 almost five past maybe we should kind of formally start the seminar. Welcome to everybody to our second, is it the second one Wayne? I think it's the second history seminar that we have on this term. And thank you Wayne for organizing it and thank you to Stefania and Lars in particular for presenting today their work and maybe just a brief word in I mean in a way both speakers don't need a lot of introduction I guess but let's start with Lars who's been working on religions and Christianity in China in particular for a long time and who is now kind of has joined Stefania's and I think Elena Elena's project right it's the two of you would kind of leading this project if I understood that correctly Elena Valous is also present very nice to meet you. So, okay you'll know Lars who was in the Institute department has been there for quite a few years. And then we have Stefania Trapanin who did her PhD at SOAS quite some time ago by now. I think that was probably shortly after I joined the department here. But she did her PhD in religion study working on Chinese Buddhism in the early 20th century. And after that spent a couple of years at the University of Groningen and has then decided that SOAS is where I belong I believe if I understand your decision right to come back to our department to teach Chinese religions I guess and philosophy. And that's it's absolutely wonderful to have you here. So, maybe in terms of publications defined as mainly worked on Buddhism in the 20th century a lot of aspects of kind of in terms of Buddhist education Buddhist monastic life woman in Buddhism, Buddhist doctrine to some extent I think. And I don't know a lot about this new project it sounds fascinating it's about kind of, I didn't notice down the title somewhere mapping religious diversity in modern Sichuan sounds fascinating. Yeah we spent first a few minutes actually planning the project so the Okay, yeah I won't explain a lot about it just wanted to say that it's kind of gone round the world that's where I picked it up actually rather than from our department which is very interesting. And I mean, it looks terribly promising it's a huge project with a lot of people involved from kind of working on different aspects of religious life in Sichuan. So I assume that the two of you, Stefania and Elana probably work on Buddhist religion. I'm not quite sure about Elana Taoist stuff too and so last is working on Catholicism and there's a long list of other people also involved so it's a fantastic project. And today, Stefania and Lars will be talking about bringing the periphery to the center. So, very curious what you mean by that, whether it's about Sichuan being the far west or something else really so I will leave the floor to you to explain more what you mean by that. Thank you so much for agreeing to give us this talk. Thank you. So I will share my screen. So you can also see my PowerPoint. Yeah, okay. Thank you Andrea for your, I'm going to, thank you Andrea for your very kind introduction. Lars and I had this idea to give a short introduction to this project since both of us are actually based at SOAS right now and really would like to take this opportunity to introduce what we have done in the background of the project is and who is involved and also to analyze some case studies. This is a project, it's a multi-year project that started in late 2017 and is founded by the Janzinguo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange and this title, mapping religious diversity in modern Sichuan. And this is just a screenshot of the website and also you can see the website on the bottom. So this is a project that I am directing with Elena Balussi who is online tonight with us from Loyola University, Chicago and also former graduate from SOAS and counts the participation of 12 scholars in total coming from several disciplinary training that are historian, people working on history of religion, Chinese studies, anthropology, sociology, ritual studies, media, material culture and affiliated to institution in North America, Europe and Asia. So this is a project that actually based at SOAS at the moment the grant per se is also based at SOAS. We collaborate with local scholars in Sichuan, so we have quite an extensive network between Sichuan University, Sichuanomo University, the Southwest University for Nationality, the Chongqing Academy and so on and also rely on a large network of religious communities in Sichuan and Chongqing. We started in the end of 2017 and were able to conduct a series of field trips until the end of 2018 and given the current travel restrictions, we have spent most of our 2020 in doing some writing, in checking our notes, but also revising and enriching the website, the project website, the one that you can see here, which I will show you later. The website includes a map of the sites we are working on and timeline related to the key moments of the history of these sites. The next step will be adding a visualization of religious networks centered on particular individuals and the person religious people that somehow we are discovering throughout our research. In line with the project focus that is on the Qing and the publican period, so from the mid-17th century, but mostly focusing really on the 19th century up to 1950, we also some links to the contemporary situation, the map of the timeline that you can find of the website are meant to provide data of sites and milestone moments that characterize the modern period. So it's not like a comprehensive history of all the religious sites in Sichuan. We really want to give a visualization of what was happening in those particular decades. For sites, we don't need just temples. We are looking at other places that somehow embed religious meaning or had a religious role in their life. So what we do tonight is last we'll start providing an overview of the history of Sichuan. Afterwards, I will explain why we decided to focus on the religious landscape of Sichuan and what are our leading question in the project and how we are conducting our research in terms of overarching theoretical framework and research methodologies that we have adopted since the beginning. And at the very end, Lars and I will share some of our findings, case studies that prove the active participation of religious players in the unfolding of local and national history. We will also review specific sources and methods that we have adopted specifically for those case studies. We will also discuss challenges that we have met in our fieldwork, hoping that somehow our experience can be helpful to graduate students or to whoever is doing fieldwork in similar situations. So now I will stop the share and we'll leave the word to Lars. Yes. Thank you very much. I'm going to let you share my screen. Oh, you may see yourselves now. Wait. I'll do it the other way around. I have two screens. I should explain. Okay. It's sometimes an advantage, sometimes a disadvantage. Here we go. So, okay. And then I just need to have the, yes, I'm going to say a few words now concerning the historical background of such one, because that explains in part the title. I have lost everything now. Sorry. The title is of course to bring the periphery into the center and the most important aspect to remember is that we're in China, but at the same time, we're not in China. And this may seem like a contradiction in terms, but can you see the screen now at this moment? Yeah. Can you see the whole screen in large? Very good. Very good. Then you're in the center. And of course, you can see the whole screen. You're in the center. And of course being in China means being in the center, but it's the, but we have a problem with such one because such one is half in half out, you could say. A bit like Britain and the European Union, but in historical terms in China, of course that matters because it brings along the specter of warfare, but then also on the positive side, a lot of cultural contacts and in all brevity, I just want to take you through 3,000 years of such one history in order to make clear why certain religious traditions matter that we have today, and especially Christianity in, from my perspective, Buddhism, of course, from another perspective. What you see here is Lisu language, such one. And this is Tibetan. Both are today extant minority groups. There are others, the Jiang, for example, but the, by now the majority of the population are certainly the Han Chinese, around 95%. So it's about the same mix as that you have for the People's Republic in general. Historically, the province is known as Ba and Shu. So these are two parts which you will probably see here on this map. No, you won't see it. I showed you on a different map, but it's, these are two halves which developed quite early on in time. The, the issue about the periphery should become clear once we enlarge the maps. So this is probably the oldest map that we have. This shows you the area where such one is situated today. There's even an insert of the global map with Eurasia, People's Republic, and then this part which shows you the, not such one, but the area which is highlighted here, but it shows you that it's outside the center. And from a historical perspective, this does make a difference. These are the states, the warring states, which then become the first China. So it takes some time for such one to be incorporated into China, going, moving across the timeline by about 800 years. That's not true. 1200 years, sorry, 1200 years. We arrive in the town period and you can see that this area is still outside China. So this is, although there is a lot of interaction and although the areas integrated actually into, into China, but there are other players at work, especially the neighbors, the large neighbors, namely Tibet. The, just to bring the geographical dimension of this being outside and inside, so being on the periphery, being central into focus, I found this map which shows very beautifully that this part which is, which is such one, so Chongqing is here, it's a little further to the west, is actually directly on the border to something that we easily recognize as Tibet. But historically, of course, all of this is Tibet. This is, these are the Tibetan lowlands. These are the highlands. And then before you know it, you