Chapter 50 Chinese religion

This article was originally written for foreigners, so it is very superficial, but I think that sometimes it should be as simple as an elementary textbook to clarify things. On the surface, Chinese people have no religion at all.The Chinese intellectual class has been atheist for many years.The influence of Buddhism on Chinese philosophy is another problem, but Buddhism seems to have left very little trace in the education of ordinary people.Just because of being suspicious of everything, there is a great sadness in Chinese literature.Only in the details of the material, it gets joy - therefore, carefully prepare the menu for the whole table, without getting tired, for no reason, just because it likes - the details are often beautiful and fascinating, and the theme is always pessimistic .All general observations of life point to nothingness.People from all over the world have similar feelings, but the Chinese are different in that this feeling of "emptiness of emptiness, everything is emptiness" is always like a new discovery, and it stays at this stage.One by one Chinese saw the flowers falling into the water, so they shed tears in the face of the wind, sighed at the moon, and felt that life was short, but they stopped here and didn't think about it.Perdition was inevitable, yet they were not discouraged, despairing, dissolute, greedy, licentious—for Europeans, that seemed the logical reaction.Like the Europeans in the Renaissance era, once they did not believe in eternal life after death, they would have fun and do evil, causing the world to turn upside down.

Educated Chinese people think that people live year after year, but they don't go anywhere; human beings go on from generation to generation, and they don't go anywhere.So what's the point of living?Whether meaningful or not, it is alive anyway.It doesn't really matter how we deal with ourselves, but we are happy to live a better life, so for our own enjoyment, it is better to obey the rules.Beyond that, a blank space is carefully left—not a white mist of mysterious possibilities, but an absolute stop of all thoughts, just like the severe blank in the upper part of a Chinese painting—an indispensable blank, Without it, the picture loses its balance.One of the rarest things in art as in life is knowing when to stop.The beauty of restraint is what the Chinese are most proud of.

Of course, the lower class cannot survive in this uninterested, thin air.Their religion is a combination of many disjointed little superstitions - astrology, fox ghosts, vegetarianism.Ancestor worship seems to be the only idea common to the superior and the inferior, and to the intellectual classes this is purely sentimental, filial piety to the dead, without any religious significance.Chinese wishful thinking But after careful study, we found that everyone has a common religious background.The only difference between scholars and fools is: scholars believe a little but are not willing to admit it; fools admit it but not quite believe it.Most of this vague psychological background is Buddhism and Taoism, mixed with the gods and monsters of the late Taoism, soaked in the minds of the Chinese for several years, and the result is very different from the original Buddhism.The superstitions of the lower classes are fragments taken out of this vast institution—the whole of which is seldom inspected, probably because it is too familiar.The superstitions of the lower classes are not superstitions since they are part of a systematic view of the universe.

Can this cosmology be considered a religion?Chinese peasants, the harder you question them, the less they dare to give an affirmative answer. At most they say: "Ghosts always exist, right? I don't think I've seen them before." As for the intellectuals, they say they don't believe it. In fact, they are not lying, but their thoughts and actions are secretly infected with the color of religious background, because whether they believe it or not, this is what they want to believe.Religion is mostly wishful thinking.Let us look at the wishes of the Chinese.Chinese hell The Chinese have a Taoist heaven and a Buddhist hell.After death, all souls will go to hell to be judged, so instead of the underground volcano according to Christianity, where only the wicked suffer in it, our hell is a relatively ventilated place. The "underworld" should always be dusk, but sometimes it looks like a very normal city. The focus of tourists' interest is the prison in the eighteenth floor cellar.It is common for people to leave their bodies and wander into hell, to meet relatives and friends who have passed away, and to lead them around for sightseeing.

