The Globalization of Chinese Buddhism

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International Journal of Asian Studies, , 2 (2005), pp. 217237 2005Cambridge University Press

doi:10.1017|S1479591405000100Printed in the United Kingdom

217

CONCEPT OF THE BORDER: NATIONS, PEOPLES AND

FRONTIERS IN ASIAN HISTORY

the globalization of chinesebuddhism: clergy and devoteenetworks in the twentieth century

Yoshiko Ashiwa and David L. Wank

Hitotsubashi University and Sophia University, Japan

E-mail [email protected]; [email protected]

The article examines the globalization of Chinas Buddhism. Such new modern values as

science and progress, along with competition from Christianity stimulated a modern reform

of Buddhism in China in the early twentieth century that was then carried abroad through

emigration and other transnational movement. This paper examines the ongoing interactions

among Buddhists across difference nation-state spaces that have constituted the spread of

this Buddhism. We show how transnational networks of clergy and devotees are constitutedthrough affiliations of kinship, loyalty and region. These, in turn, faciliate allocations of per-

sonnel, money, and legitimacy that have not only institutionalized Buddhism in Southeast

Asian and North American overseas Chinese communities but also supported its revival in

late twentieth century China.

introduction

Our field research on a Buddhist temple on Chinas southeast coast in the late 1980s

impressed us with how the temples remarkable revival following decades of state reli-

gious suppression was linked to overseas Chinese Buddhists.1 They were supporting

Nanputuo Temple in Xiamen , Fujian province by funding the restora-

tion of its compound, lobbying the state for the revival of its academy to educate clergy,

and welcoming graduates to serve in overseas temples. We learned that this was proceed-

ing along paths dug by clerics who had begun emigrating a century earlier, spreading

Buddhism to overseas Chinese communities where it had flourished, even while being

suppressed in China after the founding of the Peoples Republic in 1949.2 After three

1 For the suppression of Buddhism from 1949 until the Cultural Revolution in 1966 see Welch, 1972. For thepost-Cultural Revolution revivals of Catholicism see Lozada 2001, Madsen 1998; for Protestantism see Hunterand Chan 1993; for Islam see Gillette 2000, Gladney 1991; and for Daoism see Dean, 1995.

2 MacInnis 1988; Potter 2003.


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the globalization of chinese buddhism218

decades of dormancy, the connections have been reactivated and now play a major role in

the revival of Buddhist institutions in Fujian.

Yet the extant scholarly literature on Buddhism in the twentieth century says little

on this historical interaction between Buddhism in China and overseas. On the one hand,

studies of Buddhism in China mention the foreign travels of several master monks butfocus on Buddhisms development within China and Taiwan.3 On the other hand, stud-

ies of Buddhism in overseas Chinese communities note the seminal role of master monks

in bringing it from China, but focus on Buddhist practice and institutions in overseas

communities.4 In short, the historical process by which Buddhism moved abroad, and

the implications of this for Buddhism in China, falls into the cracks between scholarly

fields.5

This article examines the institutional process of the globalization of Chinese Buddhism.

We focus on three concerns within this broad area of inquiry. One is the kind of networks

through which globalization has proceeded. Another is how this process is affected as itpenetrates into different nation-state spaces. Finally, we consider how the process has been

constituted by ongoing interactions between overseas Chinese communities and mainland

China. Taken together these inquiries shed light on the adaptability of the traditional

network organization of Chinese Buddhism and its transformation through globalization.

We begin by examining the recent emphasis in scholarship on transnational networks

as constituting a global Chinese entity. The second section considers Holmes Welchs

typology of networks that constituted the historically decentralized Chinese Buddhism.

The third section sketches the emergence of modern reform movements in Chinese

Buddhism in the late nineteenth century and the movement of this Buddhism to South-

east Asia and North America. The fourth section examines transnational networks in the

careers of key clergy, highlighting institutional differences between North America and

Southeast Asia, and the ongoing movements of personnel, finances, and legitimacy within

them. The fifth section examines the networks of key devotees.

The data draws from several sources. One is a total of two years of fieldwork on the

revival of Buddhism in China. Beginning in 1989 we sought to understand how Nanpu-

tuo Temple, in Xiamen city, Fujian province, was recovering from the state suppression

of religion that began in the 1950s and intensified during the Cultural Revolution. Exten-

sive interviews at the temple and in Xiamen with leading clergy and devotees allowed us

to identify temples, clergy, and devotees in Southeast Asia and North America connected

with the temple and Xiamen. We then visited those places to meet and interview lead-

ing clergy and key lay-devotees to learn their personal histories, activities and travels, and

links to China. The places and times of the fieldwork are: a total of a year and half in

China, mostly Fujian Province but also in Guangdong province and Beijing in 198990,

1995, 1998, 1999, and 2000, a total of half a year in the United States in 1993, 1994, 1996,

1997, and 200203; a total of a month in Singapore in 1996, 1998 and 1999; and a week in

3 Pittman 2001; Reichelt 1990 [1932]; Welch 1968.

4 Chandler 1998; Wee 1997.

5 While there are publications in Chinese on the activities of clerics and lay-devotees in overseas communities

these consist of hagiographies that are less analysis than primary data (e.g. He 1999, Yu 1997).


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219yoshiko ashiwa and david l. wank

the Philippines in 1999.6Another source of data is biographical sketches of Buddhist clergy

and devotees in hagiographies and commemorative volumes of clerics and devotees that

provide insight into the affiliations.7 A third data source is secondary works on overseas

Chinese, which provides insight into the historical context.

chinese globalization throughtransnational networksThe recent view among some scholars that networks are the institutional basis of Chinese

globalization rests on the extensive literature on networks in Chinese social contexts.This

scholarship emphasizes the flexibility of ties in terms of shifting (fictive) meanings to

enable communication and cooperation between individuals and communities, to maintain

productivity, and to deal with new situations.8 What this recent scholarship does is to

expand analytically these processes beyond a single nation-state space to encompass or trans-

gress multiple nation-state spaces in what is variously termed Chinese diaspora, GreaterChina, Global China, Chinese cultural sphere, or alternative Chinese modernity.

In their concept of modern Chinese transnationalism Ong and Nonini write:. . .

networks interest us precisely because of their informality and their related capacity to

span space and to connect groups who occupy different positions in national spaces. 9

McKeown sees Chinese diasporas as constituted by historically accumulated networks of

shared symbols, behaviors, and communication across national boundaries that can mobilize

people towards ends and change over time.10And in his study of the globalization of Chinese

voluntary organizations, Liu examines how traditional common name associations are

being redirected towards the transnational activities of overseas Chinese entrepreneurs inlate twentieth century capitalism.11

Among the several recent studies of Chinese religion that emphasize transnational

networks,12 Kuahs concept of transnational cultural network is especially relevant for

6 We have received various funding for this research. During 19891990 Ashiwa had a travel grant from KobeYamate Womens College to teach anthropology at Xiamen University. During our fieldwork in the U.S.in 1993 and 1994, Ashiwa was a Nitobe Fellow at Harvard University while Wank was a Kukin Fellow atthe Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies. Fieldwork in China and abroad from19982000was funded by an International Peace and Cooperation Research and Writing Grant from the John and

Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Fieldwork was also conducted in the U.S. in 2003 while Ashiwa was a SeniorFulbright Scholar at Columbia University. Documentary collection and interview transcription wassupported by two Scientific Grant-in-Aid research awards from the Ministry of Education, Sports, Scienceand Culture of Japan.

