Welcome to March! The most beautiful and terrible of all months for a whole host of reasons which can sometimes (as our tyrannical friend Caesar found) be political. To be more direct on Tuesday twenty people were killed in a riot in north-western city of Kashgar in Xinjiang province in China.
Courtesy of the BBC
Wait what? Well for those of you who don't know Tibet is not the only region which China has colonized. The Xinjiang autonomous region of China was reconquered in 1949 and half of its population are Uighurs. China has always been a large ethnically diverse country (there are over nine different versions of spoken Chinese after all) and its various governments have used various policies to deal with this issue. The current policy under the PRC has been to create a large overwhelming ethnic majority of Han Chinese (which has recently absorbed groups like the Cantonese) and spread that group throughout China (and while I support the building of China's high speed rail network on environmental grounds, this policy is one of the reasons its being built in the first place) in order to create a false (or perhaps real) sense of cultural, ethnic, and national hegemony allowing for easier governance.
However, in many cases the exact opposite is happening. Groups like the Uighurs, Tibetans, and Cantonese are beginning to question these policies claiming that they are active forms of discrimination that decrease likelihood of employment as well as a form of destructive cultural erosion. However, The CCP doesn't really take all that well to criticism so the complaints, through normal channels, go unheeded. Resulting in:
2008 Lhasa unrest
2009 Xinjiang unrest
Which forces the CCP to do the only thing it knows how to do:
Since the 2008/2009 urrest in both Tibet and Xinjiang China has increasingly tightened security. And with China's parliament meeting frighteningly close to the anniversary of the Lhasa riots this coming week, certain members of the government are calling for even tighter control. With officials like the party's secretary to Tibet, Chen Quanguo, calling for tight monitoring of "Mobile phones, the internet and other measures for the management of new media need to be fully implemented to maintain the public's interests and national security."
Which raises a rather interesting issue that I'll let Princess Leia voice:
Preach Friend, Preach!
It'll be interesting (and probably horrifying considering the PRC track record on these things) to see what unfolds in the next few weeks. Are the fears of the CCP unfounded? Or are things going to exploded and if so what will that explosion mean.
I guess will just have to wait and see (but I'm beginning to think there more to that geomancer's story then ever before)
I think those two photos sum it up best. Tibet is burning and tensions are beginning to mount. According to the BBC currently 21 monks have set themselves on fire in the past few months in protest of myriad of issues concerning Tibetian Chinese relations, but, in this situation at least, there are two of cardinal importance. As I mentioned last time the recent restrictions in the area around Tibet 'proper' has sparked this second wave of protest, but what are the restrictions? Well that's the second point many of the monks, nuns, and Tibetans in general feel that China is deeply restricting their freedom of expression, religion, speech, and movement. China's response to these claims?
Notice the fire extiquisher
There are dozens of photos and this post could could become a photo journal from here on out, but that would miss the point. China is cracking down hard against the Tibetians labeling them separatists and terrorists and they will continue to do so until their goal of security is reached. Regardless of who you think is right in this situation people are being beaten, restricted, watched, and (perhaps most importantly) dying by their own hand or otherwise. And China's actions aren't helping. But then again China has dealt with religious protests similar to this before and in a similar manner I might add.
Each time China has successfully put down the protests and, for the most part, managed to eradicate the memory of what happened from the public's mind. So, in many ways, this crackdown makes a lot of sense it worked before so it will work again, at least that's what the Chinese government is banking on. And while a large part of me if fearful that this will be a replay of what's gone before part of me is hopeful for some change.After all if you'll remember Chinese geomancers did predict that several Party officials would wind up behind bars by years end.
Take away questions? Well this time I guess I'm very interested to see how this situation develops and I'll be watching it as closely as I can in the days and weeks to come.
In loving memory of the dead, may you find what you seek:
It seems fitting that my last post on Korea would bring us back to my first one. During the end of the 19th century conditions in Joseon controlled Korea were rapidly deteriorating for both the working class and the nation itself. Many farmers were living in abject poverty under harsh landlords and much of the ruling class was dealing with the beginnings of a cultural invasion being mounted on multiple fronts by the Catholic Church, Europe, and Japan collectively known as Sohak (Western Learning). In many ways this assault being mounted by Sohak meant that traditions endemic to Korea, such as Musim and Korean Buddhism, were being dramatically changed or under the threat of potential elimination. In other words it was a culture in deep crisis.
