Taiwan Preserves 2,500-Year Chinese Buddhist Traditions After 1966 Cultural Revolution
Updated
Updated · The New York Times · May 14
Taiwan Preserves 2,500-Year Chinese Buddhist Traditions After 1966 Cultural Revolution
1 articles · Updated · The New York Times · May 14
Taiwan emerged as a refuge for Chinese Buddhism, preserving traditions that were largely destroyed on the mainland during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution beginning in 1966.
That role grew from the island’s protection of a syncretic religious culture in which Buddhism absorbed Taoist beliefs, deities and customs that had developed across China over roughly 2,500 years.
The article frames Taiwan as a cultural repository for the Chinese world after the mainland reopened in the early 1980s and looked to overseas Chinese communities where older traditions had survived.
Set against Taiwan’s layered history—17th-century Chinese migration, 1895-1945 Japanese rule and the Kuomintang’s postwar retreat—the island is portrayed as preserving a version of Chinese religious life lost elsewhere.
Is Taiwan a living museum of a lost Chinese civilization or the birthplace of an entirely new culture?
As Beijing systematically erases traditions, can Taiwan's spiritual heritage become its most powerful defense?