Lotus Blossoms and Purple Clouds: Monastic Buddhism in Post-Mao China by Brian J. Nichols (review)

Reviewed by: Lotus Blossoms and Purple Clouds: Monastic Buddhism in Post-Mao China by Brian J. Nichols Amandine Péronnet Brian J. Nichols, Lotus Blossoms and Purple Clouds: Monastic Buddhism in Post-Mao China. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2022. xiii, 288 pp. US28 (pb). ISBN 978-0-8248-9349-1 This rich ethnographic account by Brian J. Nichols tells an astonishing tale of Buddhist resilience and metamorphosis in post-Mao China. Far from doctrinal, philosophical, or textual studies, this is a tale about the living tradition at Quanzhou Kaiyuan Monastery泉州開元寺, and the monastery's path to legitimacy and survival. Located in Southeast China, Kaiyuan is not an elite or model monastery, but rather an ordinary, urban institution with some fifty monks in residence. However, unlike many other monasteries in China, it managed to overcome every hurdle in its way for 1, 300 years, including an attempt by Red Guards to vandalize it during the Cultural Revolution (pp. 1–2). The author, using extensive primary sources and fieldwork at the site where he lived for a total of seven months, explores how the monastery has survived for so long. He relies on local histories, material culture, and oral accounts by lay Buddhists, monks, and administrative personnel to provide a thorough description of Kaiyuan Monastery, while analyzing the strategies it adopted to interact with its political and social environments. Most notably, Nichols's rich ethnographic sources and multidisciplinary approach make for a comprehensive study of Chinese Buddhist monasticism that is grounded in the monastery's physical space, rather than defined by normative discourses about institutional Buddhism. The book's first two chapters, which constitute part I, provide historical context for Kaiyuan Monastery's development. Chapter 1 highlights the main features that elicited protection and support by political elites up to 1975. The monastery's strength seems to have always derived from its capacity to attract patrons, which it did by highlighting its historical and cultural significance, the auspicious events surrounding its founding (including the titular lotus blossoms and purple clouds), and the presence of eminent monks. Nichols takes us through every phase of growth, consolidation, decline, and restoration in Kaiyuan's long existence, identifying the influence of "patronage by elites, the regulatory and interventionist state, and modulations in material culture" (p. 47). Of particular interest to scholars of modern and contemporary Buddhism is the "curatorial turn" (p. 38) taken in the 1950s after the accession of the Communist party, as the PRC government encouraged monasteries to promote their historical and cultural significance. Kaiyuan End Page 159 Monastery's leaders had promoted its significance since the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), and their continuation of this work in the 1950s resulted in the monastery's recognition as a Provincial Level Protected Heritage Site in 1961. Generally speaking, the monastery's history is marked by unusual longevity and resilience, which Nichols suggests might be a consequence of its early curatorial goals—described as a tendency to preserve cultural and historical properties. Chapter 2 contextualizes this resilience by turning to Kaiyuan Monastery's institutional development from 1976 to the present. In the post-Mao era, the monastery has undergone full renovation of what the author calls "hardware" (p. 52), meaning equipment and financial resources. Finding new sources of income is one of the biggest challenges Buddhist monasteries face in contemporary China, and this theme permeates the whole book. At Kaiyuan Monastery, monks quite skillfully chose to diversify their revenue streams by relying on overseas donations, official funding, rituals, earnings from nianfo念佛 days, and entrance tickets, for their survival. Yet, the same patronage patterns still apply: monasticism was allowed to endure at Kaiyuan by gaining support from influential Buddhist and political leaders such as Zhao Puchu 趙樸初 (1907–2000), by complying with state regulations, and by emphasizing material culture to justify raising funds. The era of the current abbot, Daoyuan 道元 (b. 1935), is characterized by revivalism rather than renovation, understood not as a revival of religious cultivation and study, but as recuperating monastic properties and autonomy in temple management. Part II of Lotus Blossoms and Purple Clouds delves into every aspect of religious life at Kaiyuan Monastery. Chapter 3 first thoroughly examines the. . .