Gina Elia

Religious Studies

The Non-Believing Christian: Defining Religion in Xu Dishan’sYuguan

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A primary concern of religious studies scholarship is

naturally to determine how, exactly, to define “religion.” One

classic definition of the term that remains in wide use in

anthropological and religious studies circles today is that of

Clifford Geertz, which explains that it is “1) a system of

symbols which acts to (2) establish powerful, pervasive, and

long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (3) formulating

conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing

these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the

moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic” (qtd. in Verboom).

Of course, this is not the only formal definition—many others

abound. No matter how one defines “religion,” though, one problem

with this effort is that the available definitions with which

scholars work stem from other scholars, rather than from

practitioners of religion. It certainly would be fruitful to

consult those who actually practice religion to ask them how they

would define what they do and believe in their spiritual lives.

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Leonard Primiano articulates this concern, calling for a new

model of religious scholarship that moves away from using as its

central object of study the idealized forms of religion

represented in the major texts of various faiths. Claiming that

all religion is in practice vernacular, rather than ideal,

meaning that no individual on earth exactly lives his or her

religion of choice as it is preached in relevant texts, he argues

that religious studies scholars should concern themselves more

with how religion is practiced in the daily life of individuals

(37-44).

To address this concern, it may be of benefit to turn to

literary representations of religious laypeople. One such effort

is the novella Yuguan [玉玉] (1939), translated as Yü-Kuan, written by

Chinese author Xu Dishan (1893-1941). Xu Dishan’s longest work,

and arguably the masterpiece of his writing career, “Yuguan” is

basically the story of the title character’s life, although it is

framed by her ongoing religious indecision. Though Xu Dishan was

himself a scholar of Religious Studies, he had personal

experience growing up among Christian converts in the Chinese

province of Fujian, a period in his life from which it is likely

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that Yuguan draws (Robinson 183-184). In any case, his story is a

sincere attempt to recreate the inner life of a religious

layperson. Therefore, a close analysis of the trajectory of

Yuguan’s religious struggles will shed light on how she might,

were she asked, define “religion.”

The story begins in the province of Fujian, where Yuguan

lives. Her husband has just died in the Sino-Japanese War in the

late nineteenth century. Left alone with her young son, she

becomes preoccupied with doing what she can to insure that he

will become successful and, consequently, will be able to pay

proper respect to her as his mother and as a noble widow. She

takes advantage of a good job offer from the local Christian

missionary church that includes free tuition for her son at the

local missionary school as one of its benefits. Though she

converts to Christianity as required, and even in time becomes an

enthusiastic promulgator of the faith, she remains unconvinced of

the religion’s doctrine in her heart and tells herself that she

is only keeping the job so that her son can make something of

himself and, eventually, honor her with some kind of material

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testament such as a widow’s arch.1 It is only late in life, after

many trials and tribulations, that Yuguan realizes that every

decision she has made up until that point has been due to her

selfish desire for her son to grow successful and honor her. She

resolves to truly live what she preaches, and from that moment

on, her life substantially improves. Her modest, generous, and

selfless lifestyle makes her so admired by the local townspeople

that they build a bridge in her name, though by this point she

has discovered a higher purpose in life and could care less about

such material rewards (Hsü 51-87).

The only substantial analysis of the novella in English, by

Lewis Robinson, portrays the story as emblematic of Xu Dishan’s

own conversion to Christianity. In Robinson’s view, Yuguan’s

inner transformation throughout the course of the story models

the transition from a Christian who is only by outward

appearances religious to one who truly believes and lives the

faith. Robinson suggests that of the entire generation of

1 In China, proper widows were expected to remain chaste until death after their husbands had departed. Widow’s arches, which were a variant of an architectural gate style known as “paifeng,” were sometimes erected to commemmorate specific widows who had followed this dictum (“Ancient Arches (Paifeng)”)

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Republican-era authors, Xu Dishan alone understood Christianity

enough to discern superficial adherence from true, faith-filled

practice. In this way, he claims that “Yuguan” is really a

Christian apology of sorts, a story written to demonstrate the

power of true Christianity, as opposed to that practiced by

frauds who claim to be Christians, but do not practice the

teachings of Jesus in their everyday lives (183-201).