There are many different legends about the shape of ghosts. Compared with the academic theory, it is said that ghosts are nothing more than breathless gas; based on this, it is concluded that it looks like a gray or black silhouette, which cannot withstand the wind. The progress of time gradually wears off, so "the new ghost is big, and the old ghost is small".But the ideal of the masses always tends to be photographic, so that ordinary ghosts always appear exactly like the dead. The policemen of the underworld arrest the souls of the dead, and the Supreme Court sits Hades, whose bureaucrats are selected from capable ghosts.Prisoners who had done great good deeds during their lifetime were immediately released and went up to the sky on the golden escalator.The sinners who remain in hell are punished in various ways according to the nature of their sins.For example, corrupt officials were forced to drink large quantities of copper solutions.reincarnation

Average people all go to reincarnate.The situation and fate of the next life will all depend on the conduct of the previous life.A good life lives in a rich family.If he is not flawless, he will be reborn into a rich family as a woman—women suffer much more than men.If he had no virtue in the past, he was reborn as an inferior human being, or a lower animal.The butcher turns into a pig.Those who owe their debts work as cattle and horses, and work for their creditors.Before leaving, the ghosts drank the ecstasy soup first, and then forgot their previous lives.They were driven on a huge toothed wheel, climbed to the top, looked down in horror, were poked in the back by the pawns, and fell—into the hands of the midwife.The theory of reincarnation is shared by all countries in the East, but nowhere is it as clearly and realistically conceived as it is in China.The child with the green marks on his buttocks must have been hesitant to jump down and was kicked off by the ghost soldiers.The mother placed the child, patted it, and asked: "Are you so unwilling to come?" Legal troubles

Sinners are punished, maybe in hell, maybe in the next life, maybe in this life—an unfilial son’s own son is unfilial, the wife who whips the girl has a festering skin disease on her back.Sometimes such retribution happens both on earth and in the underworld.A man visited hell and saw a lady he knew being flogged, and thought she must be dead; after returning from the sun, she was found alive, but with sores on her back. The legal formalities of arrest and trial are not always followed.There are many cases in which someone hurts someone and dies, and the court may cancel all the rituals and let the victim go and catch the prisoner himself.After being possessed by a ghost, the prisoner speaks in the voice of the deceased, reveals his own secret, and commits suicide.A more direct and quicker method than this is thunder from the sky, which is only applicable to the most heinous cases.Thor wrote the crime on the charred back of the prisoner. The specimen of "Raven" has been collected into a book and published in the world.

Since there is no certainty, the administration of the underworld can be explained by various conjectures.Therefore, the theory of karma in China is impeccable. It is easy to prove its existence, but absolutely cannot prove its non-existence. The ghosts of China are extremely clear, without any mystery.The laws of the underworld are exactly the same as those of the late Chinese civilization.Just because it is based on human nature, Yin Division sometimes does wrong things.Before the dead souls go to hell, they often have to go through the pre-trial of the local Town God's Temple.The Town God Temple is the local court of the underworld, and the city gods are often filled by dead officials (like Lin Daiyu's father, Lin Ruhai, who became the city god in "A Dream of Red Mansions"), and they have the possibility of accepting bribes.Although the Supreme Court in hell is more fair, it often checks the wrong account books, and a person is arrested before his lifespan.After many twists and turns, after finding out the mistake, he had to "borrow the dead body to return to life", because the original dead body was out of control.

Why are you so interested in coffins? You can reincarnate after death. It can be seen that the soul is independent from the body, and the body is only temporary. Therefore, Chinese theology is different from Egyptian theology and does not pay so much attention to the corpse.But why so much attention to the coffin?No matter how much trouble and expense there is, the coffins of those who die in foreign lands must be transported back thousands of miles to be buried in the tombs of their ancestors.Chinese coffins, the better the texture, the heavier they are.The original intention of making a coffin is for four to sixty-four or more people to carry it. Therefore, if the house where the coffin is stopped catches fire, the current problem will be very embarrassing and painful. The family members of the deceased have only one emergency method. Dig a hole in the ground, bury the coffin properly, and then run for your life.The general cemetery strives to be warm and dry. If the tomb is found to be damp, windy, and ants come out, the children and grandchildren will definitely feel uncomfortable.As a result, the study of Feng Shui has grown and multiplied, specializing in the study of the situation and environment of ancestral tombs on the fate of descendants.