cross the river, the Yangtze River, Changyang, and all of a sudden you're in territory where the Han Chinese are historically not at home. So this is why such one is geographically and historically on the outside of the Chinese civilization spectrum. In terms of civilization, of course, you can see that this is a so-called Sino-Tibetan Buddhist statuette, which shows clear similarities to at least Cham culture, which is of course in, which you will find in Kampucheya in the central parts of Vietnam, and then all the way over to India. So this is part of a different cultural sphere, very much at home in historical such one. Again, a few samples that show you the period that precedes the, if you like, the integration of the region into China. These rather mystical looking creatures are bronze figures from a place called Sanxingdui, which is part of the early bronze civilizations. And then here in the corner, you have a, I think it's an earthenware one, which gives you the image of a storyteller, quite vivid if you look at the figure. And this is already when in the rest of China and including actually those parts of the eastern parts of such one, you are already in the Han period. So in other words, this is already integrated, but this duality still exists. And it's only actually in the Song era that such one really becomes fully part of China, let's call it China. It's a contradiction in terms because Song China is actually the smallest empire of the large contiguous empires that exist in China, but still already then, that's around the 11th century, 12th centuries of our time, you get a strong Chinese presence in such one. And the gentleman to the right is the poet and statesman Xu Shi, who is also a famous cook. Those of you who have been to Hangzhou especially, it's far away from Sichuan, you will know that he's experimented with pork. So this is, this is pork. But in any case, he probably also had vegetarian dishes. But in any case, he did not make any food out of these pandas, who are very much at home in Sichuan. But the two had the same idea, namely to use a kind of walking stick, which I think is quite a good idea. It's quite telling of Sichuan, because of course, this is an area which is also in terms of vegetation, quite different from other parts of China. In the late imperial period, and this is where it becomes important for Christianity. And this is actually the last point that I want to make for the historical introduction. In the late imperial period, Sichuan plays an important role. It's during the Ming era, so from 1368 all the way till 1644, it continues the very intense integration into the rest of cultural China. So in other words, it's part of, not just part of the administrative structure, but it's very much part of the cultural trends that occur in China. You get this in the religious realm, philosophical realm, in the expression of the syncretic movement. So it's the San Jiao He Yi, the three teachings that unite into one. This tendency becomes very strong during the Ming period, and it's in this time that you get also at a popular level a lot of syncretic movements. And these syncretic movements are initially quite well, they are listed in any case because the Ming are less concerned with religious organizations being illegal, but they certainly form the beginning of the, I won't call them secret societies, but of the religious societies which draw them essence out of the unification of different religious ideas. Therefore, you get from, you know, you have here on the right-hand side an early image from the Ming period where you have men congregating there or men who belong to the so-called Bai Lian Jiao, the white lotus society. White lotus were quite, well, innovative in one way, namely that they allowed women full access. So you had men and women meeting in the same places, which during the Ming period was perhaps frowned upon, but not illegal, but definitely during the team. And this is why during the team period you have regular persecutions against, well, against religious movements which are declared heterodox, heretical, we come across that term at the beginning of my introduction to Christianity. One other feature that's very important for the population and for the entire structure of Zuchuan, following the conquest of the Ming Empire by the Qing. So in the first decades after 1644, the West, especially the Western parts, China was being divided up between the central government and between feudatories in simple, simplifying language. And these feudatories were simply territories that were given to the three great, biggest commanders who had helped the Qing to conquer the territory of the former Ming Empire. One of them, Wu Sangui, extended his feudatory to include Zuchuan. And though it was not, the team period was too short to actually have any formal power structures in place, but the warfare that came along had a dramatic effect on the population of Zuchuan. The population was reduced in some places by 90%. And this is a almost, what you could refer to, I think I used the term decimate, so it almost left only 10% left, not completely, but in some population centers, certainly. And the effect for the following one and a half centuries, so from throughout the whole 18th century, and certainly in the first decades of the 20th century, sorry, 19th century, you had population movements because of a regaining population growth, which meant that people in the countryside were no longer needed, so they went to the big cities. And while many people made their way to the eastern, the cities in the east, in the Jiangnan, for example, in the Lower Yangtze Valley, Zuchuan became one of these places in the interior to absorb people. And because they absorbed many people from Northern China, the dialect which you have in Zuchuan is very unique. It is essentially a Northern dialect, but pronounced in a very peculiar way. So, Zuchuanese, Chinese. So these were a few words concerning the development of Zuchuan as a peripheral part of China that then becomes part of the center. So this is probably a fairly vague explanation, certainly to historians, but I just wanted to highlight the major steps in the development of this province, up to the point when Christianity develops, and that will be my following part after Steffi, who will continue with her introduction. Thank you, to click out here. Okay, thank you very much, Lars. So as Lars said, Zuchuan is indeed participate very much in national history, but also has the own peculiarity. And you can find a number of events or movements that are pretty much local. And so there you have a development of the participation in national history, and also development of important local movements. The railway protection movement in the modern period is just one of the many examples. Lars gives his own explanation of periphery. I have to say that in another sense, from a religious studies perspective, we have noticed how there is an emerging scholarship on religion in modern China. And somehow most of this scholarship is actually looking at the Tianan area, so that a different regional place in China, and also focus on coastal areas and large urban centers. While actually Zuchuan, which is in the periphery, kind of remain also in the periphery of the academic study of Chinese religion. So what we wanted to do is somehow integrate the current scholarship of history of China and religious history of China, exploring dynamics and paradigm of religious diversity in modern Zuchuan. Since you have a national history, so what we also want to do is try to engage history and religion. So with this project, the different researchers within the project show how this unique historical background might have influenced religious life and institution in modern Zuchuan and also vice versa, how religious communities might have intervened or even affected than folding off non-religious history within this territory and also in the larger territory of China. And in some of my case studies also intervened in the region in Southeast Asia. This project wants to look at Zuchuan so as a place that needs to be relocated from the periphery of the academic study of religion to the center. And it reveals that Zuchuan is an important note of religious networks that originate and develop within it and extend beyond it. And it's an active center of religious knowledge production in itself. It's not just the recipient of knowledge transmission from more advanced coastal areas. Now, within China, the province of Zuchuan is very much rich when it comes to ethnic minorities and religious diversity. Ethnic minorities, something that Lars already introduced. You have a number of minorities like the Yi, the Miao, the Hui, the Qian, the Zhang, the Tibetan groups. And some of them are prominent in particular areas of Zuchuan. Some others you have particular area that you find more than one minority in there. And this is one of the part of the uniqueness of Zuchuan. But it's also crucial for the overall history of religious in China. In fact, you have Taoist, Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism, Protestant, Christian, and you have been coexisting for centuries in here. Just to give a short overview, the presence of Zuchuan is in the area where Zhang Tao-lin founded the Celestial Masters and so started Taoist movements already in the Eastern Anne. And not much later, actually, this is also one of the very first parts of China that experienced the arrival of spread of Buddhism. To be honest, according to some of my funding, looking at some local reading of historical documents, it seems that Buddhist worship was practiced already in the third century BC, in particular area of Zuchuan, in the city of Suenin. Tibetan tradition also was recorded in Zuchuan in the imperial time. The Muslim communities start developing the Yuan period and increasing later in the Ming and the Qin Catholicism is present since the Tang. And then in the late Ming and early Qin, you have really a settle down of Catholic Christianity. And later on in the 19th century of Protestant also joining the Catholics. Moreover, in terms of sacred sites, Zuchuan has also a number of important places, sacred places for both Taoism and Buddhism. One of the sacred mountains of