First of all, it is unclear whether or not Xu Dishan was

Christian in the orthodox sense that Robinson presumed, which

makes the author’s entire argument read like it is an attempt to

justify this assumption. A scholar writing more recently, Nathan

Faries, remarks, “Xu Dishan…is often described as combining

Buddhism, Daoism, and Christianity in his stories and as himself

having followed all three schools simultaneously” (193). There

are many other reasons besides this, however, that cause

Robinson’s explanation of the story as an apology of the

Christian faith to fall short. That is to say, the message of Xu

Dishan’s story involves a certain kind of morality, but not

conventional Christian morality, as Robinson’s analysis tries to

affirm. Yuguan’s self-actualization is a deeply personal process

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that stems from within, not from the persuasion of any one

external ideology. This is proven by the fact that, first of all,

Yuguan does not accept Christianity at the expense of other

faiths, but rather engages with several belief systems in the

course of her life journey, often at the same time. Secondly,

Christianity is by no means portrayed in a glorified light, but

rather with its flaws as well as its strengths highlighted.

Third, all ideologies depicted in the novella, no matter whether

religious or political, seem incredibly distant and disconnected

from the lives of the commoners they are supposed to represent,

such as Yuguan. It is unlikely, then, that any meaningful inner

transformation could have stemmed from them. Xu Dishan’s novella

is thus a demonstration of a character using various religious

ideologies in order to come to a self-actualization that is at

its core highly individuated, unique to Yuguan’s own particular

set of beliefs and experiences. She finds some Christian precepts

to be helpful guidelines in this goal, but ultimately creates a

composite faith, demonstrating her agency by crafting her own

guidelines for living her life.

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Christianity cannot be the sole reason behind Yuguan’s

transformation at the end of the story, first and foremost

because it is frequently brought into question and combined with

other religious traditions that make up for its perceived

shortcomings. After Yuguan converts to Christianity the first

time, in name only, she continues to worry about whether

misfortunes that befall her are due to the fact that she has not

been active in sweeping the graves of her in-laws, an aspect of

traditional Chinese belief. (Hsü 59). This fear demonstrates that

her exposure to Christianity, contrary to what she preaches in

her day job, has not affected her own spiritual traditions.

She also continues to worship her ancestral tablets. After

she takes on her job at the church, the narrative explains:

While nobody knew when and where she had moved the

family shrine in the living room, it was almost certain that

she had wrapped up her ancestral tablets and put them in a

bag and hung them somewhere under the beams of the bedroom.

The door to that room was often closed, as if it were a

sacred place. She would not destroy the ancestral tablets,

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because she believed that it would be sacrilegious to do so,

and it would also bring bad luck to her son (58).

In this passage, the ancestral tablets are treated with reverence

never accorded to Christianity in the story. Yuguan keeps the

door to her bedroom where she stores them closed, treating it as

a “sacred” place, which is evidence of her esteem for the

tablets. These are also the only religious objects in the story

that she ever expresses fear of destroying because such an act

would be “sacrilegious.” Thus, Yuguan’s belief in her ancestral

tablets is much deeper than that in Christianity. She never

doubts them the way that, many times in the course of her life,

she questions the teachings of the Christian church that it is

nevertheless her job to teach to others. These doubts are always

left unanswered in the narrative, the effect of which is to leave

the questions hovering in the background of the story, an ever-

present shadow to haunt the reader’s perception of Christianity

as it must haunt Yuguan’s as well. As for the ancestral tablets,

while it is true that they are not mentioned again in the short

portion of the story that remains after Yuguan’s decision to lead

a true missionary lifestyle, they are never explicitly decried,

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either. The last mention of Yuguan using them occurs fairly late

in her life, when she prays over them at her son’s second wedding

(82).

