Interview with Nikolas Broy and Matthias Schumann

This interview is with Nikolas Broy and Matthias Schumann, guest editors for the special issue on vegetarianism published in Twentieth-Century China in October 2024. Nikolas Broy and Matthias Schumann wrote the introduction to this special issue and each contributed an article. Nikolas Broy, Ph.D. is an independent researcher affiliated with the Institute of the Study of Religion at Leipzig University, Germany. Matthias Schumann is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Chinese at Heidelberg University. Read the article here

Before we start into the article and your research, could you tell us a bit about your academic backgrounds?

NB: I studied Religious Studies and Chinese Studies at Leipzig University, where I also earned my doctoral degree. My work addresses the social history of religions in the Chinese-speaking world, past and present, especially salvationist sects and redemptive societies, warfare and martial arts in Chinese Buddhism, and vegetarianism. I also seek to integrate theoretical approaches and analytical frameworks from the social sciences and global studies, particularly the work of Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu.

MS: I graduated with a Masters in Chinese Studies and History from Heidelberg University, before pursuing my PhD within the field of Chinese religious history with a thesis on the fate of spirit writing (扶乩 fuji) during the Republican period. Here, I was interested in understanding how Chinese actors tried to legitimize a practice that was criticized by many reformist intellectuals as “superstition” by appropriating globally circulating concepts such as religion or science. Such questions continue to interest me to this day and pushed me to investigate other issues that sit at the intersections of religion, society and politics, such as the history of animal protection or vegetarianism in China.

Your special issue discusses the development of religious vegetarianism in Chinese society. How did you come to focus on this interesting topic for the special issue?

Practically speaking, this special issue originated with a panel that we organized for the twenty-third biennial conference of the European Association for Chinese Studies (EACS) in Leipzig, which was eventually held online. Based on the positive feedback we received from the audience, we decided to transform some of the panel contributions into a thematic issue. Unfortunately, one contributor, Poon Shuk-wah, could not be part of it. From an academic perspective, the topic reflects the research of both of us within the field of Chinese religious history. Our initial approach to the topic from two very different angles, namely vegetarianism within the Chinese sectarian tradition and the emerging animal protection movement, showed the complex and multifaceted history of religious vegetarianism in China, which convinced us that it would be worthwhile to explore the topic collectively.

In the introduction, you discuss the long history of vegetarianism in China from the Han dynasty to the present day. What trends do you see across the long history of religious vegetarianism?

As mentioned, the history of religious vegetarianism in China is complex, but one aspect that stands out is the importance of vegetarianism for what can be broadly termed identity construction. Directly linked to the importance of meat consumption and meat sacrifice in Chinese culture, abstaining from meat was always a strong statement. As such, it was highly significant and thus became one of the defining markers of the Chinese Buddhist community. While there were debates regarding its mandatory nature for the laity, recent research by Eric Green shows that, from early on, Chinese Buddhists embraced the idea of monastic meat abstention. It highlighted what was at stake when leaving one’s family (出家 chujia) and joining the monastic community. Likewise, sectarian communities that considered vegetarianism a part of their religious identities thereby emphasized in- and out-group boundaries that were often based on the perception that only a few elect believers, and not the sinful human community in general, would be saved from future catastrophes. With the rise of novel social concerns since the early twentieth century, such as animal protection or environmentalism, processes of identity construction could, in similar forms, be applied to the individual. Being vegetarian signals awareness of certain ethical ideals, such as kindness to animals or a nonexploitative relationship with the more-than-human environment. Given how entrenched these ideals are within certain religious and ethical traditions, vegetarianism can be a powerful statement, nowadays amplified online through social media and other means.