In the midst of this was Ch'oe Che'u, a man who had a great deal of trouble getting started in life. Around 1860 he was struck down with a strange incurable illness, that was, of course, until he was gripped with a vision of a spirit known as Sangje. The spirit commanded him to take up the path of spiritual teaching and save Korea and the world with it. Ch'oe asked the spirit if he was to teach Sohak to which the spirit laughed and said no, he would spread Tonghak (Eastern Learning) instead. Snagje then handed him a piece of paper inscribed with 21 characters that could cure people's sicknesses as well as the sickness of the world around them. Ch'oe then took this new way, and new god, into himself by eating the paper and suddenly his sickness was gone
So much swaggger = Ch'oe
Ch'oe then went about and spread his teaching throughout the south of Korea. It quickly gained a following which quickly lead Ch'oe to be arrested and killed for spreading a superstitious tradition (thereby preventing Korea from modernizing). However, his nephew carried on the teaching and the group grew in popularity. Over the next thirty years the group was quiet but then in 1894 the corruption and incompetency of the government pushed the movement into a full fledged rebellion.
sadly it was nothing like this
The rebellion was initially successful and managed to rout many of the government's forces. However, in March the government launched a counter-scorched-earth-campaign causing the rebellion to become a civil war, or the Peasant War of 1894. The war ended but only after the horrificBattle of Ugeumchi, lasting from late October to Early November, wherein the Japanese Army intervened and used their superior technology to slaughter the Tonghak Army.
However, that was not the end of the movement as the leaders pushed the group back underground and gradually changed it into Cheondoism, the modern version of Tonghak that we know today. The groups value of Korean teachings would continue to inform and aid Korean bids for independence to the point that 15 of the 23 signers of the March 1st Movement's Deceleration of Independence were followers of Cheondoism.
Which leads us back to where we began. To be honest this was not something I was expecting to happen. After i finished investigating the March 1st Movement I didn't think it would figure back into Korean religious history, but of course (as is becoming the trend on this blog) I was wrong. Upon reading that Tonghak/Cheondoism was the background to the March 1st Movement I'm pretty sure I looked like this:
This is what most of my revelations look like
Why you ask? Well two very important reasons. Reason number 1 is that I always get chills when shit I'm working on spontaneously interconnects (like how my theory of religion came together last semester). Reason number 2 is that Tonghak/Cheondoism is a syncretist religion. For those of you who don't know, syncretism is "the attempt to reconcile contrary beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought.” Which is exactly what Cheondoism is.
Don't believe me? Lets take a closer look then. Ch'oe had an illness which would not abate until he accepted God into his life and carried out its plan, meaning Cheondoism began from an instance of Muism's divine illness. Secondly the word Cheondogyo (the full name of the religion) means religion of the heavenly way with Do being the Korean version of the Chinese word for the Dao or way. And while Daoism's influence on Cheondogyo is slight the group does posit that we must bring the world into a paradise modeled on heaven similar to the Daoist view of being in accordance with the way. Thirdly the group takes the idea of a God from Christianity and combines them with more Shamanistic and Buddhist attitudes to create their own version of Haneullim (an ancient Korean god) who they maintain is the one and only god who resides in every human and governs the universe while at the same time is the entirety of the universe.
By combining all of these beliefs into Cheondoism, Ch'oe created a religion which empowered the Korean people by teaching them that God resided inside of all of them therefore everyone had the right to be treated equally and furthermore it is our duty to the god that resides in all of us to fight back against oppression until we achieve a perfect world here and now. Meaning that in addition to Protestantism there was another religious force active in the Korean independence movement. This excited me because I have long maintained that syncretist religions, and popular religions in general, have, when combined with a Place (in this case Korea), often acted as a dynamic force for active resistance against oppression. And while that is an academic thesis in itself, reading about this piece of history greatly excited me.
So much so that I did this for hours
So this is where we leave Korea (although I don't doubt it will return in passing during our discussions of China) I have to say that these three research projects have been very interesting and I've learned a lot, but throughout this process I keep running into the same key problem. A lack of research. For all of these pieces it was often sheer dumb luck I was able to find anything at all. And I guess this links back to my question of why? Why is there so little information? It's a question I have no way of answering but its an important one.
Additionally this particular project left me wanting to pursue my hypothesis on the connection between syncretism and action against oppression by social movements. I have often found it interesting that the master narrative of many religions have such a distaste for the syncretists tendacies that lie in us all. And how often those who express this distaste the most are those who have to most of lose if a syncretist religion manages to gain enough sway.
So that's all for today! I hope these wandering of Korea have been as exciting for you as for me
till next time when we'll talk about something to do with current events!
Jacob
The Flag of Cheondoism
P.S.
God-Head being present now,
I desire his great descent.
Serving the Heavenly Lord, I am.
Never forgetting, I know all things
--traditional Cheondogyo prayer
P.P.S.
Interested in syncretism? I used to do a blog on in it, back in the day (the day being 2011)
Hong, Suhn-kyoung. 1968. Tonghak in the context of korean modernization.Review of Religious Research10, no. 1: 43.
2004. The tonghak peasant revolution. Association for Asia Research. 2 Jan. 2004. http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/1797.html (accessed 2/2, 2012).