Buddhism, Aumei, Aumei-Shant Mount Aumei, is indeed in Zuchuan. And the Qin-Cheng-Shant, one of the sacred mountains for Taoism is also in Zuchuan. So this is why for us, Zuchuan is a unique place, is a crucial case study to see religious and ethnic diversity, to also understand how religious community, sacred space, religious social networks are all interacting. As the title of our project suggests, we are researching not just religion, but indeed religious diversity. And religious diversity is a topic that has been quite emerging, quite prominent recently in a number of study of Western scholarship and then beyond Western scholarship and focusing on, of course, religious diversity in other areas, in other geographical and cultural areas. Most of Western scholarship have shown an increased interest in the topic of governance and dynamics of religious diversity. And of course, failures in the administration of diversity, the confrontation of an increase in exclusion and lack of inclusion practices, all these pressing challenges for our current society have encouraged academic and public debates on the subject. In China, it seems that coexistence and cooperation among the variety of religious tradition and communities develop in a distinct way. And as it is reflected in the research on local religious diversity that has appeared in the past few years. The preliminary discussion of the subject found its first difficulties in adoption of the word religion and reached the conclusion that both the construct of religion and the concept of diversity should be problematized and critically redefined in light of the China context. In fact, the issues of affiliation and membership to specific religious groups are conceived peculiarly in the Chinese plurality of belief systems. Since China is on most levels an arena that witnesses borrowings rather the boundaries among religions. Scholarship has argued that coexistence and often also merging and collaboration among religious tradition and diverse communities advance in a distinct way. There have been a number of edited volumes in the last 10 years on the topic of religious diversity. Adam Chao, for instance, argued that the concept of religious diversity is not native of Chinese culture since Chinese people see religions not as fixed and impermeable systems of beliefs but as situation-based practices. And in China we may see diversity and religiosity and inclusion practices but we may not really detect the religious diversity and practices of exclusion as they emerge elsewhere. Other scholars have made a distinction in the perspective of religious diversity as lived in practice on the ground, on one hand and the one that is theorized and more rhetorical in China's official policies on the other. Sociologists have added to this discussion discussing the possibility to talk about plurality and pluralism and pluralization instead of diversity looking also the concept of oligopoly as diversity is right on the level of state-religion relations. Scientists have kind of warned on the use of a term diversity looking at China and decided to us maybe would have been better to zoom in and look at different realities within China and also made a distinction between what happened in Mellon China and Hong Kong and Taiwan. Secular immesecularization or other two terms that somehow emerge from this debate and highly criticize and then the term syncretist and the term sectarianism is used in the study of Chinese religious and culture and should be redefined as well. So you have a number of articles that have even been published recently that somehow understand how Western framed classifications that have been used so far should be actually adopted with quotions by scholars and increasingly there is a move towards using indigenous ideas and philosophical concept which can offer alternative perspective on and definition of diversity even for relying solely on them, on Chinese native concept may not be satisfactory either. I myself have published an article two years ago where I tried to reflect on this different position and also do some cross-references to foundational concepts and paradigms in traditional Chinese thought and Chinese philosophy with a purpose to propose a rather interdisciplinary and multivocal perspective for future research. So some our project is on religious diversity and of course is this kind of discussion, academic discussion that is developing also within China. But our project is not so much concerned with official policy, so the perspective of diversity from the state even if of course one of our research is actually doing research on the different legal regulation of religion and religious diversity. But we try to look more of analysis of communities and networks, the so-called religion on the ground so the lit religion and with a specific interest in the interactions between rural and urban, public and private, religious and lay communities and spaces. Moreover, we take into account not only the five officially recognized religions, the one that I mentioned before in relation to Sichuan, Buddhism, Taoist, Protestantism, Catholicism and Islam, but also other religious manifestations that do not fit into these neat categories like Confucius Taoist traditions, philanthropic organizations, new religious movements, spirit, writing communities and so on. And we like to address these different religious groups, not as separate entities, but often in conversation with each other and we will pay also specific attention to gender relations in these exchanges since in the study of religion in China there is still a big need of more and more study of the situation of women in Chinese religions. Of course, we have an attention on Sichuan and now I'm going to discuss with you a little bit some key concepts of lines of historical inquiry that are the basis of our research. Given our attention on Sichuan and very often to small areas within the province, for instance I myself am working on one district in Chengdu or a small well, a small town in China still a big town from an European perspective but in perspective of China's town is quite a small town in rural areas, so we really look at small areas within the province not just the province at large. We categorize our research under the label of local history and micro history and reflect of the active role played by space in the formation of different typologies of networks. Among scholars, Ginsburg explained how micro histories and the studies of local realities are taken as core agents in the disclosing also of micro histories and they are wrapping up in this case the overarching narratives of religious China and in fact we try always to relate what happened to Sichuan and the effect of what is happening to Sichuan on the impact of what happened in Sichuan in the larger history of China. Space is also an important term for us and in our project space is intended not in the sense of the territory, passive recipient of a living society but is an active agent in the making of the community and the network. It's not the passive container of lived religions and we have scholars that we have read like Dori Massiso from geography but also Lily Kong and King Knot and they all argued how places have multiple identities they do not have clearly defined inside and outside and most importantly places are processes subject to continuous transformation where society and environment are all closely related and our research show that space and communities alternate each other as subject and object in the power dynamics of the religious and social landscape. Concepts of micro and local history and a new understanding and revitalization of ideas of space and place have formed part of the overall theoretical basis of this project. Another term that we use very often is network and the idea of network in relation to community. Network for us function as an analytical tool in the analysis not only of the synchronous relations among religious communities in Sichuan but also of the diachronic development. Our starting point is that the plurality of religious and cultural traditions in Sichuan has been practiced by religious community which can be grouped into larger networks. We are considering existing concepts that have been developing network studies but we also added other concepts like interreligious network and interreligious network and so interact even further with spatial science. Interreligious network by that we mean a network of communities belonging to the same religious tradition but may be located in different areas within Sichuan while interreligious network with a network of communities belonging to different religious traditions located within a small the same small area like a city district in Sichuan. The individual projects that are ongoing, the 12 individual projects reveal the importance of interreligious networks and also the text-retro spaces and material culture which result from these interactions. The studies take as a whole begin to trace the profile of a complex and unique religious landscape influenced by migration, ethnic diversity and the lack of strong political control that allow for wider experimentation. A few sub- projects show attention to the role of women in religious community, religious identity is seen often as interacting and even overlapping with ethnic distinction. In fact some of the sub-projects develop a discussion of religious diversity and dialogue with the discourse of ethnicity. Attention to spirit writing networks is also part of one of the sub-projects maps of lineage networks namely lineages of teacher-student connection called transmission lineages within Tibetan Buddhism is another topic. Networks in representation is something that one of us is looking at. Networks in representation means networks as shaped in various forms of literature and culture which also engage with networks on the ground. And then there are the consideration of hybrid networks within such one and studies of relation and tension between regional and trans-regional networks which put such one in dialogue with practices and networks in Zhejiang, Hubei, Guangdong, Jiangsu, Weizhou and Yunnan. Here I have the list of all the scholars that are involved and Amy is looking at the networks in