7 Commemorative volumes are published upon the death of master monks and contain names of ordina-tion masters, temples resided at and positions assumed, and significant dharma transmissions. Similarinformation is also found in hagiographies.

8 Hamilton 1996; Lever-Tracy, Ip, and Tracy 1996; Smart and Smart 1998; Wank 1999; Wong 1988.

9 Nonini and Ong 1997, p. 22.

10 McKeown 1999, p. 329. See also Lever-Tracy, Ip, and Tracy 1996; Ong 1999; Shambaugh 1995; Yang 2003.

11 Liu 1998.

12 Guest 2003, Yang 1999. See also the special issue of theEuropean Journal of East Asian Studies special issueon transnationalism in Chinese religions (Huang 2003). The issue also contains two articles on Buddhism,focusing on the Compassion Relief Foundation based in Taiwan (Huang 2003, Laliberte 2003). While bothuse the concept of transnationalism neither employs the concept of networks to embed the transnational

processes in social relations.


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our study.13 In her ethnography of the reconstruction of an ancestral temple in a Fujian

village by a lineage whose members also reside in Singapore, she examines how percep-

tions and norms of kinship and person enable coordinated decision-making among these

far-flung actors. Several aspects of her study are similar to our analysis of the globaliza-

tion of Buddhism. First, the transnational networks are cultural perceptions and historicalmemories that affect decisions regarding movements of resources in the networks. Second,

the networks are continuous interactions of information, power, and resources between

China and overseas Chinese. Finally, the networks are constituted by overlapping person-

al and institutional ties. Similar network dynamics can be observed in the decentralized

organization of Buddhism.

the network organization of chinese

buddhismIn a classic account, Holmes Welch described the historical organization of ChineseBuddhism as a diffuse network system held together by norms of affiliation. Through-

out Chinese history, there was no single organization to which all Buddhist monks and

devotees belonged. The various Buddhist groups were localized. . . . What held Buddhists

together was a series of networks of affiliation, superimposed haphazardly upon each

other.14 Welch draws attention to how the authority for decisions and cooperation

between clerics and temples derived from the norms and expectations that resided in rela-

tions among clergy to each other and to specific temples. These affiliations constituted an

especially important avenue for the reproduction and expansion of the Chinese Buddhismthrough the reconstruction of existing, and construction of new, temples and in ensuring

there was clergy to staff them. They also constituted a key avenue to draw in financial

resources from devotees to support these endeavors.

One affiliation is religious kinship. Tonsure kin are clerics whose heads were shaved

by the same master, inducing them to feel reciprocal rights and obligations almost

like those between brothers by blood. If their common master was several generations

removed, they still regarded one another as kinsmen.15 Somewhat weaker kinship ties

are created by common generation names from the same descent line (gatha). These could

be created opportunistically when a cleric transmitted the dharma of his or her clan ortemple to another cleric, giving them a common descent line. Such transmissions could

signify anything from a simple courtesy to the designation of a successor abbot. Kinship

could also be produced by the dharma of a monastery. This happens when clerics with

shared experiences of ordination, study, and office-holding in the same monastery come to

perceive themselves as kin through their mutual affiliation. Perceptions of kin could also

be produced among monks who specialized in the same text and studied it together and

cooperated to expound it.

The second affiliation is loyalty to a charismatic monk. Master monks attracted bands of

followers who, while not sharing religious kinship with the master, had studied or meditated

13 Kuah 2000.

14 Welch 1967, p. 403.

15 Welch 1967, p. 403.


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or held office under him, or simply revered him. Welch notes that these affiliations also

encompassed laypersons. A layperson receiving the Refuges from a monk receives the same

generational names as the monks tonsured disciples and so they are considered members

of the same family. In this family, horizontal ties between monks and devotees were weak:

. . . if two laymen had received the Refuges from Hs-yn [Xuyun], it had little effect ontheir relationship with each other or with the monks whose heads he had shaved. On the

other hand, they might be both intensely devoted to him and derive a deep satisfaction

from being the followers of such an eminent monk.16These vertical ties to a master are

strong and can be mobilized by him. An eminent master such as Xuyun had thousands of

followers: . . . if he wanted to restore a monastery, the money was soon forthcoming from

the laity. When the time came to staff it, he had the loyal monks with which to do it.17

The third affiliation is regionalism as seen in cliques of clerics from the same dialect

region, most notably northern Jiangsu and southern Fujian provinces, both of which pro-

duced large numbers of clerics. Monks from the same region tended to appoint each otherto administrative offices and could dominate the temples of a specific locale. Welch notes

how this regionalism was a powerful force, both cohesive and divisive.18The divisiveness

stemmed from jealousies that it created by its distinction between insiders and outsiders.

But it was also cohesive because temples in the same locale faced similar problems, and

so the regional ties facilitated cooperation in administration, welfare work and subsidies

from rich to poor temples.

The haphazard character of Welchs system is due to the intermingling of personal

and institutional networks, which impart an historical contingency and flexibility to the

system. All these affiliations between lay people and monasteries were informal,arising and disappearing as circumstances changed.19Trust was further enhanced by the

overlapping of personal and institutional components of relations. Cooperation between

temples often stemmed from kinship among clerics. For example, Welch describes how the

famous Jinshan Templetook responsibility for collecting land rents for the neighbor-

ing Wofu Temple and also gave it subsidies when necessary. The reason for this was that an

earlier abbot of Chin Shan had been a tonsure heir of Wo-fu, namely Chan-ching, who

was Chin Shans abbot in the late Ching Dynasty. In deference to his memory Chin Shan

was still helping the Wo-fu Ssu [Temple] in the 1930s.20Loose coupling among temples

further enhanced flexibility. Even as they cooperated they were also independent. Relationswere neither legal nor hierarchically enforced but were informal understandings between

independent entities that allowed for rapid realignments to reflect changing conditions.

The systems expansive possibilities derived from the affiliations of clerics. The strong-

est ties tonsure kinship are only found among clerics, while regional affiliations are

also confined to clerics. As noted above dharma ties between clerics and devotees who are

loyal to the same master are considered to be weak. Welchs geodesic dome metaphor for

16 Welch 1967, p. 404.

17 Welch 1967, p. 404.

18 Welch 1967, p. 405.

19 Welch 1967, p. 407.

20 Welch 1967, p. 406.


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Chinese Buddhism expresses this. The domes nodes consist of monks and temples, and the

sticks between them are the affiliations that linked them, while from the nodes of this

dome . . . hung families of lay people, each of which might be connected with a particular

monastery. . . .21This image suggests that the affiliations among the clergy constituted the

systems structure and expansion with the lay-devotees providing support at specificsites.