The only explanation for the excessive concern about the remains of parents is that in China, the relationship of being a son of man has an abnormal development.The traditional Chinese fictitious filial piety is a great, all-swallowing passion; and since it is the only legitimate passion, its monstrous development is entirely out of proportion to the watered down calm on the other side.The model son cut off his stock and simmered soup to feed his sick parents in the way of a cannibal's ardent sacrifice.This type of behavior is usually only done by people who are madly in love.By analogy, it is also expected that they are concerned about the safety and comfort of their parents after death to a degree of nervousness.

The motive for customizing a coffin for oneself is not necessarily narcissism but practical considerations.The inhabitants of an agricultural society take it for granted that they store all the necessities of life.China's rich are often described as "the rice is rotten."In the past, in a more affluent era, shrouds and shroud materials were all necessary household items, and they would be useful one day. It is not entirely meaningless to spend every ounce on material things for the benefit of the dead, since the judged soul may have an unlimited delay before incarnation.There was a debate in the past about whether the ghosts of the transitional period should be placed on the tomb or the main card.The weaving of Chinese religion has many loose threads, which are sometimes spliced.For example, the theory of determinism and "what goes around" seems to be in conflict, but when a last-minute remedy is added later, there is no inconsistency between the two.The old man who was born childless, as a result of his good deeds, his concubine gave him twins; the dying man, his life span was extended by ten or twenty years, and the unreasonable schoolboy passed the exam... Such a death and a violent death The Chinese have various ideas about different kinds of death.A typical phrase in an obituary describes the ideal end: "Death."The cause of death was purely related to age, and he died in the main room, which shows that he was the head of the family, someone took care of him, and someone mourned.Although the Chinese pay attention to how to die, they are very casual in some places. The head of the coffin is engraved with a vivid and beautiful "Lu Bu Opera Diaochan", and the music team at the funeral played "Su San, don't cry". When the Chinese say that a person is dead, they say that he "died in the immortals" or "died in the west" (to India, the original place of Sakyamuni), and the coffin is also called "shouqi".With such an understatement and pleasant decoration, ordinary sick death is easier to accept, but violent death is still considered terrible.People who die badly have no chance of rebirth, and have to wait until someone else encounters the same misfortune to be his substitute.So the ghost, who was eager to reincarnate, did everything possible to lure people to commit suicide.Whoever is in a bad mood, the ghost discovers his possibility.If it had been hanged, it would have hung a circle before his eyes, and looking into the circle it looked like a lovely garden.When the person stretches his head in, the rope ring shrinks immediately.The same goes for death by accident.If a car crashes at a certain location, there will be other cars crashing there continuously in the future.Takahashi's swimming pool is notorious for drowning people every year.Ghosts seem to be governed by cruel instincts, like spiders and beasts.inhuman liar The Chinese associate the world of elves with lower beings.Fox fairies and flower demons and wood charms are all inferior to human beings and unwilling to settle down, delusional to surpass the stage of natural evolution and cultivate to a human body - the most enviable way of life is human beings, because it is the most complete.Ambitious animals and plants, dissatisfied with their own poverty and foolishness, are compelled to take desperate risks, and the only way to gain popularity is to steal.They transform into beautiful women and absorb the semen of men. The human world and the world of ghosts overlap and overlap, occupying the same space and time, forming a crowded universe.Bullying ghosts specialize in seducing unlucky people, those who are weak in body and spirit, but when they meet lucky people, upright people, and people with official titles, they always hide away.People live under extreme combined pressure-sanctions from the society plus sanctions from the underworld plus countless greedy and snobbish elves who are waiting for the opportunity to enter.However, a thinking person does not need to be afraid of demons, because they are a weaker, darker, and diluted