representations and also specifically Tibetan Buddhism who with us today is looking at the Wenchang worship within such one but also in relation to other areas of somehow connected such one to other provinces in China. Geoff Keung McLean is looking at Protestants in such one Lars is looking at Catholicism and is going to tell us a little bit more later on. Volker Hollis from such one university is looking at Leomann and some Taoist and also Taoist groups. Anabella Pitkin is working on Tibetan Buddhism within such one. I look at Han Buddhism so I don't look at Sino-Tibetan practices but more the Chinese side of Buddhism. Sanyuan Lin is a scholar that focus on on the Hui and so on the the diffusion of the spread of Islam within such one but also looking at Xian and Wei Zhou and other area and so the connection between the Islamic communities in such one and other areas around in such one. Elena Balusi who is the co-director of the project is also with us tonight. She has different projects. One is about women in Taoism and women as writers also of particular texts within Taoism and the history of Hui Guan particularly the guideholds. So this particular building complex that change religious affiliation throughout history and so it's a give a particular very nice interpretation of diversity within the same space diachronically but also synchronically is developing a very interesting conclusion on the role of space in defining religious and the particular religious color and Elena will give a talk on one of his Hui Guan on the 19th of February. Wang Zhenchuan in focus on the spirit writing movement, Wu Hua is our scholar from Sichuan University that is looking at the legal framework of the religious groups especially Buddhist but also other religious group within Sichuan and Zhenchuan also from Sichuan University is looking at Chuang Zhu so particularly related to Sichuan. I'd love to show you for a second our website I don't know how I can do that. Can you see the website? Yes. On the website you can read more about individual projects, the publication and presentation that we are doing about the profile of the researchers and our fieldwork notes so different notes and kind of blog posts that we write about our field trips which is last one was in the end of 2018. What I want to show you is the map that can so this is one of the two major addition that we have done and something that we have worked on during COVID travel restriction was try to create a map where we are locating all the different sites and if you click on one of them now I'm doing something that I'm not supposed to do okay here is back you can hear the name of the site and some more detail and the name of the researcher and from here you can go to have a more detailed description of this particular site and as you can see there are over here on the bottom there is also an explanation of how we work on the map and so far there are some we are still working on it so this is updated at the end of every month and besides as I said besides the normal for instance Buddhist temple there are also schools where schools that were founded by monks but also schools for monks schools for monks were established for the lady and we are going to do the same for Taoist and other religious tradition so more colors will appear over here and now if I can go back the other feature is that it takes a few seconds to load is the timeline where you have all the different sites that we have been working on again this is also updated every at the end of every month and if you go through here again this is not the history of all the religious sites in Sichuan we are looking at the modern history so we chose some key moments in the modern history of these sites and we include that in the timeline and when you go on one of them again you have different explanation and a photo you can move to more details about this particular temple in this case and each line one line for each tradition and this will be will grow even more now we will go back to my power point now Lars and I would like to close with some ideas of case studies that we have been working on so you can see in practice what is the uniqueness of religious diversity in Sichuan I myself have been working on on Han Buddhism so not the Tibetan sign of Tibetan practices and also within Han Buddhism I prefer not to look at the monks and nuns the so-called eminent monks eminent nuns and the temples that somehow are mentioned sometimes in historical works by Chinese or Western scholars but try to look at the small sites of the small temples and so-called non-eminent monks so try to give more visibility to a reality that otherwise will be hidden in history these are just some example of what I have been working on so a number of papers that I have done on nuns or education or I took particular town like swinging an agent that in perspective if you think about China I consider not really big cities but what I am going to talk since I already talked about nuns in lecture last year at SOS what I am going to talk to you today is the phenomenon of the movement of soldier monks and the engagement between Buddhist monks, temples and the army during the Sino-Japanese War from the 1930s until 1945 I also before going into detail on monks, the army and the temples I am going to give an idea of what kind of sources we can look at and I am pretty sure that my sources and last sources may overlap but also each of us has peculiar unusual sources that we decided to rely on in terms of sources of course you have the usual official sources on Buddhism because it is a temple or because it is a particular town and archives of provincial archives town archives the archives in my case of the Buddhist association of China and this is the kind of official documents but other material forms and material sources that can give us a very important understanding of the Qing period and the republican period in Sichuan besides reading a number of nobles of novelists that have actually been based in Sichuan and where nobles may refer to historical moments and also to nuns or monasteries in modern Sichuan and a number of interviews to old monks but also younger generation and their memories that have been memorialized particular monks and nuns I relied on pictures that I found in monasteries museums and streets so this is a very interesting collection that I found a few years ago that give a history and the explanation of the names of the different streets within the city of Chengdu this is just Chengdu and there are like four volumes and some of these streets do have connection with religion so there is the monk road for instance and there is a reason why it's called monk road and this is a very historical photo and some quotation from that book but if you go around Chengdu you can find more and more streets that with the name of particular temples of nuns and these temples of nuns are not there anymore so from the street you can actually realize the previous religious map that you had in the city of Chengdu streets or bridge so this is a bridge the bridge is actually on the side and you see this big stone it's written Sheja Chao Shakyamuni bridge Shakyamuni Buddha this bridge was built in 1918 by a Buddhist monk that never appears in the official history of modern Chinese Buddhism neither in the Chinese ones nor in the English ones but he was very important for this very very small community P2 district it was called just P so Pxian in the Republican period he fundraised for the building of this of this bridge that actually changed really the life of the community and to honor that the community decided to name the bridge on Shakyamuni so on Buddhism just as a way to remember this particular monk and many people just common people in this very small part of Chengdu do have memories of the no stories about this particular monk Changyuan so this is another example of how particular material evidences can give us very interesting data of religious history in this case the city of Chengdu but also other areas when it talks about pictures and picture histories nunneries, especially nunneries that don't really have a very long written history they try to memorialize their own history through a collection of photos of nuns that lived in that monastery and but not just nuns so this is one a couple of examples from Chengdu and then this is as you see a number of photos from Neijuan this is another one also from Chengdu but what you find here are not just nuns that lived in that nunnery but also nuns that lived in other nunneries and then but then they made a trip here and will stay here and somehow the nunnery felt connection with them so through this room you can have really an idea of a community that is found around this particular nunnery and goes beyond the borders of the same nunnery and so this is another way to disclose particular networks and community networks so this is just an idea of alternative sources that are used to find information about nuns, monks but also to find information of the topic of today, the one about soldier monks and the relationship between Buddhist temples and the army we have sources, publications on state protection Buddhism Buddhism to protect the country and this is something that is pretty much relate and associate this movement to a particular historical moment, the modernity in China and also the idea of the Buddhism that needs to be helpful, socially helpful in a particular historical moment even if the idea of protection of Buddhist protection for China is something that you find also in the pre-modern period, there is a very nice publication by Shuiyue about Buddhism and war and nationalism already for a few years ago but what I try to integrate that with a specific study of Sichuan and especially a study of two temples, Wen Shuiyuan and Paoguan and the kind of activities and the relationship between those monks the monks who lived in both monasteries and particular generals among the sources that I found just to give an idea of when we talk about the connection between monks, temples and the army is not something that is hidden in the public domain but this is quite praised by the government, by society and it is also praised rather than hidden in public spaces or in monastery as a sign to