Respecting silence: Longing, rhythm, and Chinese temples in an age of bulldozers

ABSTRACT

This essay distinguishes the silence that makes rhythm (and thus ritual) possible, and the silence of loss and longing. It argues that both, as they intertwine, are crucial parts of the adjustment to traumatic change. The interaction between these two kinds of silence offers an alternative to theories that focus primarily on speaking as a way of overcoming trauma, or on silence as antisocial. The ethnographic evidence comes from a surgical case that illustrates the basic approach, followed by a case of rapid urbanization on the outskirts of a large Chinese city, involving the resettlement of 100,000 people. Both cases show the two kinds of silence as they resonate with each other. The analysis argues that silence is not just the absence of sound, but a necessary part of all the rhythms of life, not replaced but invoked by speech.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• urbanization
• rhythm
• silence
• religion

Acknowledgment

I am grateful to the Institute of Anthropology at Nanjing University, which funded most of this research, and to Keping Wu, my co-researcher. In addition, I have greatly benefitted from the comments of numerous colleagues, including Kimberly Arkin, Ana Dragojlovic, Sara Friedman, Ayşe Parla, Annemarie Samuels, Merav Shohet, and an anonymous surgeon. I also benefitted greatly from the help of several research assistants including Gu Jing, Deng Ziru, Li Yang, and Jin Yiwen, and from the support of Emily Wu.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This draws on Epstein’s distinction between rhythm and metre in music (Epstein 1995, 29–40).

2 Note that memorialization differs significantly from rhythm as a way of avoiding or postponing the abyss. There is not space to expand on memorials here, but see Seligman and Weller (2019, 157–63).

3 Research in this area has taken place largely in summers from 2014 to 2018. All of it has been conducted jointly with Keping Wu. Our primary informants have been local intermediaries with deities (‘incense heads’) in the two former townships, of whom we have interviewed about fifty, along with many of their followers. In addition, we have taken part in many of their activities, from healing clients to participation in large ceremonies. We have also had extensive discussions with local Daoists, especially the head of the local branch of the Chinese Daoist Association, which is overseen by the Communist Party and is in charge of all local Daoist temples. Some state officials responsible for religion allowed us to speak with them in 2019.

4 Some relevant information on Xietang is available in a gazetteer created shortly before the township was dissolved (‘Xietang Zhenzhi [斜塘镇志]’ 2001). One portion of Chefang was not incorporated into the Suzhou Industrial Park, where the research took place, but instead was transferred to the jurisdiction of neighbouring Luzhi Township, whose gazetteer also includes some information (Jiangsu Sheng Suzhou Shi Wuzhong Qu Luzhi Zhenzhi Bianzuan Weiyuan Hui [江苏省苏州市吴中区甪直镇志编纂委员会] 2016). With the dissolution of both township governments, political functions have now been moved to an urban district, called Xietang District, but including both former townships.

5 People also again commemorate their ancestors on major holidays like the Qingming. Unlike some other rural areas in China, however, people in these townships did not recreate ancestral shrines in their houses, nor have any lineage halls been rebuilt.

6 Many younger people were already working outside the agricultural sector, so it was less of a transformation for them, although they were also affected by the end of village sociality.

7 This has also happened at some temples in nearby Shanghai (Long 2014) and both areas claim to have pioneered it. The person in charge of this policy as it developed in the SIP Religious Affairs Bureau at the time says they did it because people rebuilt temples faster than the government could tear them down, and they realized they would have to make some kind of legal space for such worship by placing it under the control of the Chinese Buddhist or Daoist Associations.

8 This temple had state recognition only as a historical artifact, not as a temple. The Daoist Association gained control of it in 2018.

9 The most famous case in recent times is probably the Wukan protest in Guangzhou (see, for example, Hess 2015).

10 Many of these unofficial altars were moved to the temple basement, which was padlocked, in 2019. As of this writing the situation is still in flux, and this article addresses only the situation through 2018.

11 Phrased differently, we can see another version of this in Fisher’s discussion of hauntology: ‘Haunting can be seen as intrinsically resistant to the contraction and homogenization of time and space. It happens when a place is stained by time, or when a particular place becomes the site for an encounter with broken time’ (Fisher 2012, 22).

12 For parallels from elsewhere, see Gell (1998).

13 For another way of thinking about the necessity and danger of writing about silence, see Weller (2017).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Nanjing University.