The Center Holds: Divination, Traditional Medicine, and Magic in Contemporary Mainland China

Abstract

A great deal of material has been written about Chinese religion. Unfortunately, only a small fraction of this has covered the folk religion, and even less time has been spent on divination and magical practice. Operating from an engaged scholar methodology, this dissertation offers a partial remedy to this situation. Through both field study and textual research, it demonstrates that magic is an integral part of contemporary mainland Chinese life.

The fieldwork used relies on two sets of sources. The first is a series of interviews done in Beijing during the fall of 2014. Unfortunately, this approach proved more difficult than expected, due to political tensions. The second set of sources proved far more fruitful. Marrying into a Chinese family has led to an instruction in the daily ins-and-outs of contemporary Chinese culture, which includes a great deal of what we would call magical thinking. Because of my family situation, I have also been accepted by the Chinese diaspora community in Alamogordo, New Mexico, and have learned a great deal from them. Where textual sources are concerned, I have managed to find many in simplified Hanzi, along with a plethora of related scholarly material. I utilized reputable electronic sources for the primary documents, while also relying on less formal sources for ideas and general mythology. I have also done research using popular material available through various websites.

The research supports several significant findings. A substantial amount of source material, which I had originally assumed to be lost, is still available in electronic format. The common people in the People’s Republic of China are as religious and as inclined to magical thinking as ever. Approximately 85 percent of the people surveyed in 1995 identified as adherents of the traditional syncretic Chinese popular religion; both religious and magical practices are thriving, even in the face of official opposition. Due to the nature of the Chinese worldview, adoption of contemporary technology for divination, TCM diagnosis, and other magical matters, is also commonplace.