Conceptually speaking, the typology just described fully accords with a standard

sociological definition of networks as any kind of socially meaningful tie. This focuses

analysis on how the relations are arranged, how the behavior of individuals depends

on their location in this arrangement, and how the qualities of the individuals influence

the arrangement22 so as to understand the allocations of authority and resources among

persons and locales.

the modernization of buddhism: from chinato the diaspora

The Buddhist reform movement that arose in China in the late nineteenth century was

both a response to decimation by the Taiping Rebellion and to the increasing presence of

new values of science, rationality, and progress that were coming to China from the mid-

nineteenth century in the context of imperialism and capitalism. New scientific ideas of

thinking saw religion as incompatible with modernity, while Buddhism was denounced

for a passive and detached attitude that was said to be a cause of Chinas backwardness.

Buddhism was also challenged by Christian missionaries who attracted followers throughoutreach activities and their impressive command of their religious doctrines. In this

context various renewal movements emerged among Buddhists.

Some renewal movements took a conservative approach that emphasized personal cul-

tivation, textual study, and retreat from the world as practiced by such masters as Hongyi

, Yuanying, Xuyun, and Tanxu.23Another was the progressive approach

associated with Taixu . Influenced by scientism and Christianity, he sought to ratio-

nalize Buddhist theology and encouraged involvement in this world through charity and

relations with political authorities. In general, the progressive approach thrived in coastal

cities, especially in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Fujian provinces where contacts with the West

and Japan were more extensive, while the conservative approach was often associated with

more remote inland temples and those in North China.

All approaches emphasized Buddhist education and many Buddhist seminaries (

) were established to train clergy. There were various intentions behind this. One was

to preempt state efforts beginning in the twilight of the Qing dynasty to appropriate

monastic lands for public schools. Another was the recognition of the need to prosely-

tize. Seminary-educated monks began giving dharma talks to lay devotees, usually on the

merits of a particular sutra. Proselytizing became an increasingly important part of a

monastic career: where previously monks had traveled abroad to obtain sutras, they now

21 Welch 1967, p. 407.

22 Lienhardt 1977, xiii. See also Granovetter 1985.

23 Birnbaum 2003, p. 433.


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often traveled to spread the dharma. As for Taixu, he founded academies to spearhead the

institutional modernization of Buddhism through classroom teaching and a curriculum

that included secular topics.

Lay devotees played a major role in this revival movement. Members of the scholar-

official elite in the late Qing dynasty, such as Yang Wenhui , played major roles indeveloping the basic tenets and practices of the modern reform movement while, in the

Republican era, it was fashionable for officials to be interested in Buddhism. Important

support also came from the rising merchant classes in the port cities that were sites of

rapid capital accumulation between the domestic and international economies. Many of

these businesspersons and their offspring were quite cosmopolitan and well educated.

With the heightened emphasis on scriptural knowledge in the reform movement, they

could play a greater role in propagating Buddhism. Such participation was especially

pronounced in the modernist reform movement where lay devotees also administered

new associations, performed some rituals alongside clerics, and taught in Buddhist

seminaries.24

Growth of the Chinese Diaspora

As Chinese began emigrating in ever greater numbers from the second half of the nine-

teenth century, Buddhist monks soon followed, first to Southeast Asia and then to North

America. Support for their travels and activities came from the growing numbers and

wealth of overseas Chinese. Buddhist temples with professional clergy and an emphasis

on scriptural knowledge and personal cultivation began to appear alongside the Guandi

shrines, divination sites, and ancestral halls that had long existed in overseas Chinesecommunities. The growth of this Buddhism in the diaspora was stimulated by ongoing

interactions between overseas Chinese communities and China through movements of

ideas, people, and money.

The movement of Buddhism to Southeast Asia began in the late nineteenth century

with the growth of an increasingly wealthy Chinese urban population in the European

colonies. This population, which hailed mostly from the Min dialect areas of southern

Fujian province, was well informed of intellectual and cultural developments in China. In

particular the business elites moved back and forth between the diaspora and port cities

in China, exposing them to the same ideas that the rising business classes were developingthrough contact with western business practices, missionaries and missionary education

and various reformist movements.

Intellectual currents in China were also quickly communicated to the overseas Chinese

in Southeast Asia through the many Chinese bookstores, newspapers, and printing presses;

reformist and revolutionary books popular in China in the early twentieth century were

immediately available in urban centers of Southeast Asia. Also, many prominent Chinese

visited Southeast Asia and gave public lectures and talks, including such nationally prominent

intellectual and political figures as Kang Youweiand Liang Qiqiao, as well as

Sun Yatsen(himself an overseas Chinese from Hawaii) and many of the prominentBuddhist monks of the period including Taixu. Therefore many of the diaspora elite

24 Taixu also tried to reduce the stigma of former monks who had returned to lay life by encouraging their

continued interest in Buddhism.


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embraced perceptions found among Chinas coastal business and political elites regarding

Chinas backwardness and the need for modernization and some founded movements that

were similar to those in China for educating women, removing superstition from Chinese

folk-religion, and so on.

Successive Chinese states were also a force in this dissemination of modern ideas in thediaspora. Beginning in 1877 in Singapore, the Qing state established forty-six consulates

abroad and, in addition to recruiting overseas businessmen to support Chinas economic

development, also promoted such modernizing reforms as the setting-up of Chambers of

Commerce in overseas Chinese communities, and modern schools to give instruction in

the Chinese language.25 In the 1930s and 1940s, the Republican government sponsored

visits by major figures in China to other parts of Asia to stimulate overseas Chinese sup-

port for its war against Japan. In 19391940 it even sponsored a half-year tour by Taixu

to Malaya, as well as Burma, Ceylon and India, although accounts of the trip suggest that

Taixu propagated Buddhism rather than discussed the war effort.

26

The Movement of Buddhism to Southeast Asia and North America

The first recorded instance of a Chinese monk moving to Southeast Asia was Miaolian

, abbot of Gushan Templein Fuzhouwho was invited by wealthy devotees

in Penang. He took up residence in a small temple for burning incense but found it too

noisy for religious practice and so his patrons bought land in a suburb for the construction

of a temple. Funds were raised from overseas Chinese in more than a hundred cities around

the world, and in 1904 the Jile Temple was opened. Miaolian, then eighty-one years

old, set off to Beijing for imperial approval. He successfully returned with two horizontalboards (), one with Guangxu Emperors inscription Daxiung Baodian and the other

with the inscription Haitian Foguo by the Dowager Empress.27 Following this

successful enterprise, other clergy followed Miaolian and the flow increased in the 1930s

and 1940s as they left the chaos of the Japanese invasion and civil war and then the new

communist regime for the more hospitable overseas Chinese communities. This influx of

personnel, combined with the economic boom and growth of an educated middle class in

the second half of the twentieth century led to much temple construction, and by the end

of the twentieth century there were 1,500 Buddhist temples in Malaysia and Singapore as

well as numerous associations and charities.28

The movement of reform Buddhism to North America occurred over half a century later

owing to the restrictive immigration regimes instituted in response to pressure from labor

unions alarmed by competition for jobs from Chinese immigrant laborers. From 18821942

in the United States (from 1898 in Hawaii following its annexation) and from 18851947

in Canada, immigration from China practically halted. Furthermore the possibility of citi-

zenship to those already in North America was denied while complex re-entry procedures

sharply reduced travel back to China. The result was that the decades of extended and

