Popular Religious Orientations
Historians note that in the Shang Dynasty (approximately 1700 BC) the
practice of ancestor worship had formed, perhaps initially as an outgrowth of
sacrifices of animals or liquor to the collective ‘first ancestors’.^11 By the start
of the dynastic period in the early Han era, ‘various popular cults, such as the
worship of ancestors and sacrifices to nature deities, still survived among the
masses. The nature cults became more and more identified with Taoism’.^12
Ancestor worship continues into the modern period, but without sacrifices.
Again, with the exception of Taoist cults, these practices also reflect
anthropocentric views toward other species.
It was the introduction of Buddhism to China in the first to third centuries
AD that provided an alternative environmental paradigm. The variant of
Buddhism introduced into China, Mahayana (Greater Vehicle), emphasized
the transitory nature of life (that individuals dwelled in emptiness) and the
possibility of escaping suffering (or salvation) through the compassionate
intervention of Bodhisattvas. All schools and sects of Buddhism, however,
believed in the fundamental equality of all forms of life. Every living being
was a ‘compound of ever-changing components, to which accrue merits and
demerits as a result of the actions of the being’.^13 When, for example, the
species died, its components reorganized, but on a higher or lower level,
dependent on how its life had been lived.
Buddhism was adopted first by elites in the early centuries, and it soon
became as popular as Taoism and Confucianism. To many Chinese, the three
codes of behavior were recognized as a syncretic blend of philosophical,
religious and ethical thoughts. As elites became disenchanted with Buddhism
(by the eighth to ninth centuries), it penetrated into the lower classes. There it
changed perspectives of the people concerning other species, making them
more inclined to ‘respect all life’.
Minority Orientations
Although China today claims 56 official minorities, in fact there are more than
- Most non-Han^14 Chinese live in peripheral areas of the Chinese state; they
are less likely to have been influenced by elite Chinese orientations.
Tibetans are perhaps the politically most sensitive Chinese minority; their
traditional orientations toward nature and conservation are strongly influenced
by Tibetan Buddhism. Their leader-in-exile, the Dalai Lama, expresses his
view of the changes in the Tibetan landscape in the last generation, and the
extent to which it conflicts with the environmental beliefs of Buddhism:
‘We always considered our wild animals a symbol of freedom. Nothing held them
back; they ran free. Without them something is missing from even the mostHistorical patterns 21