commemorate the end of the war with the Japanese and that is something that I found in Jiaojue Si Temple in Chengdu in 2015 something very important for me for this particular study was a museum so besides the usual documents and other material, form of material culture, I visited the Sichuan Museum of Zhenchuan that is in a very small town on Anren and is made of different buildings and is an impressive exhibition of memories and relics for the Second Sino-Japanese War with special rooms that explains major events and actors in Sichuan going through the different buildings of the museum it's not difficult to find photos also Buddhist monks and temples and also summaries that explain the engagement between Buddhist and the army so we have this photo of the Buddhist monks in the late 30s dressed like these are monks dressed like soldiers that just finished and graduated from a training, a rescue aid training course that was organized in this temple or monks and nuns that were shoeing military uniforms it was always the decision of that time that monks Buddhists have to have to contribute to the Sino-Japanese War where we're not could not be obliged to kill and so to be on the front and to fight if they wanted they could then I can tell you I found a number of autobiographies of monks that praised themselves for killing Japanese but then you have also monks that decided to help the army in a different more peaceful way and these are two examples you have also mentioned other monks like Tanshu who was in a kind of good terms with Japanese and so was able to get the head of a particular general that was killed by the Japanese to head it back from the Japanese and he kept it in his temple and was found decades after that there was a huge poster about this so given the time I tried to cut a little bit and then another very interesting relationship between selective Buddhists and and the army are particular Buddhist monks were very much praised and kept in high consideration by members of the army but also high members of the Communist Party or of the KMT and because those years, the particular years in China in general because you have a center Japanese war but also you have the rising of the power and to power of the of the Chinese Communist Party and when it comes to Sichuan is another peculiar case because the government moved from Nanjing to Chongqing and you have a number of academy like the Army Academy that build kind of second headquarters and more schools within Sichuan where the government was and then there was one particular monk from Shanghai that is probably the most famous monk and it comes from Sichuan that one with a number of articles about who was in very good terms with a communist and was able to help general to pass from the KMT army to the communist army so this is another example what I'm going to show you now what I'm going to explain you in briefly our participation of Buddhists in the conflict or in contributing to the conflict and also the role of temples so on the one hand you have Buddhists participating in somehow and then you have all the temples so the role of space the space has also been used and contributed to the sign of Japanese war in terms of activities you have of Buddhists participating in medical rescue teams training that was done different classes and different training seminars done in different monastery the major one was done in 1938 in Wenshu Yuan one of these two temples in Chengdu and is the one that organized one in 1940 so you have 70 70 monks from different temples that went to the first one and 60 that went to the second one a little bit more than two months there was a decision of a Sichuan chapter of the Buddhist association of China to organize these these training so monks could have been helpful and could help the wounded instead so that said that was going to be their own contribution to the war instead of having their own gun and joining the army in different more violent way there was a number of fundraising activities that I found through different documents in 1941 there was the Buddhist aircraft donation campaign and that's the way that I could translate it better it was a fundraising committee established within the Wenshu monastery and with monks part of it and they were getting funds to help the building of more aircraft for planes for the war in 44 you have another collection of funds that was a more social society but the meetings and the general meetings for the collection of these funds were done within monastery and you have monastery where donating more than 44,000 Yuan that is at that time was a quite generous donation and in the summer of 44 you have armies militaries that were coming back to Sichuan from the front and monks that decide to donate all the pilots monks from Wenshu Yuan that decides to donate all the pilots of meditation pilots to them to make them sleep better and then decided to sleep without the pilots so there are all these different documents and then they all end say how patriotic the Buddhist monks and Buddhist nuns were no less than non-ordained and non-Buddhist people in society also interesting are the anti-Japanese war propaganda so you have a number of propaganda conferences that were so the manifestos were written by student monks of the Konlin Buddhist college for example in 1931 then you have a number of pamphlets that were distributed in the 30s around the city of Chengdu so there has been a conference about anti-Japanese propaganda run by the Sichuan Buddhist Association and important monks important for Sichuan were part of this conference and then they distribute anti-Japanese pamphlets to the public and then you have a number of student monks from the seminary over there that were going street by street speaking against Japanese and giving these pamphlets to everyone important also there was the so-called state protection liturgies the different fahui the different liturgies that were used to protect the state and for the victims of war and these are too many to be listed from the 1930s up to the end of the war and some of them have the participation of more than 100 monks in the last few days there were either the Hu Huos or the liturgies for protection of the state sometimes they were named Guan Yin liturgies or the Waterland the Shuelu Fahui and they were all centered around the recitation of the humane king Sutra is a sutra that talks about the virtues for a humane king so an apocryph text that is very important in China in pre-modern time and is still read in certain monastery what is also interesting here this is a site this is a Pagwan monastery that I mentioned before and this particular sign Aigou Aijiao it means love your country and love your religion is written in every temple but in this staple is quite important thinking of the role the Pagwans had in the organization of training for the soldiers rescue team training and also in the use of really the use of space within the temple something that also was happening at that time thinking of state protection Buddhism was the opening, the foundation the establishment of different temples a really cool state protection temple so temples that were built and all the liturgies that were done there was for the welfare and the good fortune of the country especially during the sign of Japanese war but then the space so another very interesting part is you don't have only Buddhist monks participating in the war in peaceful or less peaceful ways but also you have temples donated their own space and you have temples turning into military camps so Pagwans became military camps and these photos that you see are peculiar because they come from big posters that you can find inside Pagwans so Pagwans are very proud to show historical pictures and to show how Pagwans were patriotic and contributing to the war at that time so hosting troops in this case hosting rescue sangha rescue training as well monks were giving lectures to the soldiers lectures about yoga chara schools, the kind of Buddhist psychology the law of karma the pure land sutra so normal let's say Buddhist lectures but also doing meditation retreats with the soldiers this presence of Buddhist within society was not really unusual that time you have the same monks going to prisons for instance and giving particular ethical teachings to the inmates because according to local government Buddhist monks were able could give a very positive contribution to the improvement of the behavior of the inmates this is another example of things that were happening at that time and so here you have all these pictures that I took from those posters and of course Pagwans is now the only temple that did that you have tautans and also chinyangons also Taoist temples were giving parts of their own of their own premises for that and here I connect a little bit with Lars because to show how patriotic and how impressive the use of a temple space and the impression that gave to the population you have important militaries like Feng Yuxian which is a Christian military that wrote even if he was Christian but then he visited Pagwans and he brought very nice verses for Pagwans of course this relationship between space army and monks is something that also developed before and after the conflict where you have army offering financial support to the temples you have a number of militaries that then decide to become monks for instance after the war and then you have temples that stay so temples are not just military camps they also be a refuge for particular generals and this is the stage and then leave this particular sign and then you have a number of explanation about that I can go ahead but I think I want to leave some space also to Lars so I will close here thank you very much I think in order to thank you for an incredibly interesting introduction and case study I am to preserve time for the discussion I am going to keep myself as short as possible in fact let me just see whether I can this one yes no I don't know what you can see can you see the outline where I stopped with Usangui and the white lotus society okay I just want to pick up a few points which you mentioned in your talk and say how this is relevant to Christianity and then we can move on to the discussion because like this we can bring