Fast and slow in Central Japan

Bullet train prices are reduced on weekends so my friend H and I took the shinkansen from Toyohashi to Nagoya (25 mins), where we were treated to a dinner of classical Nagoya food by someone who studied art management with her ten years ago - their group came to New York and all stayed in my place in Chelsea. He was glad to repay the favor a decade on. I was delighted to see hatcho miso - the mother of all misos - in action! All of us were glad to be distracted from the election, yet another country's nationalist government consolidating its strength.

东京

Back in Japan for the first quality time in many years! (I stopped over for ten days three years ago in solidarity after the earthquake-tsunami-nuclear meltdowns, but before that it had been five years.) What will I find? I'll be seeing it with different eyes, of course - in part Chinese ones! Certainly nothing in my time in Japan in the 1980s and 1990s prepared me for this (from the Narita Express train) - "Tokyo" in fourlanguages, Japanese and English, Korean and Chinese. A land open to the rest of East Asia - though the government likely to be reelected in tomorrow's snap election has contributed to the souring of relations with its neighbors. (Incidentally, today is the first national holiday in China remembering the Japanese assault on Nanjing, which began this day in 1937 - one of three new patriotic holidays since I arrived.)

Hong Kong gratitude

My twelve days in Hong Kong/Macau turned out great! I did almost as many things as there were kinds of fish balls at this stall in the Shatin wet market. I met old friends (high school, grad school, New School!) and made new ones, visited two universities, and, of course, got (pretty much) the China visa I was after. It was also a perfect place and time to process my first three months in what I learned to call "the Mainland" (rather than "China" or "the rest of China.") Shanghai is in many ways more like Hong Kong than other Chinese cities but there were still some striking difference, from the spacious flatness of the former to the latter's at once global and Chinese energy (the screen of the free tablet I got in my first hotel, above, with Google, Facebook and Youtube as well as WeChat and Weibo happy together, is a vision of a both/and as yet unattainable in Shanghai). I'm sorry I won't be able to return to Hong Kong during my Chinese stay (that single-entry visa!) but I'm certain I will be back. I'll also be seeing a few of the people I met in Hong Kong when they swing by Shanghai in the Spring... And among Hong Kong's other gifts were many new connections for me to follow up in Shanghai!

Ending

The end of my stay in Hong Kong coincided with the end of the Occupy Central movement. I joined crowds of restless people at Admiralty

watching the clearing of the site late this afternoon. The protesters had cleared most of their things away, a few were sitting nearby, silent,

as police cleanup did its work. I remembered what I saw when I went to the encampment - a veritable town - a week ago Wednesday night:

 

Arrive without traveling

So my only really real talk this term (the other three have all been class visits of one form or another) went well, I think, despite its silly name -

 

a day ago I wasn't sure it would all come together. Here are some highlights, with some of what my friend G calls my "very Zen" powerpoint slides, but have a listen first to this. The Beatles' "The Innner Light" - B-side to "Lady Madonna"! It sounds Indian, but the text is straight from (a translation of) the Daodejing [Tao Te Ching]. I found out about it from the anthology which was the focus of my talk, the just-appeared Norton Anthology of World Religion, large chunks of

which my research assistant at Lang copied and sent me. As you'll perhaps recall, one noteworthy feature of this massive 4000-page reference work is the displacement of Confucianism by Daoism as the "world religion" from China. What were they thinking? I used this as pretext to describe the book's approach in general, and to Daoism in particular - both of which turned out to be pretty interesting. Here are three antecedents claimed by the main editor, Jack Miles, in his history of comparative religion (in the West). The significance of Bernard and

Picart's Ceremonies and religious customs of all the peoples of the world and of the Parliament of the World's Religions is clear. What Miles calls the "Renaissance Rehearsal of Comparative Religion" is more idiosyncratic. It grounds the literary endeavor of the anthology as a whole (primary texts valuable for religious as well as literary reasons, and for readers with literary as well as religious interests), including the idea that religion can inspire even if we think it fiction. It also prefigures the rationale for canonizing "Daoism, lost and found."

I didn't say much about the Daoism section itself, all 760 pages of which I cannot say I read (or even tried). I was more interested in the rather shabby way in which Confucianism was despatched in Miles' Preface (its texts are already available in English, the Chinese state doesn't list it as a religion, and we don't want to enter the debate if Confucianism is a religion), the sense of adventure in sharing elements of the Daoist Canon that had almost completely vanished - and the interesting selections for the last century (including the Beatles song).