25 Zhuang 1999, p. 99.

26 Pittman 2001, pp. 13943; Welch 1968, p. 3.

27 Yu 1997, pp. 1728.

28 Yu 1997, p. 4.


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rich cultural contact between the diaspora and China in Southeast Asia up until the mid-

twentieth century did not occur in North America, and Chinatowns dwindled in size and

Chinese mixed in with the general population. The exception was Hawaii where a large

percentage of the population was of Chinese origin, many from the areas surrounding

Hong Kong, and more ongoing links were maintained to China through Hong Kong.The ban on Chinese immigration to the United States was repealed in 1943. At first

only a limited immigration of members of the Nationalist political and business elite was

permitted.29Unlike the earlier migrants, who had left Guangdong province for economic

gain, these new migrants were wealthy and well-educated political refugees from Shanghai

and neighboring Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces. Many had spent several years as refugees

in Hong Kong or Taiwan before entering the United States and Canada. From 1965, follow-

ing an overhaul of United States immigration procedures, many Chinese began coming

to the U.S. as immigrants or on student visas. In the 1980s, following the United States

establishment of ties with the Peoples Republic of China, Chinese began coming from themainland, a mix of students and undocumented laborers, resulting in a diverse Chinese

community in the United States.

The first monk to go North America was Zhiding who went in 1957 at the

invitation of Chinese in Hawaii. Ten years later he opened the Hsu Yun Temple in

Honolulu, heralded in the worldwide overseas Chinese press as the first real Chinese

temple in North America.30A trickle of other monks soon followed, and they established

Buddhist activities on the U.S. mainland and in Canada. The refugees of the Nationalist

official-business elite were prominent supporters of these monks. As immigration from

Taiwan and then mainland China increased, the number of Buddhist temples has grown,with hundreds by the late twentieth century, including 26 alone in lower Manhattans

Chinatown.31

In sum, Buddhism moved overseas through a process of interaction with China that

occurred differently in various regions. In Southeast Asia the interaction was continuous,

with clergy and devotees all part of the same migration outflow stemming largely from

Fujian Province. With regard to North America, the interruption of migration links between

China and North America meant that when migration resumed after more than half a

century, the new migrants were no longer from the same region as the original Cantonese

migrants. Among the key clergy and devotees who institutionalized Buddhism in NorthAmerica, there was no numerically dominant regional group. This is apparent in the

distribution of the ancestral regions of prominent monks and devotees overseas as seen

in the place of birth recorded in entries in the Annals of Overseas Propagators of Chinese

Buddhism. Of the forty-eight clergy and devotees in the Philippines, Singapore and Malay-

sia, fully thirty-four (71%) come from Fujian province and they are almost entirely from

the Min dialect area in the southern half.32By contrast, of the twenty-nine persons in the

29 Canada repudiated its exclusionary immigration policies in 1947. It initially allowed only limited

immigration for family members of Chinese with Canadian citizenship.

30 Yu 1997, pp. 33448.

31 Guest 2002.

32 The distribution by province is Fujian 34, Jiangsu 8, Guangdong 2, Liaoning 1, Zhejiang 1, Anhui 1,

Taiwan 1.


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United States and Canada, one third (ten persons) are from Jiangsu province with the

remaining distributed among the others, and only one from Fujian province.33This differ-

ence in ancestral region of origin underscores the very different historical processes and

interactions between diasporic regions and China.

clergy networks

Throughout the twentieth the clergy have been a key force in the expansion of Buddhism

around the world and its institutionalization in locales. This section will examine first

the careers of key monks who brought Buddhism to each diasporic region, and then the

dynamics of expansion across nation-state borders and institutionalization in locales that

proceeded in the networks.

Clergy Careers and NetworksSoutheast Asia:Zhuandaowas the leader of Chinese Buddhists in Southeast Asia in the

first half of the twentieth century.34He was born in Southern Fujians Nanan county

in 1872 and ordained in Nanshan Templeat age eighteen. A seven-year stay at Tian-

tong Temple acquainted him with such famous monks as Xuyun, Yuanying and

Huiquan. He then stayed at Nanputuo Temple until invited by Xuyun to Beijing to work

on his library. He returned to Nanputuo Temple and when it decided in 1913 to establish

the Sangha Academy, Zhuandao went to Singapore to seek funds from the overseas Chinese

community. He was enthusiastically welcomed by overseas Chinese, who also raised fundsto construct a temple for him. Putuo Templewas completed in the 1920s and is still

one of Singapores most prominent temple. When the master monk Yuanying asked him to

help reconstruct Kaiyuan Temple in Quanzhou Zhuandao raised money from

Singapore Buddhists and went to Fujian to assist. Much of his subsequent career involved

traveling back and forth between Southern Fujian and Singapore. In Fujian he further used

funds from overseas Chinese to restore Nanshan Temple, found the Nanshan Buddhist

Propagation School , restore Chongfu Temple in Zhanghou and

serve as abbot there, and establish the Propagate Buddhism among the Populace School

(

) to educate orphans. In Singapore he worked with lay devotees to establishand chair such associations as the Buddhist Lay Devotee Association () and the

China Buddhist Association, to propagate Chinese reading ability and knowledge of Chinese

culture among overseas Chinese, and to support orphanages and old persons homes.

Hongquansucceeded Zhuandao as Malayas leading monk from the end of World

War II until his death in 1991.35 He was born in 1907 in Fujians Jinjiang county

and was tonsured by Huiquan at the age of thirteen in Quanzhou citys Chengtian Temple

. When Nanputuo Temple became ecumenical in 1924 and Huiquan was selected

as head monk, Hongquan went with him. In 1927 Taixu came to Nanputuo Temple and

33 The distribution by province is Jiangsu 10, Anhui 4, Guangdong 4, Hebei 3, Jilin 2, Fujian 1, Henan 1, Jiangxi

1, Liaoning 1, Shanxi 1, Zhejiang 1.

34 Yu 1997,pp. 2428.

35 Yu 1997, pp. 8186.


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Hongquan became his follower. When Huiquan established Wanshilian Temple

to serve as headquarters of the Buddhist Studies Research Society he

appointed Hongquan as prior. When Japan invaded China in 1937 Huiquan and Hongquan

went to Malaya and Indonesia and then to Singapore. There Hongquan helped Zhuan-

dao build Pujue Temple and Zhuandao gave him a dharma transmission to make themdharma brothers. In 1942 Huiquan and Hongquan went to Penang to build Miaoxianglin

Temple with funds donated by overseas Chinese. With Huiquans death,

Hongquan became its head monk and then, in 1943, abbot of Pujue Temple upon Zhuan-

daos death. During Hongquans long tenure he expanded the Pujue Temple, established

and chaired the Singapore Buddhist Association , the Singapore Inter-

Religious organization , and schools and free medical clinics, and pub-

lished the journal Nanyang Buddhist. He also hosted major religious and political

figures and was honored in 1987 by Thailands King as Supreme Chinese Monk with

equal rank to Thailands Supreme Patriarch of Monks Community. With the relaxationof Chinas policy towards religion after 1979, Hongquan made almost a dozen trips to

China to help restore the temples in southern Fujian province associated with his master

Huiquan, preside at ceremonies, and lobby Chinas religious establishment for the return

of temples and the restarting of the South Fujian Buddhist Academy.