A key scene that demonstrates the shortcomings of

Christianity occurs when Yuguan spends the night in a house that

she believes is haunted by ghosts. As she sleeps that night, she

prays the psalms over the Romanized Fujianese Bible she always

carries with her, but nevertheless remains quite afraid of the

sounds and atmosphere that surround her. The following day, she

determines that a Christian Bible probably would not be of much

use in defending her against Chinese ghosts, since they would be

unlikely to be afraid of it. She therefore determines to also

carry with her a copy of the Yijing, though she cannot decipher it.

From that point on, she never fears potential ghosts that may be

lurking again, thinking herself totally protected by the

combination of the Bible and the Yijing (60-61)

This instance reveals that Christianity is by no means an

infallible or all-powerful force in Yuguan’s life. Because it

remains in her mind unequivocally foreign, she cannot accept the

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premise of the Christians that their faith is in fact universally

applicable. Instead, she assumes that its reach extends only so

far as the culture in which it was created, and that the ghosts

of her traditional beliefs would thus be unmoved by the presence

of a Bible or any other Christian artifact. Although this

instance occurs early in the story when Yuguan is still a

Christian in appearance only, Xu Dishan explicitly writes that,

even after her supposed true conversion in her old age, she never

ceases to carry the Yijing as well as the Bible along with her

(87). She thus still clearly continues to believe in the ghosts

of her old traditions, as well as in the idea that the Bible does

not have the power to protect against spirits that are not a part

of the religious system to which it belongs. This detail

highlights the fact that her conversion is not exactly a

conversion to orthodox Christianity, which would preclude her

from rendering the Yijing as a sacred text akin to the Bible.

In addition to the shortcomings of the doctrinal aspects of

Christianity, Xu Dishan’s story also manages in an aside to point

out the corruption of Christian missionaries, proving that the

promulgators of the faith themselves are not above the pettiness

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they preach against. When she encounters her brother-in-law for

the first time in many years, she asks him about what he has done

in the time since she last saw him, as might be expected:

Yü-Kuan asked if he was married and had any children. Mu-

ning shook his head

and said no; but then he corrected himself, saying that he had

married when he was in

Honan…[the bride’s] father, Mu-ning said, had been a peasant

who owed the local Catholic

church some money which, with the interest, was too much for

him ever to return, even

if he were to sell all the twenty-odd acres of his land. The

usurer was a ‘philanthropic’

Catholic priest, who said that he would relieve the peasant of

his debt if he and his entire

family joined the Catholic Church…he felt that [Catholicism]

was a flat lie…the more he

thought, the more suspicious he became…why would the priest

set him free of his debt of

several hundred dollars for nothing? …He decided that it was

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far better to sell his

daughter to pay his debt (79).

This anecdote conveys the unfortunate corruption of a particular

missionary, who ran a farmer into extreme debt in order to try to

coerce him into joining the church. The existence of such a

character demonstrates that the supposed adherents of

Christianity are not necessarily more immune from sin and

corruption than anybody else. The choice to frame the word

“philanthropic” in quotation marks explicitly marks the hypocrisy

of this priest’s actions. This acknowledgement thus deprives

Christianity of any sense of otherworldliness and infallibility,

lowering it to the level of any other ideology—a great

descrepancy exists between what is preached and what is

practiced.

While narrating the above story, Mu-ning further says about

his father-in-law, after he tried to convert, that “…he could not

remember the words of the Lord’s Prayer and often confused it

with the Taoist Sun Sutra. For this he was once scolded by the

priest. But to the end he never understood why the Sun Sutra

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could not be recited” (79). The farmer does not understand the

idea of religious exclusivity, and cannot imagine why a certain

religious text he happens to be familiar with cannot be used in

this religious context. While Yuguan herself does not admit to

this particular religious conflation, she does nothing to refute

the statement. The farmer’s words thus reinforce the idea that

Christianity seems not totally effecitve, or at least somehow

incomplete, without the addition of other religious traditions

into its practice.

