Daoist Yao Aiyun and Modern Education and Other Reforms in Late Qing Nanyang

Abstract: This is a study of Daoist encounter with modernity. It reconstructs the history of Quanzhen Daoist monastic activism in late Qing educational and other modern reforms in Nanyang from the 1880s to the 1910s. Focusing on the life and career of the Quanzhen Daoist cleric Yao Aiyun (1845–1912), this study examines the intense Daoist activism carried out by prior Yao and the Monastery of Dark Mystery (Xuanmiao guan) in establishing three new schools from 1905 to 1908. Using evidence developed from new and previously underexplored primary sources, I show that prior Yao and his monastery paid for and operated three new schools to support the Qing state's push for modern education reforms in rural jurisdictions, and more importantly to meet the educational needs of the children in local communities in Nanyang. I further demonstrate that while the threat of temple expropriation by the late Qing state may have been a factor driving some Buddhist and Daoist temples to support to the state educational reforms, prior Yao and his monastery's efforts in establishing new schools must not be seen merely as self-serving or opportunistic instincts at times of crisis. Instead, I argue that they are best understood as a natural extension of the Quanzhen Daoist monastery's long and deep tradition of commitment and service to the local community in Nanyang. As I have shown elsewhere, these efforts trace their roots or origins to at least the early Qing re-construction of Nanyang in the mid-seventeenth century, and to the most recent valiant defense of the city against the Nian-Taiping rebels in the 1860s. I further argue that contrary to the Weberian thesis that religion would either wither under the impact of modernity or oppose the proliferation of science and knowledge, prior Yao's activism shows that Daoism rather willingly pioneered in efforts to establish new western-style schools for the sake of advancing modern education and science-based knowledge among the local population. In the process, prior Yao and his Quanzhen Daoist temple gained both official state recognition and popular respect, and grew stronger in both influence and power in local society in late Qing Nanyang. Indeed, the case of prior Yao also shows that Chinese traditional religions such as Daoism often found ingenious ways to not only adapt to and engage with forces of modernity, but they also evolved themselves and advanced their own interests by immersing themselves deeply in various new social and public institutions of the modernizing society in late Qing Nanyang.