That such ethical considerations have grown in prominence since the early twentieth century is certainly another long-term trend that we explore in this special issue. Thus, in premodern China, many practitioners, including Buddhists, sectarians, and other seekers of self-cultivation, seem to have abstained from consuming meat mainly to attain certain physical or spiritual benefits, such as salvation, health, blessings, or spiritual insights. This differs from what a Euro-American audience today would typically associate with Buddhist ethics. Since the late imperial period, domestic crises and new global discourses have prompted more animal-centered perspectives. Thus, many morality books (善書 shanshu) of the late nineteenth century identified the killing of animals as one reason for the prevalence of wars and disasters. In addition, new concepts such as animal welfare or animal rights soon entered the debate. Such developments somewhat countered the anthropocentric dimension of Chinese religious vegetarianism, while the justifications and motivations for adopting a vegetarian diet multiplied.

What we cannot generally attest to—despite the strong influence of secular ideologies in twentieth-century China—is a general trend away from religious vegetarianism to secular forms of vegetarian practice. Instead, and reflecting the title of our special issue, religious and more secular ethical concerns remain deeply interconnected. This marks a difference, we think, from the European or North American contexts, in which vegetarianism has become a much more secular field. We also have to point out, however, that research on vegetarianism in contemporary Sinophone societies is relatively scarce and much of the ethnographic research on mainland China that we use in our introduction is from the 2010s, when research opportunities were still more readily available. We would hope that future research will provide a more fine-tuned picture of the diversity of vegetarian practice today.

How do your introduction and these case studies on religious vegetarianism speak to the overall history of modern China?

In the introduction to his book The Global and Regional in China’s Nation-Formation, historian Prasenjit Duara talks about how the Chinese nation-state during the twentieth century tried to enforce new concepts and categories, such as religion, science, superstition, and secularism, which were derived from a hegemonic understanding of modernity. He also points out, however, that alternative cosmologies persisted and that such attempts met resistance from the field of what he refers to as popular culture. We think that, in many respects, our case studies on religious vegetarianism speak to the process that Duara delineates. Religion in general, and popular religion in particular—including sectarian groups such as Yiguandao studied by Nikolas Broy—faced increasing pressure from political actors and reformist intellectuals who tried to enforce a strict boundary between modernity (good) and tradition (bad) or between science and superstition. Such discourses had a heavy influence on vegetarian discourses and practices. In his contribution to our special issue, Vincent Goossaert mentions how a novel class of newspaper journalists came to see periodic forms of vegetarianism in a new critical light. However, he also points out that advocates of vegetarianism were quick to seize on critical concepts of modernity, legitimizing vegetarianism in light of science or hygiene, thus complicating the assumed boundary between tradition and modernity. Similar forms of legitimation were at stake when vegetarians invoked novel ethical concerns (Schumann) or the modern environmental movement (Broy). Such appeals to the language of modernity were a common approach to negotiating different forms of knowledge throughout the twentieth century, and vegetarianism is no exception. Moreover, many Chinese political actors were themselves not ready to give up claims to a distinct “Chinese tradition” that could serve as a source of identity and a resource for nation building. Accordingly, vegetarian practices with a profound historical legacy, such as refraining from killing animals in times of crisis, resurfaced throughout the twentieth century in the most surprising contexts, as the contributions to this issue show. As such, religious vegetarianism is at the core of a complex negotiation of Chinese modernity that stretches through the twentieth century and continues until today.

In the article, you discuss the numerous terms used to define vegetarians, plant eating, and abstaining from meat in China. How do these differing definitions impact researching and understanding Chinese vegetarianism?

