The Institute for Chinese Studies Presents:
"Secularized Religion and Sacralized Revolution in Postsocialist China"
Jifeng Liu
Xiamen University
Abstract: This presentation examines the history and cultural significance of a People’s Liberation Army Temple in a southeast coastal town of China. The temple is dedicated to the religious worship of 27 Chinese Communist soldiers who died during battles with Nationalist troops. While the military and government treat the temple as a political resource, it remains a site of active worship, and the religious and political dimensions align in a mutually accepted narrative. Local cultural history and religious traditions, as well as the complexities of local politics and civil-military relations, are highly relevant to China’s grassroots religious revivals. Download the PDF flyer here.
Jifeng Liu is Associate Professor of Southeast Asian Studies at Xiamen University. He received his PhD from Leiden University in 2017 and was a Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Germany. Currently, he is a visiting professor at Harvard in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. Liu's research interests include religion in Chinese societies, overseas Chinese, transnational networks, as well as ethnicity and nation building in Southeast Asia. He is the author of Negotiating the Christian Past in China: Memory and Missions in Contemporary Xiamen (Penn State University Press, 2022).
Free and Open to the Public
If you require an accommodation, such as live captioning, to participate in this event, please contact EASC at easc@osu.edu. Requests made at least two weeks in advance of the event will generally allow us to provide seamless access, but the university will make every effort to meet requests made after this date.
This event is supported by a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant to The Ohio State University East Asian Studies Center.