way of existence.There are many stories about how the deceased husband pitifully prevented his wife from remarrying, crying around the sedan chair, and crying until dawn in the new house, but it was useless.At the same time, although the life of the gods is perfect in some respects, it is not as good as human life-it is relatively monotonous and limited.Taoist heaven Although there are Qionglouyuyu, Qihuayaocao, there is always a clean and blank feeling, which is close to "inaction", which is the only Taoist color in our Taoist paradise.The rest of the picture is all based on the local traditions of the past dynasties.The Jade Emperor directly rules countless fairy palaces, and indirectly rules the world and hell.He is also the feudal lord of the Tathagata Buddha in the West, the Avalokitesvara of the Purple Bamboo Forest, and the great gods with their own spheres of influence.If a talented woman on earth dies early, she is eligible to be elected as a female official in the Heavenly Palace.The goddess accidentally broke the vase, or laughed out loud while saluting, or was caught flirting, and was cast down to earth, falling in love, suffering, and producing material for folk tales.Such a break in the eternal joys of heaven did not seem unpleasant. The government in heaven implements an extreme division of labor. There are gods of literati, gods of warriors, gods of wealth, and gods of longevity. On the ground, every city has a city god, every village has land, every family has two door gods, a kitchen god, and every lake and river god. There is a dragon king.In addition, there are unprofessional Sanxian.despite the blasphemy Although China's heaven is grand, it pales in comparison with China's hell, and its lines are not clear, because heaven is not like hell, and after all, it has little to do with people.But even if the Chinese don't take heaven seriously, they can believe it whenever they like.Their ideals are surprisingly tenacious.For example, on the radio, two Shaoxing opera lovers were saying goodbye, and they cried out tearfully, "Xianmei!" "Brother Liang!" "A bottle of Toxin in the Wang Mansion on the third floor of No. 13, Cihou North Lane, Annan Road—delivery immediately! "And the drama was definitely not broken. Because the Chinese are not very sensitive to anti-climaxes, the Chinese religion can stand up to any amount of profanity. "Jade Emperor" is synonymous with wife—especially a fierce wife.The line between piety and mischief is not very clear.Among the gods were the Queen Mother, who was ugly at first in Chinese mythology but was later embellished as a gorgeous old lady; and Magu, one of the Eight Immortals, both of whom were present at the birthday feast A good embellishment, but not an object of faith.However, the Chinese do not object to them being treated as equals to the Avalokiteshvara.Like foreigners, it is impossible to imagine that Santa Claus has a relationship with God.minimal salvation Chinese people's "soul salvation" varies from person to person.People who are satisfied with an endless series of worldly lives do not need to be "saved" at all. As long as they do things out of reason, they will not make big mistakes that cannot be reborn. Some people see the suffering in real life and hope to create a more satisfactory environment. Most of them adopt the Buddhist method of silence, solitude, and immobility.The Chinese people affected by this can be roughly divided into two factions.The quieter believers—retiring judges, old ladies, widows, unmarried wives—shut themselves up in huts, copying scriptures they didn't care to understand.Being isolated from the world and having no chance to do evil creates negative goodness. In the next life, one can practice in a better environment and enjoy more worldly happiness.Complete isolation from the world was often impossible and had to be compromised greatly.For example, being a vegetarian will not only reduce the crime of killing, but if it is carried out to the extreme of not eating fireworks, it will also have positive value; if you eat fruits all the year round, one day you will grow white hair all over your body, and you will turn into a fairy ape, jumping and jumping. and go.However, Chinese vegetarians are so obsessed with meat. They invented "vegetarian chicken" and "vegetarian ham". An even better invention is the system of eating "vegetarian vegetables". such as.Pious Chinese people are born into the world, stepping in and out with one foot, thinking that the underground clerk will faithfully record every inch and every minute of retirement.Physicalization of Salvation Work As for active young people, they are temporarily born to gain knowledge and power, and when they come back, they can eradicate violence and improve