Mazu Temple, Pescadores Islands, Taiwan

BBC reports on China's 300 million faithful:

The number of religious believers in China could be three times higher than official estimates, according to a survey reported by state media.

A poll of 4,500 people by Shanghai university professors found 31.4% of people above the age of 16 considered themselves as religious.

Religion is one of those things that fascinate me, so I'm keenly interested in what this survey means. What does "considered themselves as religious" mean?

The survey found that Buddhism, Taoism, Catholicism, Christianity and Islam are the country's five major religions - China considers Catholicism as separate to Christianity, which covers Protestantism.

About 200 million believers "are Buddhists, Taoists or worshippers of legendary figures such as the Dragon King and God of Fortune", the China Daily reported.

The survey also found a significant rise in Christianity - accounting for 12% of all believers, or 40 million, compared with the official figure of 16 million in 2005.

OK, so the number of Protestant Christians is rising, and there are enough Catholics (kinda sorta, as mentioned here previously) to cause Pope Benedict to pay attention, and there are enough Muslims to affect Year of Pig advertising. (And the religious population in general is trending younger and younger)

But most of the religious folks are Buddhists, Taoists and "worshippers of legendary figures such as the Dragon King and God of Fortune."

What does THAT mean?

Looky, looky, findy: Here's an interesting pdf of an academic paper describing how religion works in (more or less) contemporary China. There's a strange interface between government and economic concerns and faith -- with a useful fuzzy area between what's a genuine religious observance and what's a spectacle played out to attract tourists or serve as a kind of "living museum."

Popular
religion persists, largely unchecked by the state, because local leaders are able to “re-invent” these beliefs and rituals as cultural relics and tourist attractions.

Reminds me of Westminster Abbey in London, actually.

Of course, my favorite kinds of religious observances are the ones that plunge right into ambiguity and make their home there.

Like these:

Daniel L. Overmyer notes that it is not uncommon for large placards of Mao to lead popular religious processions, be hung in newly built ancestral temples, or placed in traditional altars
found within the home. In the same way, anthropologist Emily Chao writes of one Naxi shaman who evokes the spirits of Chairman Mao, Zhou Enlai, and Deng Xiaoping to heal followers and help drive away ghosts.

I'm betting at least a few of those however-many-million "worshippers of legendary figures" fall right into this zone of strangeness.

Anyway, the paper really gets going around page 13, when the author starts describing "the cult of Mazu," a supernatural protector of fishermen and sailors.

Check it out.

There's more on Mazu (or Matsu) here, at wikipedia -- note that she's described there as a "Taoist goddess," despite being, well, not exactly that.