Besides the fact that Christianity is portrayed as

imperfect, irrational, and corruptible, and often is used by

characters in combination with other traditions for greater

effect, the other proof that it is not responsible for Yuguan’s

transformation stems from how it is positioned in relation to her

and her fellow villagers. In a sense, the narration of Yuguan’s

life is not only the story of an individual, but the story of an

individual in tension with various wider movements that claim to

be for her benefit, but which fail to directly move her in any

way. Throughout the story, Yuguan cycles through many different

ideologies that extend far beyond the reach of her personal life,

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and which claim to exist for the benefit and edification of her,

the commoner: the traditional ancestral worship she practices

from the beginning of the story, the Christian church she

converts to in name only and works for in order to provide a

future for her son, the political movements of the Communists

that occur mid-way through the story and separate her from her

family for some time, and even the cosmopolitanism and

Westernization reflected by her son and his second wife, who at

the end of the story have returned from living for many years in

the United States. Yuguan rarely seems affected or expresses any

kind of emotional investment in any of these movements and

ideologies. Their relevancy and importance is lost on her. 2

One small example to demonstrate this point is that,

although Yuguan carries the Yijing around with her, she finds it

totally indecipherable, unlike her romanized Fujianese Bible

(61). This is likely because the Yijing is written in Classical

Chinese, a language of the literati that an uneducated, nearly

2 If there is any exception, it is the displeasure Yuguan displays at her son’s and second daughter-in-law’s blatant disregard for Chinese traditions and their embrace of a Western lifestyle, which Yuguan is unaccustomed to and finds extremely distasteful. As displayed above, she also expresses a reverence for her ancestral tablets that she does not seem to possess for any other ideology, including Christianity.

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illiterate villager like Yuguan would not have the least idea of

how to read. Her reliance on the Yijing is thus based on some kind

of superstious belief, not grounded in her understanding of the

text itself. Even ideological items that are created within her

own culture, therefore, are intended for audiences so far removed

from Yuguan that any understanding of their deeper significance

is impossible for her.

Thus ignorant of ideologies and philosophies, Yuguan manages

to stay happily and unabashedly neutral in all political and

religious conflicts. At one point, she even reveals that all of

these movements are more-or-less equatable in her mind. She is

captured by Communists and paraded through the streets wearing a

dunce cap and a sign with a picture of the Christian cross and

the words “The Lackey of Imperialism.” The narrative explains of

the sign simply, “‘The Lackey of Imperialism’ was the catchword

of another kind of religion of whose significance Yü-Kuan was

ignorant” (76). Yuguan has ironically categorized Communism as a

“religion,” indicating that to her, it is equatable with

Christianity, Daoism, and so on. Her categorization reveals that

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she understands little about the movement that is condemning her,

and in doing so demonstrates her indifference to its criticism.

The narrative then continues, “While she was being paraded

in the streets, she kept thinking that she was actually innocent,

even though her religion was being insulted. Thus thinking, she

was able to immerse herself in her own thoughts, and could not

have cared less about the people who swarmed around her and

insulted her” (76-77). At the same time that she is indifferent

to the Communists, she also could care less about the fact that

her religion is being insulted, revealing what little fervor she

actually has for Christianity—it is a system of belief she

subscribes to mostly for convenience. Immersing herself in her

own thoughts about her future enables her to practically forget

about the situation she is embroiled in, which might humiliate

her if she cared more about the significance of the ideologies

involved. This incident thus amply demonstrates how distant and

far-away political and religious movements are to villagers like

Yuguan, to the extent that they are all classified as being of

the same type of belief system, “religion.” In labelling the

Communist movement a “religion,” she does not elevate the status

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of that movement, which is depicted as essentially a mass

pillaging of her village, but rather lowers the status of

Christianity. This faith is no different from any other

ideological movement; they all consist of imperfect, corruptible

people who hold certain viewpoints of which they try to convince

others. Only the sacred tablets of her traditional belief ever

have anything like sacred or otherworldly significance to her.

The irony of this is that, while these movements are intended

to “transform society,” they never actually seem to penetrate

Yuguan’s personal feelings and beliefs. Throughout all of the

changes in her life, she remains firmly invested only in the

pragmatic concerns that directly affect her and her son. While

she is being paraded around by the Communists, for example, it is

her future comfortable retirement under her successful son’s roof

that she is dreaming of (61). Thus, her life remains grounded in

pragmatic circumstances of everyday living, while various

ideologies wash over her, but leave her uncommitted to any of

them.

