"Quanzhen Daoism in Modern Chinese Society and Culture: An International Symposium: 全真道與近現代中國社會和文化: 國際學術研討會"

    As a very influential and distinct Chinese religious institution in both late imperial and modern China, Quanzhen Daoism has long attracted scholarly and public interest. However, the scholarship on the subject has dealt primarily with the early formative period of Quanzhen Daoism in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and concerned mainly with its doctrinal teachings, self-cultivation techniques, and other internal issues of the religious sect.

    Recently, scholars of modern China and Daoism have begun to focus on the Quanzhen Daoism’s close ties with and influences on modern Chinese society and culture for the past several centuries. Adopting new interpretative frameworks and strategies of social and cultural history, anthropology, and sociology, and using fresh data culled from archives, local and temple gazetteers, newly discovered epigraphic materials, literary writings, art works, and contemporary fieldwork, scholars in the field of Daoist studies and modern China have in the last decade or so produced a rich body of new research and writings focused on both the tradition and transformation of Quanzhen Daoism in modern Chinese society and culture.  

    It is our shared belief that these recent scholarly works are not only representative of the new directions and approaches to the studies of Quanzhen Daoism, but they are also closely engaged with the most debated issues of religious studies, social history, and anthropological studies of modern China. For that reason, we are convinced that a small symposium involving the major scholars from the field will be best venue to showcase and consolidate the recent innovative research and writings, and further contribute to the field of modern Daoism and modern Chinese studies at large through close and intensive intellectual exchange and discussions among the leading scholars in the field.

Friday, November 2, 2007
9:00 a.m.               Welcome

9:30 a.m.               Panel 1:  Quanzhen Identities
    This panel deals with the construction of a distinct Quanzhen identity, in various contexts: the monastic culture, the Quanzhen practices among the laity, and the contemporary scholarly milieu, and literary and popular imagination.  In all these cases, we ask what makes Quanzhen unique and specific, and examine what elements of Quanzhen tradition have been chosen and invested with particular significance by those people who claim a Quanzhen identity for themselves.  We would also like to address to the social discourse on Quanzhen, and seek to understand how non-Quanzhen people represented Quanzhen and thought about it.
Vincent Goossaert, CNRS/GSRL, Chinese University of Hong Kong           “Quanzhen’s Place in Chinese Urban Religious Life, 1850-1950”
Zhang Guangbao, Institute of History, CASS, Beijing
        “On Quanzhen Studies in China Since the Early Republican Period 民国以来中国大陆全真教研究评述 "
Monica Esposito, Institute of Research for Humanistic Studies, Kyoto University
        “Daozang jiyao and Quanzhen Identity during the Qing"
Lai Chi-tim, Centre for Daoist Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong
       “An Overview of Cantonese Quanzhen”
Discussants:
Raoul Birnbaum, History of Art and Visual Culture, UC Santa Cruz
Terry Kleeman, Religious Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder

12:00 p.m.              Lunch

2:00 p.m.               Panel 2:  Quanzhen Material Culture, Production and Transmission
  This panel examines the material productions and propaganda of the Quanzhen, such as texts and works of art as well as event-productions (rituals, festivals), all considered as means by which the Quanzhen identity and teachings reach out to society at large.   We are most of all interested in both the modes of production (who writes/ paints/ performs; in what media; for what audience) and the social and political contexts of such production.  We would like to reach a balanced view of the Quanzhen specific contribution in the larger picture of late imperial and modern circulation of religious products such as self-cultivation manuals, morality books, religious art, temples cults and festivals, etc.
Vincent Durand-Dastes, Classical Chinese Literature, INALCO, Paris
        “Quanzhen Masters and Ming-Qing Vernacular Hagiographical Novels”
Mei Li, Historical Geography, Central China Normal University
       “The Revival of the Longmen Lineage and the Temple Constructions on Mount Wudang during the Qing 清代武当山龙门派的中兴与宫观建设 ”
Stephen Eskildsen, Philosophy and Religion, University of Tennessee
        “Late Qing and Early Republican Textual Transmission of Quanzhen Inner Alchemic Texts: the Cases of Dacheng jieyao 大成捷要 and Xingming fajue mingzhi 性命法訣明指”
Wu Yakui, Independent Scholar
       “Quanzhen Daoist Altars in Late Qing and Early Republican China: The Case of Jueyun Altar in Shanghai 论清末民初的全真道“坛”：以海上觉云为中心 ”
Discussants:
Philip Clart, East Asian Religions, University of Missouri, Columbus
Eugene Cooper, Anthropology, University of Southern California

