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By Root 957 0

strands of native Chinese philosophy, Confucianism and Taoism—both introduced around 500 BCE—clearly shaped China’s history, government, and culture more than any myth or religious belief did. Emphasizing social order, loyalty to family and king, and ancestor worship, Confucianism is a moral code of proper behavior designed to achieve an ideally gentle world in which every individual has a place within the family and every family has a place within the society. Confucianism places the virtue of a disciplined communal order above the need to appease the gods, while Taoism, the second major school of Chinese thinking, stresses the importance of individuals living simply and close to nature. By far the more influential of the two, Confucianism was made the state religion in 136 BCE, during the powerful Han Dynasty—a 400-year period in Chinese history often equated with the Roman Empire in terms of its size and prestige. Just as Confucianism was being institutionalized, Buddhism was imported from India, adding a spicy new accent to China’s philosophical potpourri and creating in China a picture markedly different from other great civilizations, where myth was often all-pervasive.

One other significant but very modern factor has diminished China’s mythic legacy. The study of Chinese myths and mythic sources was severely stunted under Communist rule. The all-powerful official Chinese Communist Party that has governed China since 1949 largely suppressed all religions, which were regarded as mere superstition. Classical Confucianism was opposed by the Maoist “powers that be”—which created a mythology of its own to lionize Chairman Mao—because it emphasized the past and, in the Party view, justified social inequality.

The Five Classics, studied by aspiring bureaucrats and functionaries for two thousand years, were set aside in favor of Karl Marx and Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book. During decades of strict Communist authoritarian rule, the Party turned Buddhist and Taoist temples into museums, schools, and meeting halls, and the study of mythology and other ancient Chinese traditions suffered. An entire generation of academics, scholars, and researchers was largely eliminated in the violent upheaval of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, when universities were shut down for years, and foreign embassies closed. Some 7 million students, teachers, and others in the professional classes were sent to be “reeducated” on rural collective farms, where many did not survive the purges and repression of the Red Guard era.*

The diplomatic “opening” of China that followed President Richard Nixon’s historic 1972 visit has also unlocked China in other ways that relate to its mythic past. Ancient Chinese healing arts, such as acupuncture, “energy healing,” and herbal medicines, are now a growing part of the Western medical arsenal. Many Westerners now decorate their homes and offices with careful attention to feng shui (fuhng shway), the ancient Chinese art of placing objects with the goal of creating a sense of balance and harmony. According to feng shui, the life-force energy called chi flows from every living and inanimate object, and can be promoted with the careful placement of furniture and the proper use of colors.

In the arts, a band of Chinese filmmakers known as the Fifth Generation has introduced American audiences to Chinese history and folk traditions in such films as Raise the Red Lantern, Yellow Earth, and Farewell My Concubine. Chinese-American filmmaker Ang Lee wowed the world with his legendary folktale Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Acclaimed Chinese-American writers such as Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club and The Kitchen God’s Wife, have reached wide audiences as they explored Chinese mythic and family traditions and their impact on a generation of Chinese-Americans. Even Disney got on the Chinese dragon-wagon with its animated Mulan, a 1998 “girl power” version of a Chinese folktale, whose heroine takes her father’s place in battle and is the same Fa Mu Lan whom Maxine Hong Kingston wrote about in