The next monk whom we will consider is Xingyuan, the first monk to proselytize

in the Philippines.36 He was born in 1889 in Nanan county and ordained at Nanputuo

Temple by Xican . His ordination brother was Zhuanfeng who ecumenicized

Nanputuo Temple in 1924 and established the South Fujian Buddhist Academy ,

while his classmates included Huiquan as well as many who would become prominentin the diaspora. He stayed at Tiantong Temple when Eight Fingers, one of Taixus first

teachers, was still abbot. He then returned to Nanputuo Temple in 1919 and lectured,

becoming known, along with Huiquan and Yuanying, as one of the three great masters

from Fujian. He then went to Nanshan Temple in Zhangzhou and established the Buddhist

Research Society, becoming head of the Eastern Ethics Buddhist Studies Research

Society at Chengtian Temple, and then the temples prior. In 1927 he

went to Singapore and stayed in Longshan Templeand Putuo Temple. Seven months

later he was appointed prior of Nanputuo Temple in Xiamen and, in this capacity, hosted

Taixu and Hongyi and received a dharma transmission from Hongyi. In 1936 he was electedabbot of Nanputuo Temple. That same year the Philippine Buddhist Association decided

to build a Buddhist temple in Manila and invited Xingyuan there. The Japanese invasion

encouraged him to accept, and he transformed the temple from a site of ancestor worship

and rites for the dead into a Buddhist temple.

When Xingyuan retired he nominated Ruijin as his successor. Ruijin was born in

1905 in Jinjiang county and after ordination, was one of the first monks to study in the

newly established South Fujian Buddhist Academy where he came to know Xingyun; it was

Xingyun who appointed him prior of Nanshan Temple and education head of the Nanshan

Buddhist Propagation School.

37

In 1933 he returned to Nanputuo Temple to help found aschool to prepare novices for the South Fujian Buddhist Academy and also founded the

36 Yu 1997. pp. 16371.

37 This was an elementary feeder school for the South Fujian Buddhist Academy.


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journal Buddhist Public Opinion. In 1946 he was invited to the Philippines by Xingyun

to become the head monk of Manilas Xinyuan Temple; he became abbot there after

Xingyuan passed away.38 Upon Hongquans death in Singapore in 1991 he also became

abbot of Singapores Pujue Temple.

North America:Zhidingwas the first Chinese monk to go to North America.39

He wasborn in 1919 in Guangdongs Qujiang county near Nanhua Temple , where

he often heard Xuyuns talks. He became Xuyuns lay disciple and, after graduating from

college, was ordained by Xuyun and served in the temples administration before enrolling

in a Buddhist seminary in Jiangsu Province. He returned to Nanhua Temple and served in

the temple administration as vice head of the temples Buddhist seminary, principal of its

primary school and then, in 1944, its head monk. In 1947 he accompanied Xuyun to Hong

Kong to perform a plenary mass. Many overseas Chinese from Hawaii attended and urged

Xuyun to establish a temple in Hawaii. Xuyun promised that Zhiding would eventually go.

In 1949 Zhiding fled to Hong Kong to escape the communists and three hundred membersof Hawaiis Chinese community wrote a letter inviting him to Hawaii. In preparation for

his arrival they established the Chinese Buddhist Association of Hawaii in 1953. Three

years later Zhiding emigrated to Honolulu and opened the Hsu Yun Temple in 1967.

To assist him Zhiding invited Fahui to come from Hong Kong. Fahui was born in

Guangdongs Panyu countyin 1928. When he was a child, his family sought refuge

in Nanhua Temple and Xuyun became Fahuis tonsure master. The following year, at the

age of eighteen, he was ordained and entered Nanhua Temples Nanhua Jielu Seminary

. Zhiding was the seminarys vice-head and Fahui greatly impressed him. After

Zhiding went to Hong Kong he invited Fahui. In 1953 Fahui entered the Huanan BuddhistStudies Academy , then recently founded by Tanxu who had sought refuge in

Hong Kong, giving him the chance to study under Tanxu. In Hawaii he supervised the

construction of Hsu Yun Temple, eventually succeeding Zhiding as abbot.

The second monk to travel to North America was Miaofeng .40 He was born in

Guangdongs Zhanjiang county in 1917 and was ordained at Nanhua Temple by

Xuyun. In the autumn of 1949 he fled to Taiwan and enrolled at the Taiwan Buddhist

Seminary recently established at Yuanguang Temple by Cihang .

He then moved to the Fuyan Prayer Hall to study with the master monk

Yinshun , who had been ordained by Taixus ordination brother, had studied at theMinnan Buddhist Academy under Taixu, and had a reputation as a brilliant scholar monk

in Taixus line of modern Buddhism. In 1954 Yinshun invited Miaofeng to teach at his

newly established Xinzhu Nuns Academy near Taipei. When a delega-

tion from San Francisco in 1960 asked Yinshun to send them a well-educated Cantonese-

speaking monk, Yinshun sent Miaofeng in 1962. A year later the Eastern United States

Buddhist Association invited Miaofeng to preside at the opening ceremony of its prayer

hall and his lectures were translated into English. Impressed by the larger audience, he

ignored letters from San Francisco imploring him to return and stayed in New York. In

38 Under his long abbotship another twenty-seven Buddhist temples were built in the Philippines, and

numerous charities and associations came into being (Chuan 1990, pp. 910).

39 Yu 1997, pp. 33448.

40 Yu 1997, pp. 394402.


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1963 he founded the Fawang Temple in Manhattans Chinatown, the Mt. Jinfo

Fawang Temple in upstate New York in 1977 and the Cihang Prayer Hall

in Queens in 1990, and he also published the Cihang Monthly.

Among the monks whom Miaofeng invited to the United States was Zhenghai, who

brought Buddhism to the American Southwest. He was born in 1931 in Tai county ,Jiangsu province, to a poor farming family who gave him to the monks at a small temple.

When he was fifteen he went to Baohuashan Temple , was ordained at Longchang

Temple , and studied at the Tianning Buddhist Seminary at Tianning

Temple . In 1949 he went to Taiwan and studied with Miaofengs teacher, Cihang.

He then spent eight years in Thailand studying Pali and Thai, and received a doctorate

in Buddhist studies from a Japanese university. In the U.S. he went to Houston and

established the Foguang Temple in 1980 and the larger Yufo Temple in

1990.

