutional forms of discipline and knowledge. The revival thus exhibited tensions between these modalities of efficacy-based religiosity and the dharma-based religiosity centred on liturgical and scriptural modalities. Monks and pastors strove to carry forward the standardisation process through their insistence on liturgical and scriptural disciplines and to educate the congregation in the importance of attending sermons to acquire orthodox knowledge. This led to the rise of religious awareness of being distinctly Buddhist or Christian and to the formation of small yet intimate communities of mutual support based on those religions. This became the new appeal of institutional forms. It not only led believers to the path of dharma-based religiosity, but also highlighted the value of self-cultivation within an overt moral order. Rural people explored diverse religious forms that allowed the cultivation of morality and the moral self. This was in response to increasing social mobility and individualism as the rural village community fell apart. While believers sought efficacy from deities, they also received confirmation of particular moral codes confirmed by their experience of efficacy. This was based on their understanding that deities only bless the good. Buddhism and Christianity exploited this concern by enacting severe religious sanctions and disciplines to consolidate the higher moral standard set for believers. Within this diversity a gender division remained as women assumed spiritual responsibility on behalf of the family and men carried out obligations to ancestors. Women represented the majority of religious participants but instead of passive acceptance of "traditional" practices, they showed initiatives in selecting the modality they would adopt, doing volunteer work, studying orthodox knowledge and following ritual disciplines. Their freedom to choose among diverse religious activities and their willingness to devote themselves to a higher cause have brought transformations of rural religious lives. Because popular religion is embedded in rural life, doing popular religion is an everyday pattern of living. The easy access to a temple or church and the continued stigmatization of the rural backwardness of religious traditions generated popular drives to express this diversity of religious transformation. Even though the rural societies are undergoing a process of social mobility and urbanization, popular religion continues to be central to people's lives: it may simulate traditional approaches to deal with life's uncertainties, but it exists in new forms that pursue diverse expressions of religious identity and knowledge.
Over the past few decades, public opinion studies have paid increasing attention to the comparison of eastern and western religions, an endeavor that calls for a rigorous evaluation of empirical measures of religiosity for eastern religions. This study investigates the applicability to Chinese Buddhism of a measurement scheme based on believing, belonging, and behaving (the Three Bs). Confirmatory factor analyses of the Chinese Spiritual Life Survey suggest that the Three Bs are valid measures of Buddhist religiosity as they converge to the same latent construct. They are also reliable survey instruments, as illustrated by measurement invariance across subpopulations defined by differences in region of residence, gender, cohort, and education. The Three Bs measurement scheme has potential for empirical comparative research. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The World Association for Public Opinion Research. All rights reserved.
China’s aging society and the family-based model of basic aged care determine that children’s support for their parents directly affects the standard of living of the majority of the aging population. Existing theories indicate that in this era of social transition, the implications of filial piety have shifted from the traditional emphasis on the parent-child generational relationship and children’s duty to obey their parents to a dual mode in which family love coexists with the authority of the elders. Using data from the Chinese General Social Survey of 2006, we explore the ways in which the two basic dimensions of authoritarian filial piety and reciprocal filial piety connect with various types of filial behavior. The results of our multivariate linear model show that on average, authoritarian filial piety, which emphasizes authority relationships and children’s duty, increases children’s financial support for their parents, while reciprocal filial piety, stressing family love and generational equality, significantly increases children’s emotional support for their parents. A comparison of the basic dimensions of filial piety shows that neither significantly increases children’s physical support for their parents. Further analysis of the interaction effect indicates that the link between authoritarian filial piety and financial support is more significant among younger groups. In addition, for males, a marginally significant positive relation exists between authoritarian filial piety and physical support for their parents.
Research has found that non-religious adults have an automatic tendency to construe natural phenomena as intentionally created. Related work has focused on whether Western and non-Western adults spontaneously assign functions to natural phenomena but, to date, no studies have explored whether an assumption of intentional origins extends to a non-Western culture without an Abrahamic cultural tradition and associated design discourse. We therefore explored whether adults in China display an intentional design bias. Participants performed a speeded judgment task in which they evaluated whether depicted items were intentionally created or not. Chinese adults favored a design-based construal of natural phenomena under processing constraints. We also created a novel culturally sensitive survey to more fully document supernatural beliefs and practices. The survey confirmed participants’ primarily atheistic self-identification while also revealing various supernatural practices and animistic beliefs. Aspects of these folk beliefs positively predicted design intuitions about nature. Cumulatively, these results demonstrate that intuitions about intentional origins are present independent of any Western creationist discourse or Abrahamic God belief. They provide first evidence of a potentially universal intentional design bias in adults. They also point to the need for more nuanced, culturally sensitive, survey approaches to explicit supernatural belief and practice.
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