society.They sat silently for hours on end with nothing in their minds.At dawn and in the middle of the night, they do deep breathing exercises and inhale the essence of the sun and the moon to help the development of Superman's "magnificence".For the Chinese, gymnastics always has a subtle moral spirit, which is related to "nourishing qi" and "training qi".The skill of the boxer goes hand in hand with the inner peace of the hermit. This kind of punching all the way to heaven is the central idea of ​​Chinese adventure novels—China also has novels with the same status as Western boy scout stories, and the readers include many adults besides students and apprentices.The chivalrous man in the book went to the mountains to learn boxing, sword skills, and strategy before he walked for the sky.To improve one's life one must first cut oneself off from one's life. This concept is deeply rooted even among people who do not read martial arts novels.unnecessary paradise Some people feel that it is not enough to just improve the reality, and it needs to be improved.Most people would rather become immortals than gods, because the title of god is often the reward of great merit, and getting it is troublesome, and there are many responsibilities to become an official of the kingdom of heaven.An honest county magistrate automatically becomes a god after death, if the people build a temple for him.Most chaste women have their own temples. As for whether they can continue to enjoy local support and love, it depends on whether they are responsible for the rice harvest, weather, and private prayers. Immortals who originated from Taoism are more enviable. They live the life of celebrities, and they have all the small pleasures advocated by Lin Yutang.The righteous birth of a sage requires more than half a century of Indian-style penance, but there is no physical abuse by Indian hermits.Those who take the slant can make alchemy, or rely on the quotations from above-the immortal disguised as a traveling monk to select the person with wisdom roots, and a few words awakened him, and the two disappeared together.Fifty years later, an old acquaintance may meet him in a foreign county, and the beard is still the same black. Some people are ranked in the fairy class, it is entirely due to good luck.A fox spirit who has studied theology and has considerable cultivation will condense its breath into a bright ball, and every moonlit night, throw it into the air to practice breathing.If a man seizes the ball and swallows it immediately, the fox's career is over.In order to live forever, beasts have to go through the human stage first, and have to travel a longer distance than humans, so they are often robbed halfway and lose their hard-earned virtues. Immortals with absolute security of life pass the time with watered down pleasures such as playing chess, drinking, and traveling.They live in another plane of time, and one day in the fairy family is equal to a thousand years in the world.This doesn't seem to do much good - but less nerve-wracking than ours. Immortals have no sex life and family happiness, so people created the amphibian "earth immortals" - earth immortals are no different from ordinary landlords except that they live forever.Untouched valleys and islands have dwellings of celestial beings, filled with black-eyed maids like a Muslim paradise, but not so popular.Occasionally contact with the crowd, and feel the pleasure of being in a superior position.Like the person in the story, the earth fairy recruited a son-in-law, met an old friend on a yacht on Dongting Lake, invited him on board for a drink, and gave him a lot of jewelry. After the friend disembarked, the girl band played drums, The white mist rose steeply, and the yacht disappeared. The celestial being enjoys his wealth without worries, although he is happy, in this irresponsible life he has no chance to exercise his skill of dealing with people, which, however painful it is to practice, is a Chinese specialty, no matter how painful it is to practice. Willing to give up.Therefore, Chinese people's attitude towards fairyland is very hesitant, half wanting it, and half hating it. Chinese people's paradise is actually superfluous.For most people, hell is good enough.As long as their conduct is not too bad, they can expect a series of infinite, roughly the same life, in which they practice the previous fate, inadvertently plant the future fate, make grievances, and resolve grievances - cause and effect are closely woven Like contempt, look dizzy.The Chinese are especially fond of this aspect of life—they don't let go of it once they like it, they have always been like this.The movie "Liu Fang" was compiled into a Beijing opera; the novel "Qiu Haitang" was compiled into