The third monk to North America was Leduwho was born in 1923 in Anhui province.41After ordination in 1942 he entered the Zhanshan Buddhist Seminary

at Zhanshan Temple in Shandong province and studied under Tanxu. In

1947 Tanxu and Xuyun sent him to Hong Kong to help raise funds to restore Guangzhous

Guangxiao Temple. His travels through the chaos of the civil war deeply impressed

Ledu and so when laypersons told him of their hope that Tanxu would found a Buddhist

seminary in Hong Kong, Ledu telegrammed an invitation to Tanxu. Tanxu arrived in mid-

1948 and founded the Nanhua Buddhist Seminary, with Ledu in the first class. After hear-

ing a devotee speak of the need for Buddhism in America, Ledu determined to spread

the dharma there and began to study English. In 1963 he was invited by a devotee in SanFrancisco who had started the True Buddha-Daoism Research Society .

Because it was a syncretic religious site, Ledu soon left, upon being invited to New York by

one of Tanxus lay disciples, Jiang Huangyu , who had recently moved from Hong

Kong. In New York she worked with Shen Jiazhen and other refugee devotees to

establish the Eastern American Buddhist Association . With Ledu, these lay-

devotees founded the Buddhist Association of the United States . Ju Heru,

wife of Shen Jiazhen, donated land in the Bronx to build the Duejue Temple , with

Ledu as head monk.42 In 1974 Ledu established the Young Mens Buddhist Association of

America

to translate sutras into English.Two clergy whom Ledu invited to North America in the 1960s, Xingkong and

Chengxiang , introduced Buddhism to Canada. Xingkong was born in 1912 in Hebei

province, ordained in Beijings Guangji Temple at the age of sixteen, and studied

under Tanxu at the Zhanshan Buddhist Seminary. He accompanied Ledu and Tanxu to

Hong Kong and enrolled in the Nanhua Buddhist Seminary. Chengxiang was born in 1920

in Hebei province and was working in a Chinese medicine store when he heard Tanxu

talk in 1946. He took the precepts from Tanxu, was ordained at Dajue Temple in

Tianjin, and studied at Tanxus Nanhua Buddhist Seminary. In 1967 both monks visited

Ledu in New York, and were encouraged by him to propagate Buddhism in Canada. Theywent to Toronto and founded the Canada Buddhist Association and Nanshan Temple, the

41 Yu 1997, pp. 37585.

42 Yu 1997, pp. 30607.


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Zhanshan Prayer Hall , the Buddhist Propagation Prayer Hall , the Inter-

national Buddhist Ocean Monastery , the Fohia Monastery , the

Zhanshan Chanyuan Monastery, and the Zhanshan Museum.

Cooperation and Resource Allocations: The affiliations of religious kinship, loyalty to

charismatic monks, and regional ties enabled cooperation among the clergy. Cooperationamong the leading master monks in Southeast Asia was embedded in overlapping affili-

ations. First, in terms of religious kinship, the first generation in the diaspora, Huiquan,

Zhuandao, and Xinyun, had studied under the monk Xican, with the latter having been

ordained by him. In the second generation, both Hongquan and Ruijin received dharma

transmissions from Zhuandao, making them members of the same descent line. Kinship

affiliations among them were deepened through the dharma of Nanputuo Temple and its

South Fujian Buddhist Academy. Zhuandao had helped found its forerunner, the Sangha

Academy, while Huiquan, Xinyun, Hongquan, and Ruijin were students and then adminis-

trators in the academy.43

Second, in terms of loyalty to charismatic monks, most had a strongloyalty to Taixu, having studied or worked with him in the South Fujian Buddhist Academy.

Third, in terms of regional affiliation all were from southern Fujian with Zhuandao, Huiquan

and Xingyuan being from Nanan county, and Hongquan and Ruijin from adjacent Jinjiang

county. In short, such multiple and overlapping affiliations enabled tight coordination and

communication among these key monks.

Affiliations among the clergy who went to North America are narrower with each

person connected to only a few monks, and there is little overlap of affiliations. In the

kinship affiliations of the first group of monks, Zhiding in Hawaii was Xuyuns disciple,

Miaofeng was linked to Taixu, and Ledu was a disciple of Tanxu. Each of them subsequent-ly invited clerics to North America with whom they shared a religious kinship. Zhiding

invited Fahui, who had also been ordained by Xuyun, which made them dharma brothers,

and both had held administrative posts in Nanhua Temple when Xuyun was abbot. Also,

both shared a regional affiliation with Guangdong province. Miaofeng had affiliations with

Zhenghai as both were followers of Cihang and had resided in Taiwan. Ledu and the two

monks he invited, Xingkong and Chengxiang, were all followers of Tanxu, and had resided

in his temples and had studied in his seminaries in China and Hong Kong.

Lay devotees are also linked to them through affiliations. One is the affiliation of

loyalty to the same master monk. Ledu and Jiang Huangyu both were disciples of Tanxu,whom they had met in Hong Kong as refugees from China. Among the three hundred

overseas Chinese in Honolulu who had invited Zhiding were disciples of his master Xuyun.

In terms of regional affiliations, the devotees and clerics in Southeast Asia were all from

southern Fujian province and were all Min dialect speakers. In North America almost no

regional affiliations can be seen between devotees and clerics. But affiliations of loyalty

proved highly adaptable as monks connected their lay devotees with their dharma kin. For

example, Ledu connected his New York lay devotees with Xingkong and Chengxiang, and

they cooperated to propagate Buddhism in New York and Toronto by establishing temples

that commemorated their master Tanxu.

43 According to one of our informants, the director of the Singapore Buddhist Lodge , Chinese

monks in Singapore can be linked with just five temples in Southern Fujian Nanputuo, Kaiyuan, Cheng-

tian, Nanshan, and Xuefeng temples and that affiliation of religious kinship connects all clergy in

Southeast Asia.


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Devotees in the diaspora can also draw clergy into their own networks of devotees,

although the network hinges on clerical authority for its integrity. Thus, Jiang Huangyu

who invited Ledu to New York subsequently introduced him to devotees in New Yorks

Shanghai refugee circle. Another example concerns Zhenghai who departed for Texas with

the phone number of a single Chinese lay-devotee in Houston given to him by Ledu. Thedevotee was a follower of Yongxing in Hong Kong. It happened that Zhenghai also

knew Yongxing because both had studied Pali in Thailand. Thereupon the devotee tele-

phoned Yongxing and received his blessing to cooperate with Zhenghai. Both Yongxing

and the Houston devotee financially supported the construction of Zhenghais first temple

and Yongxing was selected as abbot.44 Interestingly both of these examples depart from

Welchs claim that common vertical ties of loyalty to a charismatic monk do not stimulate

horizontal cooperation between clergy and devotees.

The networks of affiliations played a role not only in the aforementioned personnel

moves but also in financial resources, mostly as a movement from the diaspora to Chinato support the reconstruction of temples. Zhuandao directed money from his disciples in

Southeast Asia to reconstruct temples in his ancestral region of south Fujian province.