We may distinguish two strands of vocabulary related to meat abstention that seem to differ regarding their relationship to religion, morality, and ritual. On the one hand, several compounds use the character su (素 plain), such as the most widely used modern terms for vegetarianism, sushi (素食), and chisu (吃素 to eat vegetarian food) and rusu (茹素 to stomach vegetarian food). More recently, consumers have used a variety of terms based on this character, such as quansu (全素 vegan) and dannaisu (蛋奶素 ovo-lacto vegetarian). On the other hand, in religious contexts, especially those of Buddhism, Daoism, and salvationist sects, the character zhai (齋) is most commonly used, probably because it had a well-established history in state ritual and Confucianism before the advent of Buddhism in China. In ancient China, it referred to a set of fasting and purification practices that included abstaining from meat and alcohol, sexual intercourse, and even sharing a bed with one’s partner. The character continues to carry such moral connotations today, so texts and practitioners using this term usually seek to emphasize a whole range of moral convictions and practices that are not restricted to dietary habits. Because of the polysemous nature of the character zhai, researchers must be very clear about the sociocultural and historical contexts of the material they study, as it may mean different things: in Confucian texts and state rituals up until the end of the Qing, zhai refers to the mandatory period of fasting (especially abstaining from meat and alcohol) for three days before a ritual or ceremony; in Chinese Islam, it is used in the context of Ramadan, during which practitioners are not allowed to consume anything from dawn to sunset; in Buddhism and salvationist sects, it often evokes permanent abstention from meat; finally, calendars displaying periods of episodic fasting, such as those examined by Vincent Goossaert in his contribution, also most often use the term zhai. Especially if one looks at premodern sources, where such practices are often only mentioned in passing, assessing what these terms mean for specific communities and practitioners is challenging.

How does this special issue complicate or complement prior studies of Chinese vegetarianism?

The three case studies complement earlier research, especially in three regards: first, Matthias Schumann’s contribution highlights the transnational entanglements of Republican-period Buddhist activists—a perspective hardly taken by earlier studies. He does so by discussing the highly intriguing example of the lay Buddhist, writer, and fervent animal-rights promoter Lü Bicheng (呂碧城 1883–1943). He thus joins a growing number of scholars interested in the global entanglements of the modern vegetarian movement. A notable example is Julia Hauser’s A Taste for Purity: An Entangled History of Vegetarianism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2023), in which she explores the evolution of the modern vegetarian movement across personal networks of people and knowledge spanning Europe, the United States, and South Asia. Second, Vincent Goossaert’s article on periodic fasting and Nikolas Broy’s contribution about the evolution of vegetarian discourses in Yiguandao broaden the horizon by addressing popular religious texts and sectarian groups. In contrast, most scholarship on vegetarianism in both premodern and modern China focuses almost exclusively on monastic Buddhists. Finally, all three articles attest to the unabated impact of religious elements on modern Chinese religious, cultural, and dietary history. Thus, our focus on religious forms of meat abstention drives home the observation that religious beliefs, values, and practices remain significant motivations today, despite various Chinese regimes’ pushes toward secularization.

Question for Nikolas Broy: In your article, you analyze the history of vegetarianism in Yiguandao, a Chinese-Taiwanese religious sect. How does the evolution of Yiguandao’s vegetarianism from being a personal sacrifice to an environmentalist stance expand the understanding of the blend of traditions, religions, and science in China?

The evolution of Yiguandao’s vegetarian discourses mirrors the movement’s overall transition from being a persecuted illegal “cult” (邪教 xiejiao) in Republican China, the People’s Republic of China, and Taiwan (until it was finally legalized there in 1987) to a respected religious movement (at least outside of the People’s Republic). Despite its impressive expansion in late Republican China and the successful establishment of various headquarters in Taiwan after 1949, Yiguandao was heavily stigmatized and marginalized on both sides of the Taiwan Strait for most of the twentieth century. Accordingly, Yiguandao practitioners could not connect to intellectual, political, and economic elites as had monastic Buddhists, who already had appropriated modern concepts of medicine, nutrition, and animal welfare during the Republican period. Until the late 1970s, most Yiguandao publications promoted a fairly traditional approach to meat abstention that emphasized individual physical and spiritual benefits. Only in the 1980s, when Yiguandao had expanded its reach into higher education institutions, can we observe that its authors also begin to include modern, secular concepts and values. Contemporary discourses spotlight this intersection of traditional values and motifs (such as individual salvation, ritual purity, moral qualities) and modern globalized notions of planetary responsibility. Yiguandao’s activities during the COVID-19 pandemic are an excellent example of its blending of these two strands.