I'll spare you the section on problems with the categories of "religion" and "world religions," though I sense that this material was new for the UHK audience. I said I was unhappy that "world religions" keeps its hold in works like the Norton Anthology, in the process making interreligious hybridity and interaction seem late and difficult rather than constitutive elements in the history of most religion; but I was hopeful that the anthology's impressive scope would show religions to be the wild woolly things they are. My speculative concluding section was the most fun:

 

What might the apotheosis of Daoism portend? Supposing the Norton Anthology to succeed in its effort to establish a canon for religious studies, I suggested six possible results: more people studying Daoism; more Western folks taking up Daoist practices; the development of new ways of being Daoist in traditionally Daoist lands, partly in conversation with the western Daoists (I suggested several analogies with the unfolding of "Buddhist modernism"); further complications for Confucianism; the appearance of Daoist ideas in broader discussions of power, change, politics, etc.; and finally "a Daoist theory of religion." No idea what that would be, but I'm interested to find out!

All in all I think I did pretty well talking about Daoism (which I don't pretend to understand) and the new Norton Anthology (most of which I haven't read). I mean, the ensuing discussion was good! I take comfort in the words of The Beatles' George Harrison (really Daodejing ch 47):

(This last was not one of the slides for my talk: made just for the blog!)

Today!

Abstract sculptures

This was the final slide of my presentation for what turned out to be the final session of the Theory of Religion class at Chinese University of Hong Kong this evening. (Actually, classes ended last month, but these dedicated students keep showing up for extra sessions.) This was my chance to use the religious studies clip from "The Simpsons," which I used it also as a visual frame for the talk - Flanders (in claymation as it's also a tribute to "Davey and Goliath") imagines a future in which he's married Edna Crabapple and his son Todd is graduating from college...

NED: Wait a minute ... liberal professors ... feminist workshops ...  abstract sculptures ... This isn't a Midwest Bible College, this is an elite East Coast University! [expression of shock] 

TODD: It's okay Daddy, I majored in religious studies ... comparative religious studies. [expression of shock and horror - see above!]

I used the three abstract sculptures as my graphics, one for each of the three short sections of my talk, which canvased reasons people give for doing religious studies. The blue balls accompanied "Transcendence views" - those which see religous studies as the necessary complement to secular disciplines as well as theological/buddhological/etc work. The turquoise blob accompanied "Compensatory views" - those which see religious studies as making up for blind spots in other disciplines. The red thing at center got to accompany my own view, "No consensus on the real" -  in which (as you've heard me say before many times) religious studies is the discipline which challenges the universality/ neutrality of other disciplines as well as theologies/etc.

The talk was fun to put together, but the discussion afterwards was really impressive. Students asked remarkably sophisticated questions, ranging from the scholarly to the personal by way of the professional, and I gave rambling anecdote-ful answers to each. Is religion not a form of organizated schizophrenia? How can you tell if someone's commitment is genuine, and not just in it for some benefit? Is it possible to belong to two religions at once? Can religion be defined? What happens to religious practices when they are commodified as technologies? Does the awareness of the plurality of religions lessen the power a religion can have in a member's life? Is there really conflict between religions? What can you do with a degree in religious studies?

Did I actually answer the questions? In my roundabout way. You try!

Cotai

Today my friend G (visiting Hong Kong from Adelaide, but we met in NY) popped over to see Macau. We strolled through the UNESCOfied historic center (above is a detail of little Santas celebrating 15 years since reunion with China) but also went to Cotai, the island where the biggest new casinos are. And are they big! Venice Macau, for instance, has not one but four meandering canal shopping zones (all above street level). This Koonsian polar bear stranded in one of them captured our feeling...

Macau!

Explored the old center of Macau today, charming in Graham Greenian ways. This little peninsula had its finger on the pulse of history for half a century, a long time ago. All the wealth of trade between China and Japan, the Indies and the West, flowed through it; Matteo Ricci began his relationship with China here. And then history moved on. But the place stayed, Portuguese and Cantonese speaking, Portuguese Catholic and part of the shambolic Portuguese empire. I'm not sure at what point it became one of those shadowy places where smugglers and gamblers hung out, but that was so much its character that Portual apparently had to wait years before the PRC would take it back. Now it's casino central, awash with the gold of China's new rich (though anti-corruption campaigns have apparently reduced the number of government officials dramatically) and a historical theme park, too. What does it all mean to the people who live here, to visitors from the rest of China?

 

I'll say Aomen to that!

For the weekend I'm in another SAR, Macau, just across the Pearl River delta from Hong Kong but a different world! Enormous casinos flashing above a still Portuguese-seeming old city. My hovercraft-ferry from Hong Kong arrived at 5; got to my hotel just as night was falling. The center (where

I'm staying) is kitted out for Christmas, and it all feels remarkably European. Arcades line the main streets, and pavements and squares are tiled in white and black marble mosaics - just like Lisboa! (I got lost, too, as one does in old ungridded cities.) Can't wait to see how it all looks in the daytime...

Lamma

Today was wintry and cold but at least it didn't rain - good enought for an outing to Lamma Island, an amazing ferry ride to Hong Kong's south.