4:30 p.m.               Tea break

5:00 p.m.   Special Visual Presentation                                        Thomas H. Hahn, Asian Studies, Cornell
        “Capturing the Tao with a Camera? Don't Be Ridiculous, Dear!”

Saturday, November 3, 2007
9:30 a.m.               Panel 3: Quanzhen Daoism, Local Society, and Religious Culture
    This panel looks at how the Quanzhen institution fitted in the larger late imperial and modern Chinese religious culture and local society; it examines the particular niche that Quanzhen Daoism occupied in terms of patronage and audience, and how it competed or cooperated with other religious institutions (other Daoists, Buddhists, local cults and specialists, etc.).  Special attention will be paid to the multiformity of Quanzhen, that is, the many local variations and different adaptations of the Quanzhen institutions to local religious and social contexts.
Guo Wu, Religious Studies Institute, Sichuan University
        “Quanzhen Daoist Development and the Regional Culture in Southwestern China in Modern Times 近现代西南地区全真道的发展及其与地方文化之关系"
Wang Gang, African & Asian Languages and Literature, University of Florida, Gainesville
        “A Local Longmen Lineage in Late Ming-Early Qing Yunnan”
Mori Yuria, Faculty of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, Waseda University
       “Yan Yonghe and the Quanzhen Daoism in Sichuan in Qing China”
Fan Guangchun, Center for Taoist Studies, Shaanxi Academy of Social Sciences
       “Quanzhen Daoism on White Cloud Mount in Contemporary Shaanxi”
Discussants:
David Johnson, History, UC Berkeley
Paul Katz, Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica

12:00 p.m.              Lunch

1:30 p.m.               Panel 4: Quanzhen Daoism, the State, Secularization, and Modernity
    This panel explores the processes of transformation through which Quanzhen  institutions and practitioners continuously adapted to changing socio-political contexts throughout China’s late imperial, modern and contemporary periods.  The Quanzhen tradition, far from conservative and insulated from social change, did actively adapt and reinvent itself during the early Qing to regain control and autonomy of many Daoist sacred places, and become a privileged actor in Chinese society and state politics.  It also adapted to the changing social and political conditions of the expanding state during the late imperial and early Republican periods by creating a Daoism fitted for the new nation-state.  It is now reasserting itself since the 1980s for a new and vigorous revival amidst contemporary China’s increasingly market economy and social change.  All of these changes deserve to be examined as fragments of one continuous history of Quanzhen adapting to its context.
Liu Xun, History, History, Rutgers University
        “Quanzhen Expands Learning 全真廣學: the Xuanmiao Monastery and the Local Modern Education and Other Reforms in Late Qing and Early Republican Nanyang”
Fang Ling, Institute of Advanced Chinese Studies, College de France, Paris
        “Medicine, Healing and the Revival of the Quanzhen Fuxing guan on Yuhuangshan, Hangzhou”
Kang Xiaofei, Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University
        “Struggles in Paradise on Earth:  Quanzhen Daoists and ‘Cultural Tourism’ at China’s Ethnic Borderland”
David Palmer, Cultural and Religious Studies, ÉFEO, Chinese University of Hong Kong
       “Globalization and the Quanzhen Daoists”
Discussants:
Richard Madsen, Sociology, UC San Diego
Susan Naquin, History and East Asian Studies, Princeton

4:00 p.m.               Tea break

4:30 p.m.               Special Session: Current research projects by participants

5:30 p.m.               Conclusions, discussion of publication