different aspects together so Periphery Center so how is what you said about such one's special status if you like also relevant to Christianity well partly talking about these religious societies because Christianity in such one really spread as a as an effect from the outside namely from the big cities in let's call them in inland China and in Beijing in the Jiangnan and further up the river and the people who spread Christianity were mostly Chinese Christians themselves such one is special because it has no ancient Christian roots so it's very different from other parts the more central parts northern parts where you had soptians who arrived as historians for example so what you what you get instead is a proliferation of Christian activity during a time when Christian missionary activity was actually proscribed namely the 18th century and in this period it was a free-standing vicarious so it was not actually part of the main Chinese vicarious there were others Fujian, Shanxi as well but this was more or less independent and also it was not administered on behalf of the Catholic Church by the propaganda feeders or the World Mission for the Catholic Church but by the French by the Missions étrangères and I'll just show you a slide which shows their logo here Missions étrangères they have a very nice place in Paris Rue du Bac you go across the Seine and you have a wonderful slightly messy but beautiful archive there which has absolutely everything about their activity and the main activity keep the first map in mind so this one that I showed you here this is Zuchuan this is Yunnan this is the northern parts of Tonkings which are not actually part they belong to the Spanish missionaries more or less but everything here in the center and then also northern parts of what is it called Burma that is part of the early activity of the Paris based missionaries and the important thing is the difference that it makes is because they come so late and because there are relatively few in number the development of Christianity in Zuchuan is almost autonomous there are of course missionaries French missionaries others as well that come later but the most important aspect is that you have people like Guo Xiang who is what would you call him he's a serial convert he starts off with the Jin Shui Jiao the clear water sect if you like it's a fasting it's a Buddhist fasting sect and then he joins the Baiye Jiao the official one the white lotus society and then after some time he becomes a complete fire brand for Christianity and he preaches Hellfire basically and so the local Christians who convert because of him they call the sect the king of Hell sect that's the development of Christianity so it basically develops to a considerable extent without European influence and then the second point that I want to mention this is all part of the archival research that I did already earlier in Paris in Rome as well propaganda in archives throughout China but of course also in Zuchuan are these the Zhen Yu the chaste women, chaste girls the Ahtas Virgines they're referred to in Latin so the blissful virgins and this is a term which is a bit misleading because often they ran away from arranged marriages and they found refuge in homes and they then became converts often, not always and they began to work as catechists so they began to proselytise themselves amongst women again, no European influence later the MEP tries to take it under its wing and they found an institute they have minimum age rules so on but in fact it's very marginal talk to this movement so then finally here that's what I wanted to say that during the long 18th centuries up to the point when western missionaries can actually enter China legally 1857, 1858 during that time the Christian population in Zuchuan explodes and they are recognised by the western missionaries who arrive as the so called old Christians and some try to correct their beliefs or re-convert them if you like so let's sorry just a few words here this is actually quickly summed up first attempt is already while western missionaries are still illegal 1803 after Zuchuan Synod which is has some token representation by Dufres I think an MEP missionary but it's completely run by the local Christians and the mainly to regulate baptisms, marriages for that I have many examples but let's move on so the Protestants do enter but in very weak numbers and also more or less by default because they travel up the Yangtze river and importantly they do so last point here as a consequence of the warfare where the capital Nanjing then later Wuhan falls into the hands of the enemies of the nationalists so they move to Chongqing and with them they take many of the western missionaries that's the first time that you actually have a real influx of Protestant missionaries and they that's above they devote themselves to missionary work amongst non-Han communities that of course that starts earlier Samuel Thompson um sorry come back the work amongst the Miao for example is a very important element here and here you have of course the belief that if you spread Christianity beyond the Han Chinese themselves you actually begin to take the mission to all the people all the peoples very seriously so just a map I mean this is recorded so you'll be able to look at these maps in detail um there's a map here hiding here Qing maps try to enlarge this this is part of an ongoing project based in Leiden it's the they collaborate with Zoas so we're trying to populate this map came out of a Manchu exercise so this is very different there's a Manchu here there's a Manchu garrison to the oh this Chongqing to the west of Chengdu so there are also Manchu documents that you can look at and then finally my own work centered on and here I am not sure whether I can actually do that I just I'm going to stop the leaders I'm going to stop in a second sorry here maybe you can see it here this is the just to the north of Chongqing you have a small city with the name Ba the Ba district and that left behind an enormous archive which is completely intact and it's one of the best preserved archives when it comes to Christianity and final just sorry for rushing through but this is some of the work that I managed to find when I was there in 2019 no that's somewhere 2019 that's two years ago that's these are examples of work you see that here here another one which is located this one has been digitized not digitized but has been microfilmed so you can look at the microfilms and then make printouts but actually something that only exists in print and the original is the Nanbu archives that's another area and you have several of these this one Nanbu archives Nanbu Dangan Guan is available in I think it's called Sichuan Shrufandashu that's if I'm not mistaken but there are similar collections elsewhere oh yeah just one quote which I found actually I found it twice I found it first in the Baishen collections and then translated and then also in but before that also in Paris there is an absence of outward signs of communal practice that's what he says in 1805 no church buildings clerical organizations visible crucifixes of scriptures so this is all underground it's an underground Christian community I stop here I open the floor to discussion thank you okay thank you so much Lars and Stefania and I'm so sorry my connection was interrupted a couple of times so I missed bits and pieces I just said earlier to Lars I believe there will be tons of questions and maybe we can have a few given but it's already quite late so I guess my question was Stefania I was very much interested what you said at the beginning sorry if I may start with a question this kind of different concepts when you were talking about diversity so what kind of concepts would your Chinese colleagues or Chinese researchers working in the area used to describe this obviously I mean you talk about the plurality of religions kind of the practice of this kind of situational look locational religious practice but obviously there are different kinds of religions so for example when Lars talks about Catholicism is quite a different thing from practicing Taoist rituals or worshipping Wenzhou Pusa or these different things right I mean this religion is not the same as religion I guess so what would Chinese concepts be that your Chinese colleagues might want to use and what are the difficulties there I think that's probably my most important question but maybe we can have a few more while you're trying I don't know if you would like to answer first and we collect more questions then maybe we can do that and I'm watching out for shows of hands well there are different ways there are different ways to look at diversity well first of all you need to think you need to consider what kind of level you're looking at you're looking at diversity from the perspective of the common people the common people that can go to different temples maybe Buddhist also go to the Taoist temple and maybe okay in having a Bible at home for instance then there is another level that are the religious personnel so maybe Buddhist monks or Taoist monks and then you have different understanding of the relationship between different groups of course there are certain religious personnel that is quite happy in having activities together other than want to make a big distinction between we are Buddhist and they are not and I can speak more about from the Buddhist perspective of religious personnel then you have a government and the government is creating a very clear cut distinction even if they may not say that but between what is one particular what one particular tradition can do what other particular tradition may not do so but it really depends when you discuss diversity which level of actors you're looking at you're looking at the government or the monastic communities or the the strict practitioner or the common people certainly something that it seems that more than also depends on the case study but there are particular areas where you go to some temples and you find more then so you may connect one particular deity with another bodhisattva so already within a thing within a site or within a community you find the connection between important divine figures belonging to different faith and then it's a way to