a drama, Shaoxing opera, farce, Tanci, and Shenqu, and the same audience faithfully went to watch it again and again.Chinese music, whether the title is "Pingsha Luoyan" or "Pingsha Luoyan", always repeat a tune again and again, chewing the aftertaste calmly, there is no climax, there is no end-after it is finished, it starts again, this time with another tune title.Chinese "bad" The priests sent by Rome to China in the seventeenth century were astonished to observe the high moral standards of the Celestial Empire. They could no longer imagine such a universal moral discipline without religion.However, the first love-like golden longing finally faded; the foreign businessmen who came in contact with the brigade seemed to be all ghostly and spineless liars. Are Chinese people as good as they looked when they first met?The Chinese said with a smile: "This boy is really bad", which is to praise his intelligence, "Honestness is another name for nothing".But at the same time, the Chinese are also afraid that their children are too clever, and it is dangerous to show their sharpness too much, and it is good to be stupid.If you are not stupid, you have to pretend to be stupid.Ordinary people tend to pay special attention to what they lack-I heard that the Jewish people in the "Old Testament" had a precocious sense of religion because they were lustful by nature.For example, the Chinese are naturally greedy for small things and love to take advantage of them, so they have a reaction of "getting rid of it" and instead reward dementia. The Chinese are not hypocritical, they seriously believe in the theory of good nature, and all anti-social and selfish instincts are not instincts.Such an arbitrary classification is very effective when it comes to moral education, because no one wants you to call him abnormal. However, it is troublesome to conform to the high standard of human nature, so Chinese people often complain that "it is difficult to be a human being". The word "to do" means to create, imitate, and perform, and there is a sense of effort in it. As a result of hard work, the Chinese have finally developed into a more moral nation than Westerners.The Chinese are the worst citizens, but it's not fair to judge the Chinese in that respect - they never had much experience in political life.In the family, among friends, they are always very concerned and restrained.The smallest thing also needs to go through moral considerations.Few people live to a senior year of self-willed rights. Because of the depth of this kind of psychological education, it is difficult to distinguish what is training and what is nature when analyzing the behavior of Chinese people.No one dared to swallow up the donations for sending Sha potions in the summer, but the heads of stone bodhisattvas were chopped off one by one and sold to foreigners, which was not a big deal.For the ignorant masses, it is quite a special phenomenon that abstract moral concepts are more powerful than concrete idol worship. Confucianism has arranged everything for scholars who do not seek deep understanding, but curious fools can't help but want to pry into the secrets of the universe.After the fragments of local and imported legends were systematized and humanized, the sanctions of Confucianism extended to the vastest frontier of Chinese fantasy.Although this religion is out of order, it is thanks to it that it gave Confucianism a little color and physique.The supernatural world in China is desolate and pale. In contrast, it shows the richness and self-sufficiency of life.Foreign teachers in China The Catholic God, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus, the Chinese can easily understand their blood relationship and dominion, and the Virgin Mary has a distant beauty, which is more attractive than the local gods.But because of her yellow hair, after all, she is a bit alienated. Although there are Christmas cards to try to dress her in Chinese ancient costumes and a cape over her yellow hair, it still doesn't work.And there are many lesser saints under these three.Each has its own hard-to-remember name, historical background, characteristics and deeds.It is easier to substitute one group of gods for another, or nothingness, or a single god.So Catholicism in China, although well-organized, is still no match for Christianity. The God of Christianity has a personal relationship with believers, and it is a relationship of love.Gods in China have always been business-like, never talking about love.He also wants you to be responsible for the sins you committed in the previous life that you are ignorant of in this life.The execution of divine punishment is sometimes a wicked deception.For example, one of the seven sons-in-law dreamed that seven people