Question for Matthias Schumann: In your article, you discuss how Buddhist activists changed traditional practices to fit into ongoing foreign reformist movements. How does this transnational component complicate the history of Chinese religious vegetarianism?

I have always been very interested in transnational or transcultural entanglements, how Chinese actors appropriated globally circulating ideas and practices for their own needs and purposes, and how such processes have shaped Chinese history. In this respect, vegetarianism is a very rewarding topic because it has had this transcultural dimension almost from its inception, due to the strong influence of Buddhism as a religion that swiftly spread across the Asian continent and later even worldwide. This means that the history of Chinese vegetarianism—whether religious or otherwise—can never be told within the narrow confines of national history. On the contrary, we see these transcultural entanglements increasing during the early twentieth century, when Chinese Buddhist actors, such as the lay Buddhist Lü Bicheng whom I discuss in my article, not only eagerly introduced new ideas to the Chinese public but also traveled abroad and directly engaged with interlocutors from around the world. Thereby, they gained access to a much larger pool of intellectual resources that they could use to legitimize Buddhist practices and ideas such as vegetarianism. As a consequence, a vegetarian diet was no longer “merely” a Buddhist salvationist practice; it could also be linked to novel social concerns such as animal protection or linked to a global peace movement. As such, these entanglements go a long way in explaining the public attention that vegetarianism received in Chinese media during the 1920s and 1930s. Looked at closely, Buddhist actors’ engagement with global ideas also vividly illustrates their agency and distinct agenda within these global knowledge exchanges. Lü Bicheng carefully adapted her messages to her audiences. To her European readers and listeners, she emphasized the achievements of Chinese Buddhist vegetarians and the overall superiority of Buddhism over Christianity, whereas her Chinese audience was treated to reports of the height of Western civilization, which had enshrined animal protection in its laws as an expression of kindness to animals. All of this was done with an eye on promoting Buddhist vegetarianism at home and abroad. The transnational nature of such writings thus also forces us researchers to be mindful of the different audiences historical actors were talking to and the strategic forms of communication that they were employing.

Referring to your individual articles, how did you conduct this research?

NB: My article grew out of a larger research project about the global spread of Yiguandao that I conducted at Leipzig University from 2016 to 2019. I conducted ethnographic fieldwork at various sites in Taiwan, South Africa, California, Austria, and Japan, which explains the transnational perspective of my contribution. Fortunately, I completed my fieldwork well before the COVID-19 pandemic kicked in and made this kind of research impossible. Yet, COVID-19 also catalyzed the research for this article, as I stumbled across Yiguandao social media posts that connected meat consumption to the pandemic’s emergence and promoted vegetarianism to counter it. Until then, I had perceived Yiguandao’s approach to meat abstention chiefly in individual terms, so I was eager to learn more about it. So, as for Matthias (see below), the pandemic contributed to the circumstances that eventually led to this article.

MS: My research for this article was actually influenced by the side effects of the coronavirus pandemic that we all experienced. Instead of being able to travel to China or Taiwan to collect primary sources there, I was stuck at home, or at least in Germany. This made the idea of exploring Buddhist actors’ activities within Europe even more appealing, and so I started looking for some of the English-language books that Lü Bicheng published for a European audience. Making use of interlibrary-loan services but also relying on colleagues in the United States, I was able to collect a number of relevant books in different editions. One copy I even picked up from a secondhand bookseller in Germany. I had of course been aware of Lü Bicheng’s transnational activities, but I think that the restrictions of the pandemic helped me unlock some of their research potential.

Can you give us a bit of background on your work on vegetarianism? Is it part of a wider research project?