At the end of the twentieth century Hongquan similarly directed funds to reconstruct all

of the temples in southern Fujian associated with his master Huiquan. Money can move

between affiliations of region and religious kinship. For example, the Nanputuo Temple

abbot Miaozhan, who was a follower of Tanxu and came originally from Manchuria,

directed some of the funds donated by Southeast Asian overseas Chinese to various

temples in Manchuria, some of then associated with Tanxu.

With regard to personnel movements, the stream of clergy migrating to Southeast Asiaand North America has quickened since the revival of Buddhism in China from the early

1980s. Of the thirty or so clergy who have emigrated to the Philippines since the 1980s,

most are Min dialect speakers from southern Fujian and have links to such temples in the

Quanzhou region as Kaiyuan Temple. In North America, personnel often move through

loyalty to a charismatic monk; an example is Ledu sponsoring clergy from the South Fujian

Buddhist Academy to go to the United States in the 1980s. Both Ledu and Miaozhan ,

abbot of Nanputuo temple, were followers of Tanxu and had heard of each other although

they had not actually met. An informant told us that an elderly lay devotee teaching at the

South Fujian Buddhist Academy in the late 1980s had once been a monk who had residedin Gaoming Temple decades earlier when Tanxu was abbot.45This devotee arranged for a

telephone call between Ledu and Miaozhan during which Ledu asked Miaozhan to send

young graduates of the academy to assist in his translation work. Possibly in recognition of

their common master, Miaozhan sent one of the brightest graduates of its first graduating

class who had become his personal secretary.

Finally, movements of legitimacy and political support have gone in both directions.

Clerics acknowledge the institutional authority of their Buddhist lineage by naming the

temples they establish in the diaspora after the temples associated with their masters.

Zhiding named his temple in Honolulu the Hsu Yun Temple after his master, while

Ledu and the clerics he invited named their North American temples after ones in China

44 Yu 1997, p. 431.

45 Ven. Miaozhan Commemorative Volume1997, 99.


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associated with their master Tanxu, hence New Yorks Dajue Temple and Montreals

Zhanshan Prayer Hall. More recently, in the late twentieth century, overseas Chinese

have helped lighten the limitations of state religious policy for Buddhists in China. 46For

example, in the early 1980s, Hongquan successfully lobbied central state authorities in

Beijing to reopen the South Fujian Buddhist Academy. He also gave a dharma transmissionto Miaozhan to make him the 48th generation in Hongquans Linji sect descent line. This

heightened Miaozhans prestige in dealings with local state authorities.

Lay Devotee Networks as an Expansive Force

Lay devotees appear to be playing an increasingly prominent role in this more globalized

Buddhism, a difference from what Welch depicted in his organizational schema of

Buddhism. Increasingly, they are not simply providing support for clerics at specific points,

as depicted in Welchs geodesic dome metaphor, but rather appear as an expansive force ofthe system itself to institutionalize Buddhism in overseas locales.47

Two examples are illustrative. In Southeast Asia, the devotee Li Juncheng was

active in Singapore from the 1920s to the 1960s. He was born in 1888 in southern Fujians

Yongchun county and received a traditional Confucian education. At the age of

seventeen he emigrated to Malaya to work in his fathers business there and he established

several very successful firms. His concern about the education of overseas Chinese led him

to establish Chinese schools and to develop an interest in Buddhism. In 1925 he visited

Chinas holy Buddhist site Mt. Putuo and took the Refuges from the master monk

Yinguang. Upon return to Singapore his business grew dramatically with the merger ofhis bank to form the Overseas Chinese Bank and he became a leading businessperson in

Singapore. He also began to work closely with Zhuandao, Hongquan and other promi-

nent monks in Malaya to propagate Buddhism. In the 1930s he funded construction of

a headquarters for the newly established Buddhist Lay Devotees Association and, shortly

before his death in 1966, supported the construction of a larger building. He financially

supported Buddhist monasteries in Malaya, the restoration of old Chinese temples in India,

and wrote about Buddhism in ancient India. After World War II he created and headed

the Singapore Buddhist Association to further communication among the hundreds of

Buddhist temples from various ethnic groups in Singapore.48

46 This is possible because of state economic policies that seek overseas Chinese investment and the belief

among local officials that showing tolerance to religion creates goodwill among overseas Chinese. It also

enhances the status of such leading monks as Hongquan in dealing with the state as they are seen as opinion

makers among overseas Chinese.

47 Of course, given the total lack of an infrastructure and the lack of an economic base for clerics in overseas

communities, lay devotees played a larger role in decision-making. We have already seen how the mere fact

that clerics immigrated was due in large to invitations by lay devotees. In constructing temples, the clerics

depended heavily on the devotees. This no doubt gave the devotees greater influence in personnel appoint-ments, as seen by the appointment of Yongxing as the first abbot of the Yufuo Temple in Houston. In over-

seas communities, Buddhist temples are much more likely to have boards of directors that are staffed largely

by lay persons with final authority over personnel appointments. But what is even more interesting is that

the activities and networks of some lay devotees is also constituting an expansive force for the system.

48 Yu 1997, pp. 4451.


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Lis activities are notable not only for his support of Buddhist temples in Malaya but

also for how his connections to other societal sectors helped institutionalize Buddhist

concerns in them. This is seen by the diverse organizations he headed: the Singapore

Chinese Aid Raising Society, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce, the Fujian Native Place

Association, the Yongchun Association and the board of directors of the Bank of Singa-pore. His positions and networks in these sectors not only enabled him to gather economic

resources from them to support Buddhism but also to institutionalize Buddhist concerns

in the educational and philanthropy sectors and even the state sphere. For example, in his

capacity as head of various organizations, he was able to lobby the Singapore government

to have Vesak made into a public holiday, to form a Buddhist Education Committee to

assist the Singapore government to promote Buddhist education and moral standards in

schools, and to work for greater religious freedom for Buddhists in Vietnam.

In North America, the devotee Shen Jiazhen also played a large role in institutionaliz

ing Buddhism. He was born in 1913 in Hangzhou to a father who was a high official in theZhejiang provincial government. He attended a Catholic primary school and majored in

electrical engineering at Jiaotong University in Shanghai. His elite background is also

reflected in his wife, a daughter of a Shanghai banker who was the assistant to Chinas

finance minister in the 1940s. In his first job as a Nationalist government official in charge

of resources, Shen traveled abroad to purchase power equipment and then supervised

power facilities in Kunming and Chongging, the two capitals of the Nationalist state in

China. In 1945 he resigned and set up a heavy industry trading company, presumably

drawing on his experiences and ties as a Nationalist official. In 1949 he fled to Hong Kong

and then to the United States in 1952 where he became a director of shipping companies.His involvement with Buddhism began in the early 1960s. Through his circle of recent

elite Chinese emigrants from Shanghai in New York,49he was introduced to Ledu in 1964

who had just arrived there.50 Together they founded the United States Buddhist Associa-

tion to promote Ledus work. This association would soon become the largest

Buddhist organization in North America, although Shen was always too busy to chair it. In

1970 he founded the World Religion Research Institutein partnership with

the State University of New York at Stony Brook and helped build a Buddhist library in

Taiwan. In the 1970s he embarked on his signature project, the building of Zhuangyan

Temple in upstate New York on a 500-acre plot of land. For this the United StatesBuddhist Association solicited donations from Chinese organizations and temples in

Taiwan, Hong Kong and other places. Almost three decades later the eight-building com-

plex design by the architect I. M. Pei was completed, and it houses numerous activities

including summer retreats, a library, and a project to digitalize all the sutras.