show or to understand in the minds of practitioners the connection and the harmonic connection between different beliefs. In terms of if you're looking at terms you can either do a very transliteration from diversity but very often speaking in metaphors there are a number of metaphors looking at diversity as form of richness or as a richness that a diversity that is integrating in a unity so for instance the example of in a young is used very often or the concept is kind of dual concepts like tea a young so the body and then the function of other beliefs so one belief more central and other beliefs that are around it so really depends on what kind of community and what kind of people you're looking at so there are a number of particular terms that can be used but many of us and well I've been working more on within buddhist so far so I've now started just the project on and then there was on all the different religious beliefs and the different sites and communities within a particular district but my understanding is the space may become more important than the boundaries between religious places religious beliefs so a space can actually create a venue for different faith to be harmonized together that's another example but a particular space is that can host more than one belief at the same time on different historical period so there are different way to see this overlapping of faith I don't know if I answered your question I add more I'm just thinking about it is not confusion I'm just interested I mean when you say it's the richness so that's probably by diversity but from the way presented also thinking about the different kinds of religious practices that you will encounter there are also hierarchies involved and there is religions that or kind of religious practices that fit better within the official framework what is welcome and fine and then there are others that using Liza's words might be considered as more heretical and the Catholic church is certainly would belong to those I would expect so I mean it's we can't probably go into that kind but it's the terminology that's used that I think is quite interesting how you conceptualize these things because that's an issue I'm personally interested in that's why I was asking this question that I would like to leave a bit time for others I've seen I think sipping first if I did get this right and then Elena alright hello there sometimes I don't see most of you and yeah very welcome and it's another topic which I'm really interested about and my question is about the map which had been showed and we can see that you had dedicated select a lot of different buildings which you think is related with the political religion and you catalog them in the different according to their background in religions like the Buddhist building, Taoist building and so on but actually my question is what is your standard to choose those buildings whether they were built as a temple and then you choose it as a I mean like the building which related to the Buddhism or you also choose the building which may not may not be a temple but still host the relevant practice because what I think because what is really common in North China is there's a lot of underground Christian communities and their religious practice is not really host in the church but in somewhere else I just wonder with your selections of the religious buildings would you consider this kind of official building was a kind of religious building or is your collection of the buildings including this kind of locations or places this is my question to well I can say something Ellen I can jump in if she wants because she was also involved with the map it's a very it's a very good question first of all we have been brainstorming on how to create a legend and also because this idea of religious affiliation is can be very blurry in certain cases and in fact especially with some elements and some buildings that Ellen is dealing with, the Huiguan then we call it hybrid I think as a way to define that they're changing of religious affiliation and role within history we are not looking just at temples first of all we're not looking at all the temples in the history of Sichuan and not all the temples of today because a number of those temples are not present anymore temples or sites are not present anymore but we were very relevant in Beijing and the public and period and are not just temples or nunneries or for instance there were also Buddhist societies so gathering of people that were located somewhere but were also itinerant but around the particular district so somehow we found a way also to map those so it's also mapping group of communities and not just a temple like a building where we are not just looking at that and of course what we have seen so far is a selection of what we have studied so we are documenting temples that are studying our own research so myself I've been working on community nature and some areas of Chengdu and Luzhou also yes so that's why you find the sites there and other scholars like Elena I've been working on other places within Sichuan about the the invisible churches that you mentioned that is true that's something that has to be integrated but we will find a way also to include them and of course we talk about sites like material sites but we that's something that belong to the scholars dealing with Christianity and we have archives I think Lars gave us the data of particular archives and in the case of Lars that archive can be considered an important site we can if you scroll down and you can see the information when we try to make sense of the different religious affiliation and the way that we work on the map Elena do you want to join yeah thank you so I can also ask my questions too this is great to actually see to hear from our own group members what they're working on because we don't often get the chance to actually share in terms of the sites I think the map I think that's what Stefania said I mean it is what we're doing we're first and foremost detailing the sites that our group is studying and so it's definitely not comprehensive and it includes places that are still there places that are no longer there sites that have changed Stefania said have changed religious affiliation sites that never had very specific religious affiliation so it is very peculiar to our project and to the people that participate in our project and the plan is I think hopefully to continue and add more sites and so that it can be a little more comprehensive but we're not trying to do a comprehensive study of everything that's going on in religion as Stefania really mentioned at the beginning and then of course the question of underground churches is more specific to Christianity and I think again we need to deal with that I also wanted since I had my hand up before to ask another to comment and ask or really to add a comment one is actually a little bit of a response to Andrea's question about terminology and I wanted to add a couple of things the fact that western terms are inadequate is completely true and that's what Stefania was explaining at the beginning we're really struggling with terminology to define really the interaction of these religious practices and religious modalities so that's definitely the case but also in Chinese you know there's I think there's a struggle there too apart from the five religious traditions what are we talking about you know is it Duoyang Zunjiao or is it Mingjian Zunjiao you know a lot of all of these things that we talk about that are outside of the five traditions is all Mingjian Zunjiao of course in the past they have been defined negatively as well so Xiejiao and so I think in Chinese too we have a lot of terms for these practices that are not definable very specifically within these categories and the Chinese you know Fujian can tell us more but I think in Chinese it's really hard also to define these practices outside of and often we define them negatively or we kind of put them to the side as oh this is just Mingjian Zunjiao you know are not really interested in that or it's not really important so I think the definitions are difficult in English or in Western languages as much as in Chinese and we need to have more conversations about that too and then the third thing if I can add a thing which was the reason why I put my hand up was I'm so happy that Stefania is working on monks temple and temples and the army in the second Sino-Japanese war because actually I'm working on that too and we haven't talked about it really but for another temple that the one that I'm talking about on February 19th which also has to you know I try to describe really the real connections between religious institutions or religious groups and the army and how that's really interconnected especially in this special period from 37 to 45 when as you said a lot of the army does come to Sichuan and really kind of changes the religious nature of Sichuan in many many ways and we have so many examples of that on Qinchen Shan there's all sorts of steleys by important army generals and in the temple that I'm looking at also there's steleys by important local army members so I think this area is really really important to look at so that's and it's not really a question for Stefanie I just wanted to say you know that's great that you're working on that too and I hope that more people work on that and that and I'm sure for Christianity I don't know if it's the same for Christianity or for Islam but certainly for Daoism and Buddhism is very very similar I think. Christianity that were organizing the rescue team training as well and there were a number of organizations from more local tradition so again non-Buddhist and non-Christian but more Taoist that are studied by a scholar in Hong Kong so that is also interesting but when I remember when I was in Sichuan I was doing research on that many monks told me that it was very good for temples to host the army because it was a way to make the temple survive otherwise you know you need the land you don't need the building so many temples survived because they actually hosted the army or public offices and that's the other question that I think is important is it that they wanted to support the army or is it that they had