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A hilarious, prankish quasi-religion is gaining popularity in an overseas Chinese online community, though still largely unknown outside the cyber world. The quasi-religion, “Cult of Dasheng”, nominally worship dedicated to Sun Wukong, the fictional figure of the Ming Dynasty’s supernatural novel Journey to the West, (1) is in fact Journey to the West among overseas Chinese.
Universally known as having grown up in a religion-free environment, most mainland Chinese students, scholars and their families remain immune to exposure to evangelism after they have come to the States. To them, a Christian neighbour’s invitation to attend evening bible study is as vexing as the liability to annual tax filing. That is not to say, however, that they would refuse any sightseeing or partying opportunity in nearby Chinese churches. Single men and women, usually in small university towns where Chinese are poorly populated, go to those occasions to meet friends, in the hope of finding their other half, preferably of identical ethnicity. Churches also function as stages of social life for those who have already married: young wives exchange points on their baby-rearing experience and shopping tips whereas their husbands rivet themselves with topics on sports, automobiles, and stocks. Then, rather perfunctorily, people gather, and listen to the sermons, sing, eat and disperse.
A typical Chinese student or high-tech worker of PRC origin, especially when he has an insufficient social life, tends to spend a great deal of time online, and MITBBS, a Bulletin Board System hosted by MIT, is very likely a cyber site that he would visit. (2) The most popular overseas Chinese online community, MITBBS has sheltered many nostalgic souls in the past ten years. The BBS feeds a variety of interest groups with over a hundred boards, half of which are designed to be problem-solving and information-sharing. The other half are, however, places where people come to pour their thoughts, moods and bewilderedness. Aside from those forever peppy boards in which abandoned lovers write melodies and fretting housewives disclose their family trivialities to seek comfort, there are several boards dedicated to serious discussions about life, religion, and spiritual pursuits.
The comprehensiveness and depth of the BBS posts are not to be undervalued, for it boasts among its visitors an overwhelmingly large number of China’s overseas elite, most of whom are equipped with the best education China has to offer. Posts are usually written in Chinese, but if situations necessitate, they can appear in English as well; though only intended for web publishing, some maintain quite a degree of elegance.
Board “Belief” has been a combat zone where Christians and non-Christians debate issues of the credibility and incredibility of the Trinity, Virgin Mary, and so on. The belligerent discussion is oftentimes mixed with an overall teasing tone set by the general tendency of the BBS, and it was the cynicism of the non-believers and the hilarity of the pranksters that gave birth to this interesting phenomenon of cyber religion, the Cult of Dasheng.
“Dasheng”, or the Great Sage, is the nickname of Sun Wukong, the monkey-turned-god. According to Journey to the West, the Monkey has neither mother nor father. Coming from the blast of a huge stone, he wins over a herd of monkeys and becomes their chief after he secures a residence for them in Shuilian Dong, Huaguo Shan, or Water Curtain Cave of Mountain of Flowers and Fruit. To seek immortality he leaves home and studies from a Taoist immortal, who grants him the name Sun Wukong, the capability of cloud-travelling and seventy-two transformations, and unparalleled Kongfu. Upon returning to his Cave, the self-claimed Beauty Monkey King, in desperately searching for a neat weapon, takes the “Pillar that Pacifies the Oceans” away from the Palace of the Dragon King and transforms it into a golden-banded cudgel, a cool stick flexible in size. He then causes a chain of havocs in the Heavenly Kingdom, where the presiding Jade Emperor, who is extremely perplexed by the naughty Monkey, first tries to pacify him and, in vain, sends down troops to crack down on the monkey rebellion. The Monkey is finally defeated by the supernatural-powered Buddha, who imprisons him and locks him up under a mountain. The Monkey remains there for five centuries before he is released under one condition: he is to escort Monk Tang Xuanzhang to India to retrieve the Buddhist sutras. He then becomes the chief disciple of Monk Tang; the journey later is joined by two other disciples, Pigsy, a pig-headed god, and Sandy, a monster who used to dwell along a sandy river, as well as a white horse, who, having committed sins in his previous life as a dragon prince, is now transformed into a horse and functions as the transportation for Monk Tang. The squad encounters numerous tribulations and distresses during their Journey to the West, constantly harassed and raided by demons and goblins, most of which are dismissed by the almighty Monkey.
The Monkey is sanguine, hilarious and upbeat, yet a skilful fighter. In sharp contrast to the Monkey, Monk Tang is a weak-willed crying baby, Pigsy is an eating-his-head-off sort of lazy ass, and Sandy is a boring and inert figure. The novel has made the Monkey an overwhelmingly popular character among Chinese, save the fact that Buddhism, even at its peak in Chinese history, has never been a dominant national religion...
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1. Wu Cheng’En, The Journey to the West, trans. W. J. F. Jenner, Beijing, Foreign
Languages Press, 1982.
2. The forum, MITBB, or 未名空间 in Chinese, was started in 1998 as bbs.mit.edu at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; it hence adopts the “MIT” as its name. Its history can be traced back to two earlier forums: the Unknown BBS at Peking University, China from 1996-1997 and the Space BBS at the Centre for Space Science at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. For more details, see Wikipedia’s record of MITBBS: “MIT BBS”, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_BBS.
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Liu Xiaoyi is currently a PhD candidate and teaching assistant of the East Asian Studies Department, University of Arizona. She studies Chinese history with a focus on the late Imperial era, particularly the history of the Ming & Qing material cultures. She also has a minor in Chinese Buddhism. She has concluded all the prerequisites for her PhD studies and entered into the phase of dissertation writing. Her PhD dissertation is about the Ming material cultures as reflected by the Ming novel 醒世姻緣傳 Xingshi Yinyuan Zhuan (Marriage Destinies to Awaken the World). Although she is fascinated by her major and minors on the areas of pre-modern Chinese history, her broad reading interests in fact are leading her to explore the arresting facets of women studies, and modern and contemporary history. She lately co-authored with Chia-lin Pao Tao, her advisor and professor of the EAS Department, University of Arizona, two articles: “A scattered memory--Hu Shih and Homebeck” (雪泥麟爪的回憶：胡適与霍因貝克), published by Journal of Biography, Taiwan, 2008, and "The `Two Beauties, One Husband´ Marriage Model Reflected from Ming and Qing Chinese Literature"(娥英兩花並蒂開—明清文學作品的中“雙美一夫”的婚姻模式), published as an excerpt chapter of the 8th Volume of Critical Essays on Chinese Women and Literature by Dao Xiang Publisher, Taiwan. She has also written a long, elaborate English essay on the historical course of Chinese women’s modern education, “The Rise of Women’s Modern Schooling in late Qing China (1840-1911)”, forthcoming by History Teacher this year. |
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| Issue 6.3 |
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Remembering—
A Shared Duty
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