The activities of Li and Shen go far beyond simply providing support for clergy. Both

engaged in many activities that rested on their own status as Buddhist devotees, as well as

members of the social elite. Their activities were also a force for propagating Buddhism,

49 The devotee Jiang Huangyu who originally invited Ledu to New York was also the wife of a wealthy Shanghai

businessman.

50 In his autobiography, he writes that Ledu deeply impressed him by criticizing the corruption within

Buddhism caused by infighting among sects, and by monks who considered temples as their personal

property (He 1999, p. 164).


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not only by the funding of Buddhist temples and the creation of Buddhist organiza-

tions, but also through links to other societal sectors. These activities proceeded through

networks both local and transnational among the devotees.

conclusionThis article has examined the globalization of Chinas Buddhism during the course of the

twentieth century. The processes of imperialism, nation-state formation, and capitalism

that brought values of nation, scientism, and progress to China and stimulated Buddhist

reform movements in China, also conveyed this Buddhism abroad through the expanded

emigration of Chinese overseas.

One analytic focus has been the process by which this has occurred. We have drawn

on Welchs typology of network affiliations that constitute the historically decentralized

organization of Buddhism to examine the movement of Buddhism transnationally. This

has shown how affiliations of kinship, loyalty to charismatic monks, and regional ties haveenabled movements of personnel, finances, and legitimacy across nation-state borders. The

analysis has also suggested ways in which globalization has transformed these networks

in ways linked to the rising prominence of lay devotees. First, loyalties to master monks

now also serve as the basis for horizontal coordination between devotees and clergy, some-

thing that Welch maintained had not happened in China. Secondly, devotees are no longer

merely sources of support for clergy in locales but are becoming an expansive force of the

system itself, forging their own networks and creating their own activities.

Another analytic focus has been how the institutionalization of Buddhism in specific

locales is also constrained by the national-space in which this occurred. We have high-lighted the effect of difference between the relatively open immigration policies of the

colonial states in Southeast Asia and the more closed ones of North America. Thus con-

tinuous migration streams in the former contrast with interrupted movements in the

latter to explain the different mixes of affiliations that conveyed Buddhism to these two

regions in the diaspora. Presumably the different characters of the networks could also

explain some differences between Buddhist practices in these two regions. Such an inquiry

would accord with the thrust of recent studies of transnational religion that inquire into

changes in practices and beliefs that occur through transnational projection into different

nation-state spaces, but that is beyond the scope of this article. 51

Our third analytic focus has been the interactive process of the globalization of

Buddhism. The transnational networks were not unidirectional but have involved

51 See Chafetz and Ebaugh 2002,Weller 2003, Yang 1999. One possible application of this focus to our analysis

could link differences in religious practices in the two regions of the diaspora to differences in the networks

among the Buddhists. For example, Buddhist clergy in Southeast Asia were from the same dialect region

as the overseas Chinese population Min speakers from southern Fujian. Perhaps as a consequence, many

Chinese Buddhist temples in Southeast Asia have elements and practices close to such popular or folk

practices as housing ancestor tablets in temples and performing rituals such as hungry ghost feeding (fang-

yankou). By contrast Buddhism came to the United States through movements largely outside the original

immigrant community. Many devotees who sponsored monks were educated professionals and former

officials who were more interested in Buddhisms canonical aspects. Also many of the monks were from

North China, where Buddhism contain fewer elements of folk practice and ancestor worship. Such reasons

possible explain why major Buddhist temples in North America appear to emphasize sutras and scholarship

and less the ancestor worship and rituals practices that are more obvious in Southeast Asia. See Chandler

(1998) for an interesting discussion of Buddhism in North America in relation to patterns of immigration.


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exchanges and movements proceeding in both directions. Throughout much of the twen-

tieth century, there has been a tendency for personnel to move from China to overseas,

to staff the growing number of temples in other countries. Networks of personnel flows

are shifting as new Chinese temples overseas turn to indigenous populations to meet

their personnel needs. Thus for example, Fahui, the second abbot of Honolulus Hsu YunTemple, has cultivated numerous non-Chinese clergy and elevated several to the status of

master, who lead the Hsu Yun Buddhist Association, an organization devoted to propagat-

ing Xuyuns teachings. Other temples are also drawing in Chinese from other points in the

diaspora to serve in the temples. For example, a small Guanyin temple in Los Angeles with

an elderly congregation of Chinese from the Chaozhou region of Guangdong province had

several young nuns from Vietnam and Taiwan who were Chaozhou speakers. They had

come to the United States as students and after several years decided to become clerics.

This further indicates an ongoing process in the growth of networks between Buddhists of

different countries and regions of the diaspora.The financial movements that we have described have largely gone in the opposite

direction as funds from overseas Chinese were sent back to China to reconstruct temples

and pay for elaborate ceremonies. In Fujian this was especially visible in the financial sup-

port provided by master monks such as Hongquan for restoring many of the regions major

temples. However, the growth of the middle class in China since the late 1970s is generat-

ing financial patronage within China, reducing the relative importance of funding from

Chinese outside of the Peoples Republic. Also, following their restoration, many of these

temples have been increasingly able to generate their own revenue. Nanputuo Temple and

other secondary temples have become major tourist attractions and gain income from gatereceipts and such commercial activities as vegetarian restaurants, while donations during

major festivals have soared and many monks are able to find personal patrons among the

rising business class. In addition, as a temples facilities and personnel revive, it can once

again conduct rituals for a fee, generating much income.52

Finally, the surge in tourism by overseas Chinese to China over the past two decades

suggests a new kind of interaction. During our interviews and observations at some

travel companies in Singapore and New York that arrange the tours, we were struck by the

number of Buddhist temples in tour itineraries. One travel company owner estimated that

temples account for almost two-thirds of the sites on a tour of China. She explained thatparents often take their children on tours to acquaint them with the traditional culture

of their ancestral homeland. This representation dovetails with the Chinese Communist

Party repositioning of Buddhist temples as Chinas historical material culture, a marked

shift away from their representations from the 1950s to the 1970s as barriers to histori-

cal progress. By seeking to garner the loyalty of Chinese citizens through cultural appeals,

the Chinese state also becomes an element in the transnational networks that conflate

Chinese culture and identity with Buddhism.

52 In this, overseas Chinese have played a large role. This is because the most elaborate and expensive rituals,

such asfangyankou, can easily run afoul of state religious policy because of possible superstitious elements.

But if overseas Chinese commission them, local officials, who view the overseas Chinese as potential investors

in the local economy, do not interfere. Such personal donations and ritual fees provide a stream of income

that goes directly into the pockets of the clerics and cannot be touched by the state religious administration

authorities.


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