This was written by rob. Posted on Monday, February 2, 2009, at 9:15 pm. Filed under China. Bookmark the permalink. Follow comments here with the RSS feed. Post a comment or leave a trackback.
I am 90% certain I know who the two people are in the front right, but they are so strangely done, that I am still a bit uncertain. Of course, their appearance in a temple only adds to the confusion.
What a great and true photo. A few years ago, when I first started reporting on religion in China, a Shanghainese religious leader said something to me along the lines of - “One of the spiritual characteristics of the Chinese people is the ability to believe in two contradictory systems at the same time.” At the time I didn’t give it much thought. But the more time I spend around Chinese religious, and the more I see pictures like this one, I see what he was getting at.
That’s probably because a lot of Chinese aren’t driven ideologically but by more practical means. In other words taking parts of each ideology that overall might be contradictory and patching different parts together to make it work.
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hahaha, this is really fun
I am 90% certain I know who the two people are in the front right, but they are so strangely done, that I am still a bit uncertain. Of course, their appearance in a temple only adds to the confusion.
OH,It’s so China
What a great and true photo. A few years ago, when I first started reporting on religion in China, a Shanghainese religious leader said something to me along the lines of - “One of the spiritual characteristics of the Chinese people is the ability to believe in two contradictory systems at the same time.” At the time I didn’t give it much thought. But the more time I spend around Chinese religious, and the more I see pictures like this one, I see what he was getting at.
That’s probably because a lot of Chinese aren’t driven ideologically but by more practical means. In other words taking parts of each ideology that overall might be contradictory and patching different parts together to make it work.
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