were tied together by a red string. He suspected it was a bad omen, and since then he ran away from his brother-in-law.Mischievous relatives force you to eat and drink in one room and lock the door.The house caught fire, and the seven sons-in-law were burned to death together.It turned out that this dream was specially sent by God to tempt him. When modern Chinese films and literature express positive goodness, this goodness always has the atmosphere of a Christian missionary, which shows the impact of Christianity on Chinese life.The model Chinese is smiling calmly, smiling bravely, wearing the fashion of two years ago, calling his wife Shimu, the girl is knitting yarn, and the child is playing "One Hundred and One Best Songs" on the piano.Women writers were quick to capture the lyrical beauty of chapel bells and kneeling before a bed in prayer.Popular magazine novels often feature a heroine who builds an orphanage in memory of her former lover.These stories should be of interest because they represent the flight of the spirit of the average educated wife and mother. Pupils in mission schools, at an impressionable age, are accustomed to associate hymns with churches and ideals of solemnity, discipline, and youth, and this attitude can be maintained well into adulthood, even if they are never baptized.The young revolutionaries hated established religions, but were not opposed to Christianity, because with it came hospitals and chemical laboratories. In the movie "Human Sea Compassionate", there is a husband and wife, the husband wastes money and energy on the stock exchange, while the wife works as a doctor to serve the crowd, and when she is free, she also accompanies the child Xizizi to conduct chemical experiments in the cellar. "Human Sea Compassionate" is the only Chinese film that goes on and on like this for more than 20 minutes.The goodness in ordinary movies is only a fleeting glimpse, used as a counterpoint to the dark side. In ancient China, all definite goodness came from the relationship between people.The highest ideal of the Confucian government is nothing more than enough food and public order so that family ties and friendship can develop harmoniously.Modern Chinese people suddenly realized that the family is a remnant of feudalism, the father is an autocratic devil, the mother is a well-intentioned fool, the fashionable wife is a plaything, and the rustic wife is the meat on the sacrificial table.After so many attacks on all basic relations, the Chinese have become as embarrassed and suspicious as the Westerners.And this is especially painful for the Chinese, because they have no other beliefs except human relations. So it is no wonder that modern Chinese find it so difficult to describe goodness.When the hero and heroine of a novel or drama get out of the maze and go to the light, it will be over immediately—no matter how much the critics whip and scold, they will have to end.Because life itself is not good enough, now we have to have another purpose in life besides life.Last year in the "News", a progressive Christian said pitifully: Even if Christianity is used as a tool, it is better to ask them for a goal. But Christianity also has its weaknesses that cannot be ignored in China.Christianity thanks God for creating the universe for us in seven days (or through the evolutionary process of eons).The Chinese say that it was Pan Gu who created the world, but that doesn't matter much—the Chinese only go back to the fifth generation, and ancestors above the fifth generation have no part in the feast of ancestor worship.Because the Chinese make a fine distinction between closeness and closeness, although they pay attention to genealogy, they don't care much about the original source of life.The first is to love the parents, and it is the turn of the creators of the distant ancestors of the parents. Of course, that love has been diluted and diluted. Educated Chinese thought Darwin must be right, since he had the support of European academic centers.If once word got through that his theory had been proven wrong, the Chinese immediately and painlessly abandoned it.They never took monkeys seriously as their ancestors, and all this happened before the dawn of time, when the world began, and the Yellow Emperor ruled over a people who were just like us, only more civilized than us.The history in Chinese imagination is a long period of average degradation, not evolution; therefore, when they comment on sages, they also use the chronological order as the standard, and the older they are, the higher their status. The origin of life is neither interesting nor the end of the world can be imagined.In the Dark Ages of Europe, the image of the Doomsday Judgment is vivid and intimate in the public