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Near the beginning of the story, when she first converts to

Christianity, she quickly reveals her many issues with the

doctrine of the Church:

Sometimes when she had some problems with Christian

doctrine, she did not dare bring them up with the foreign

missionaries; when she did ask, she was not satisfied with

their answers. She thought to herself, since the church was

trying to teach people to do good and to lead them to the

right path, who cared whether what one believed in was a son

born of a virgin or a goblin who popped out of a crack in a

rock? (58).

At this early stage of Yuguan’s engagement with Christianity, it

is clear that she finds little to admire or believe in the

otherworldly, spiritual doctrines of the faith. She describes a

central sacred belief of Christians, the rising of Jesus from the

dead, superstitiously and disrespectfully with the reductive

expression “…a goblin who popped out of a crack in a rock,”

demonstrating her distaste for and lack of conviction in the

idea. However, even at this early stage of her life, when she is

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mostly self-absorbed, she is attracted to the good deeds and work

of the Church, which she uses to justify her continued

promulgation of and association with it. Even toward the end of

the novella, though, when she realizes the error of her ways and

decides to lead a selfless and pious life until the end of her

days, Christianity is never mentioned explicitly as a motive in

this choice:

While her daughter-in-law was out, house-hunting day

after day, Yü-kuan spent

most of the time in her room doing nothing. She began to

realize that everything that she

had done for her son since her husband’s death was actually

out of selfish motives.

Decades of missionary life could be summarized by the old

saying, ‘A chinaware dealer

who used broken bowls himself,’ because she herself had

never benefited from what she

had preached. When she thought about this, she got up from

her chair as if suddenly she

grasped some priceless truth. She began to realize that her

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brother-in-law’s words to her

when she first became a widow had been right. Her widowhood

was nothing but vanity;

her missionary work was close to hypocrisy; and her present

suffering was, in fact, a

natural outcome of her past deeds. She wanted to go back to

the country to start a genuine

missionary life. But first she must repent. She felt that

she should do at least one good

deed for someone (84).

It is clear from Yuguan’s discussion of returning to a

“genuine missionary life” that she is contemplating living a life

based on Christian ideals of modesty, selflessness, and piety.

However, other than the use of the word “missionary,” which is

the only way Yuguan knows to characterize the style of life she

has in mind, there are no explicit references to Christianity.

She is not lamenting her lack of belief in God, Heaven, Jesus,

the Immaculate Conception, the Holy Trinity, or any of the other

Christian doctrines that always troubled her. Rather, the

emphasis of her revelation is without a doubt on her actions, as

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emphasized by the admission that her suffering was due to her

past deeds, rather than past lack of belief. She concludes her

realization not with a desire to develop her relationship with

Christ or any other Christian spiritual entity, but rather with

the conviction that she should begin her new life by doing a good

deed for someone. Thus, the emphasis of Yuguan’s transformation

is on the need to live a moral, modest, and selfless life, rather

than to grow in more abstract areas of Christian spirituality. It

is important to note also that the origin of her revelation, the

voice she hearkens back to that leads her to this awakening, is

not that of God, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit, but that of an old

saying and her flesh-and-blood brother-in-law.

Christianity does not lead Yuguan to the realization that, to

be happy, she should lead a selfless life; she comes to this

through her own growth, trials, and tribulations. She pursues

“missionary” life finally because it is a way to label herself as

one who is selfless, modest, and pious. However, from her

revelation until the end of the story, there is no mention of her

Christian belief, other than the acknowledgement that she went to

church regularly and donated almost all of her money to it. This

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in itself emphasizes her good deeds, rather than any adherence to

Christianity’s more abstract principles. She makes use of the

worldly aspects of Christian doctrine to help her lead the life

that, on her own, she has come to perceive is most worth living,

but she is by no means an orthodox Christian—there is no evidence

in the text that the theological aspects of the faith ever come

to mean anything for her.