NB: My initial interest in vegetarianism grew from my doctoral research, in which I explored the evolution of religious practices and rituals of a group of salvationist sects in southeastern coastal China and Taiwan, commonly referred to as “vegetarian sects” (齋教 Zhaijiao). Even though meat abstention was not a significant topic in my work back then, the research helped me develop an awareness of its significance in Chinese religious history. When I began working on Yiguandao in 2016, I again encountered practitioners who refrained from consuming meat and alcohol. Having been exposed to religious vegetarians in two major projects, I became intrigued by the idea of exploring the significance of vegetarianism in China’s religious landscape more generally. This special issue is an essential stepping stone for my future research. I am currently developing a larger project to explore how religiously motivated beliefs and practices of abstaining from meat evolved throughout China’s modern and global transition from the late Qing period to the present.

MS: It was my initial work on the history of the Chinese animal protection movement that got me looking at Chinese religious vegetarianism, because the two topics are so closely intertwined, as the contributions to this special issue indicate. And both of these topics are, in turn, part of a more general interest in the transformation of human-animal relations in modern China that I am pursuing as part of my current work at Heidelberg University. In this context, I am looking at the complex interplay between novel scientific theories and indigenous knowledge systems and how they played out in various forms and contexts, such as, for example, when Buddhist animal protection activists in Shanghai during the 1930s demanded that people take into account aspects of public health and hygiene when releasing into the wild animals that they had saved from the butcher’s knife.

In what ways would you like this special issue on the history of vegetarianism to change the field of Chinese history as a whole?

To put this in somewhat modest terms, we think that our special issue is part of a broader current within the field that strives to show the importance of religious ideas and practices for Chinese history against a long-standing tendency to see China’s historical evolution in terms of a trend toward secularization. Religious actors and ideas within the Sinophone world have been extremely resilient and have surfaced forcefully whenever opportunity allowed for it. As such, it is also no surprise that religious ethics still play an important role in justifying vegetarianism today.

Where do you see your individual research going in the future?

NB: As stated above, I hope to get the necessary funding to pursue a larger project on the evolution of vegetarian discourses and practices in modern Chinese societies, including mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macao but also overseas Chinese communities, especially in Southeast Asia. It will be an excellent opportunity to examine different religious contexts in various Chinese societies over roughly one and a half centuries. I am eager to uncover the entanglements of religious and secular approaches to food, nutrition, health, morality and ethics, animal welfare, and global sustainability.

MS: My aim is to complement the study of the changing ethical precepts related to animals, such as vegetarianism, with a closer look at some of the practical consequences that followed from Buddhist precepts against the killing and consumption of animals. Whereas Lü Bicheng focused on the intellectual legitimation of vegetarianism, Chinese Buddhists started to establish vegetarian restaurants or shelters for animals rescued from the butcher’s knife. Researching such enterprises will hopefully give us a better idea of the place of animals within Chinese society and how it shifted as the result of the propagation of religious vegetarianism.

What historiography shaped this issue and your articles? For further reading, what historiography would you recommend?

The introduction and our individual contributions show our commitment to a global studies approach to history. Following Sebastian Conrad and others, but also responding to recent calls mostly in the German-speaking academic study of religion to explore religious history from a global perspective (in German: globale Religionsgeschichte), we are convinced that looking at transregional entanglements is necessary to understand historical phenomena such as the evolution of meat abstention in twentieth-century Chinese societies. We have also profited from the work of colleagues who are working on the entanglements of vegetarianism and religion in other regional contexts. Here, we would like to mention Bernadett Bigalke and Jörg Albrecht, whose work on the life reform movement in twentieth-century German-speaking countries, modern Western esotericism, and the transformation of alternative diets (such as vegetarianism and macrobiotics) in Germany since the mid-nineteenth century was very inspiring when we were developing our own approach to understanding the entanglements of foodways, religion, and more secular concerns.

Do you have any closing comments for our readers?

We hope to convince readers that collective dietary habits are not just something that may be of interest to food studies scholars but that the intersection of foodways, religion, and global modernity can teach us a lot about the recent history of Chinese societies.