to support the army in that period of time I think that's a really important distinction what I find in my research is more that the army kind of took over rather than the other way around but in your case it seems like the monks seemed to be very happy to support them some of them I think they felt compelled others actually they brought a number of poems they were monks that decided to disrobe in order to join the army and I found in the archives in Chongqing they said they prefer to leave Buddhism because they didn't find it was suitable so they were monks that actually joined the army on the front line but there are other monks that prefer to disrobe and then give all their goods to the army and actually join the battlefield and some of them seems to be very patriotic but others were probably feeling that it was important for the survival of their own community so it's a kind of tricky mix of feelings and reasons over there From the Christian side in the same period you had a non-military patriotic response so basically they were trying also the foreign missionaries but as I said there weren't that many perhaps during the war years more than normally but not as many as in other provinces or cities but what you got was the attempt to work as doctors to work in emergency rescue operations certainly to help with the aftermath of bombings and so on and after all some of the colleges that existed were actually founded by missionaries initially and by that time they were almost completely run by volunteers or people who were paid very little who were Christian local Christians Yeah you have a question Yeah Yuan Yeah I do have two questions Thanks very much for the nice speech and then by the way I want to mention because for my undergrad research I do a Norwegian missionary whose name is Ludwish Heichert who has a very liberal theology idea to combine the Buddhism and the Christianity so he always went to visit the Buddhism temples in Sichuan province and also went through the Sichuan to Shikang and Tibet so it's quite interesting cases to combine this two speech so I have two questions though the first one is for you, for Stefania so you mentioned the military it's a soldier and the Buddhism and I find in your photo I can find the and the slogan to commemorate the Second Sino-Japanese War and what I want to ask is for this event how the temple and how the monks, even the government to retell the story and pick up the certain events or certain things from the history to support this event because I really want to know how they how to say re-narrated their history and their historical interaction with the army my second question is for Lars and so you mentioned those if I remember correctly maybe those Christians in 19 19th centuries or 18th centuries right so this case really reminds me those Catholics in Japan you know those secret Christians they try to hide themselves and develop underground churches because the policy of the Shogun government so what I want to ask is do you have any sort of when those French missionaries went back to this place and visited those Christians or secret Christians how do they react and how they understand each other and how they think about each other do they question their identity or religious identity or just when there those French missionaries in those communities or what happened to those interactions basically I want to ask so if you want to answer first or go go ahead the French missionaries had one advantage that was that the core area in the early 19th century except for part of what is nowadays Vietnam was actually relatively open to them and they could go through the forest and arrive in the southern parts of Guizhou for example but then also further Yunnan but then also further up into Sichuan where they had these old connections and I there's a lot of evidence that suggests that these connections were ongoing but very very few so these are just a handful of western missionaries also the situation in the Qing is not quite the same as during the Tokugawa period in Japan because Christianity itself is not illegal since 1724 since the Yongzhong missionary activity is illegal but not Christianity so you could as long as you even have a church and the church if it was registered fine but as I found out when looking at the archives in and many of these churches were simply places where people congregated without having any official status because they didn't want to involve the magistrate or others but there were no widespread persecutions except for the years between 1850 1811 and 1815 there were several cases where Christians were killed but why because this is a period when the whole of this stretch of China is in uproar and you have so many armed rebellions by religious movements so the Chinese officials they were not they did not distinguish very clearly between what kind of you had in front of you and in some cases there were very drastic very specifically Chinese sorry Christian actions so where they had to walk across the crucifix for example but most Christians they simply went underground again and there were no big repercussions when the Europeans came in larger numbers then there were a few cases where there were disagreements like old Christians, new Christians but it was particularly the Protestants who arrived, they didn't actually recognise that as Christian at all because they were prejudiced against Catholicism that's my take on it Thank you So very quickly to answer your question about how the kind of reading of history, new reading of history what are my findings so far looking at a particular Buddhist monastery when I show you that I have been studied there is an attempt to that's my impression to do a kind of search on focus reading of history so focus on local people and local events for instance there was a very one Min Zhang I think is his name a local general that was from Shintu Shintu, so the district of Shintu and the county of Shintu in the republican period with Inchendu so very close to Pagwan because it was local there was a huge state funeral that was made there and then the coffin arrived and the Buddhist participated and they like to remember that because it's about the war but also because it's about the local it's about the community so there is a long big emphasis on specific figures that were native of search on from the army and so how search on so it's kind of search on reading of the military history that's one thing and another thing I think is a way to exploit the war to give publicity to when it comes to Pagwan to a temple or to Buddhism there's a lots of emphasis on this Christian general and that the idea is not so much it is an important general but that he was not really Buddhist but he loved to stay at Pagwan he wrote verses for Pagwan how great he was very impressed by Buddhism so that that's another narrative that is developing and these are two interesting points that I noticed in my research and in terms of that banner that was there and in September and I think it was there especially around the Guoxinjie so in the moment of the national holiday the first of October so around that date you have that particular banner and that was taken away but it was not because of one particular day related to the war but more related to the Guoxinjie moment that you know it's not one day it's basically two weeks more or less of activities but that was and then it's gone but when it comes to Pagwan the posters the photo but I should have come from both posters they are there 24-7 and they've been there for years and then there are and if you go inside as are very much inside there's really a center the middle of the monastery and they're quite huge very close to the tea house and the restaurant and I was quite impressed as they're taking photo I think it was the only one no one actually was looking at those posters and were looking at me taking photos of the posters but for me was telling something about how they wanted to talk about their participation in war so on the one hand is a search run focus reading on the other hand is at least for my Buddhist temples are working on I kind of try to exploit the war to make a statement about the Buddhist temple or Buddhism in general well thank you very much Stefania I've taken over as chair because Andrea's internet connection has lost but I want to thank both Stefania and Lars for an absolutely fascinating paper I think we have to throw things to a close now and it's we've gone 20 minutes over time and it's strikes me as an absolutely terrific project and you're doing so many different things and the resources that you've collected and the resources mainly the resources that you're making available to such a large public strikes me as an incredible achievement so congratulations on that and it's a testimony to the interest in your project that we've had so many different people attending I think this is the last 30 minutes for the term and or for the academic year I should say we had one last one last term and two last term so I think this is the largest we've had so thank you very much again and I'm sure we'll hear from you again in on a future occasion and can I just before I throw things to a final close can I please just remind our audience that our next seminar is on the 24th of February and then we'll have a paper by Shavita Sen on domestic workers in India will be less historical and more contemporary but I'm sure it will be very interesting so please do come along to that I'll of course send a reminder India course but thank you very much we hope to see you again thank you and I also want to thank Elena who is co-director of a project with me and also saw us graduate from history and religious studies right yeah and happy new year thank you Lars it can only get better bye bye everyone so there's a recording which I just stopped Lars can you tell us where the recording will be made available yeah it's at the moment on a cloud in the cloud yeah but if people wanted to look at it I'll have to send out something if people just send you a notice of a link to the recording if you want to produce that in your own time thank you very much see you next time thanks for hosting us have a very good evening everyone or good morning wherever you are bye bye bye bye