Thus, one aspect of Xu Dishan’s answer to the question of how

to define “religion” seems to be that behavior toward others is

valued over cosmological beliefs, which are hardly discussed in

the story and, when they are mentioned at all, are summarily

dismissed. A published memory of Xu Dishan explains that he

always seemed to be suspicious of the formal doctrines of

religions such as Christianity (Zhang 13-14). This lends credence

to the observation that formal doctrine and dogma are accorded

little respect or acknowledgement in his novella. Just the fact

that Yuguan is not a true adherent to any one religion alone is

enough to demonstrate the diminished importance in the novella of

theological belief. Xu Dishan’s story indicates, then, that one

can be religious without having to claim adherence to one

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religious tradition exclusively, and that one’s religion

seemingly has more to do with one’s actions, and the motivations

of those actions, than it does with one’s cosmological belief.

Yuguan is considered by her fellow villagers to be a model of the

religious life, but she herself exhibits a lifestyle that, while

peaceful, seems to make no grand claims about the nature of the

world, life beyond death, or anything of that nature.

Were Yuguan asked how to define “religion,” based on her life

story and experiences, she would likely respond that, while

Christianity and Communism are religions, what she does is

“religion,” too. That is to say, her “religion” is the personal

and individual process and evolution of a system of ethics. While

her personal spiritual exploration does not necessarily engage

with supernatural entities or higher powers, her own hybrid

religion of Christianity, ancestral worship, and the Yijing becomes

the center of her religious consciousness. As such, she would

likely be reluctant to classify her beliefs as anything else. Her

definition would thus cause Geertz to have to reform his

definition of “religion” to include instances in which religion

stems from within the self, rather than from society.

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To be clear, I am not arguing that Yuguan’s experience

portrays a “sui generis” mode of thinking about religion versus a

constructivist mode. Regardless of where the urge for religion

stems from, Yuguan’s experience rather reflects the essential

difference that exists between ideal formalized religion and

individual, “vernacular” religion. Yuguan’s personal experience,

symbolized in her hybrid belief system that finally leads her to

wisdom and happiness, is emblematic of this distinction between

religion as it is constructed ideally and religion as it is

actually practiced among people. Her story is a fable of the

power and agency individuals possess to work both within and

outside of the constraints of societal religious structures to

formulate their own individual beliefs. Xu Dishan’s novella,

then, far from being simply an apology of the Christian faith, is

a call for people to pursue their own individual paths of

religious self-actualization, rather than blindly obey the

dictums of one particular ideology. Furthermore, his own

insistence on this religious individuation, as well as his

character Yuguan’s example, demonstrate the imperative for

“religion” to be defined and studied in academic contexts no

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longer only in its ideal form, but also in its form as it is

actually practiced and believed in by individuals.

Works Cited

Primary

Hsü Ti-Shan. “Yü-kuan.” Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas 1919-1949. New

York:

Columbia University Press, 1981.

Secondary

“Ancient Arches (Paifeng).” Chinaculture.org. Ministry of Culture,

P.R. China, 2003. Web. 6

May 2014.

Faries, Nathan. The “Inscrutably Chinese” Church: How Narratives and

Nationalism Continue

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to Divide Christianity. Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto,

Plymouth, UK:

Lexington Books, 2010.

Primiano, Leonard. “Vernacular Religion and the Search for Method

in Religious Folklife.”

Western Folklore. 54.1. Jan. 1995. pp. 37-56.

Robinson, Lewis. Double-Edged Sword: Christianity & 20th Century Chinese Fiction.

Hong

Kong: Tao Fong Shan Ecumenical Centre, 1986.

Verboom, Guido. “Toward an Anthropological Definition of

Religion.” Mongoluls.net.

Mongolia Web News, 2002-2007. Web. 6 May 2014.

Zhang Zhuling. “Duiyu Xu Dishan Jiaoshou de yi ge Huiyi” [A

Memory of Professor Xu

Dishan]. Zhuidiao Xu Dishan Xiansheng Jinian Tekan [Volume of

Commemorating Xu Dishan]. Hong Kong: Guoji Shangye Yinwu

Gongsi, 1930.

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