imagination. Perhaps because of the collapse of the Roman Empire, the nerves were hit, and everyone thought that the end of the world would come in the year 1000.China has never undergone such categorical setbacks in the course of its development, so the Chinese people feel that history is in the bamboo knot of luck, and a period of peace will lead to catastrophe forever. Chinese religion always judges people by behavior rather than belief, because almost all the most senior elements in society are not religious. At the same time, because the punishment is not very heavy and the amount of reward is not very attractive, most believers adopt a passive attitude and only want to avoid punishment.The Chinese have a long-standing habit of always trying to shirk their responsibilities blindly; out of their expectation, Christianity offers them a "lamb of redemption" to bear all responsibilities at no cost, all you have to do is believe.In this way, the Chinese who are accustomed to bargaining are greatly moved by suspicion. But the biggest difficulty for Chinese people to believe in Christianity is that the afterlife it depicts is not what Chinese people want.The older Christian heaven, in which the golden harp is played endlessly, singing the virtues of heaven, let's not talk about it.A more progressive ideal, the earth is regarded as a moral playground, and after we are trained here, we can devote ourselves to another remote world. For the complacent and conservative Chinese, they have always regarded life as the universe. Central, this is also not acceptable.As for the saying that life is a temporary bubble in the tide of the big self, such an eternal life without personality doesn't make much sense.Christianity gives us very little comfort, so local legends are still tenable against the high-pressure preaching of old and new Christianity. There are no such scriptures—very few people understand Buddhist scriptures, which means they don’t exist.The Unfathomable Heart of China However, is Chinese religion a religion?It is a religion, it should be a devout belief.The lower classes considered it safer to be religious.Because it doesn't matter if it turns out to be a complete lie later, and an atheist risks unnecessary hell.This explains China's traditional tolerance towards foreign teachers.If you offend Christians for no reason, if you fall into the Christian hell in the future and have no relatives, you will suffer. But no matter how ambiguous.Sometimes in religion you can't be vague with diplomatic rhetoric, you have to answer "yes" or "no". For example, someone loses everything, and only with inner support can he cheer up and create another future.But in China, such things are rare.Although I believe that "you can be a master if you suffer from hardships", once you fall down after becoming a master, you will never get up again.For this reason, almost every two days, the supplements of Chinese newspapers reprinted the lesson of Edison or Franklin: "Failure is the mother of success." When the Chinese admit defeat, they may still have self-confidence. What they want to do may be good, but it is not the right time.God never helps the losing side.The "heaven" of Chinese intellectuals coincides with the "nature" in modern thought, is great, walks its own ruthless path, and has nothing to do with the loving God of Christianity.Here, the common people's religion is also influenced by the scholar's heaven: sin must be punished, because crime hinders the promotion of nature, and a lonely good is not necessarily rewarded.Although it is said that "there is no unparalleled road", when you really become a beggar, you rarely have a chance to turn around.Chinese people in desperate situation, can there be anything to support them?Apart from telling them that this is the retribution for sins committed in the previous life, doesn't religion give any comfort? A beggar is not a human being, because in Confucianism, the scope of human life is very limited.One of the most important conditions of human qualifications is the relationship between people; even these relationships are limited to the five luns.People who are too poor cannot practice Confucianism, because it presupposes that a person must have some money or land to support his family and meet the requirements of society.乞丐不能有家庭或是任何人与人的关系，除掉乞怜于人的这一种，而这又是有损于个人道德的，于是乞丐被逐出宗教的保护之外。 穷人又与赤贫的不同。世界各国向来都以下层阶级为最虔诚，因为他们比较热心相信来生的补报。而中国的下层阶级，因为住得挤，有更繁多的人的关系、限制、责任，更亲切地体验到中国宗教背景中神鬼人拥挤的，刻刻被侦察的境况。 将死的人也不算人；痛苦与扩大的自我感切断了人与人的关系。因为缺少同情，临终的病人的心境在中国始终没有被发掘。所有的文学，涉及这一点，总限于旁观者的反应，因此常常流为毫无心肝的讽刺滑稽，像那名唤"无常"的鬼警察，一个白衣丑角，高帽子上写着"对我生财"。 对于生命的来龙去脉毫不感到兴趣的中国人，即使感到兴趣也不大敢朝这上面想。思想常常漂流到人性的范围之外是危险的，邪魔鬼怪可以乘隙而入，总是不去招惹它的好。中国人集中注意力在他们眼面前热闹明白的，红灯照里的人生小小的一部。在这范围内，中国的宗教是有效的；在那之外，只有不确定、无所不在的悲哀。什么都是空的，像阎惜姣所说："洗手净指甲，做鞋泥里蹋。"