tearun: Yo so I have some questions for a people, speaking as a totally ignorant person on the matter. In terms of Chinese mythology/indigenous religion/polytheism

> What is the proper term? (Example, proper term for Japanese Polytheism is Shinto)
> Is this still a living religion or tradition? Or would it be more on the level of Hellenic Polytheism?
> Is it one that is considered under the pagan umbrella, or no?
> Is it open or closed?
> What are the basics of belief?
> I ask these mainly because I see a lot about Chang’e, but only Chang’e and nothing about the polytheist religion she is a part of or Chinese Polytheism as a whole. For instance, what should one know if they’re planning to approach Chang’e? Is there a standard for ritual cleansing? A standard of how to approach deities and when? These are important things to know. Even if you don’t plan on following the rules, know the rules you break.

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Hooboy. What a question. I’ve written over a thousand words here, so the rest is under the cut.

First things first: what we refer to as “Chinese” is in fact a very large set of ethnicities with a lot of similarities and mixing. Mandarin is the “standard language”, but there’s tons of regional variations, like Cantonese and Hokkien. Add that to the languages that sprung up with the Chinese diaspora and you’ve got a huge pot of all kinds of people. What is “indigenous” and what isn’t is a hugely murky topic, not helped by a lot of information being lost by history.

We’re pretty much everywhere, but of note are the People’s Republic of China (which is the mainland and the motherland, was formerly communist and currently still run by the communist party but that fiction has been abandoned a long time ago, you can buy iPhones and stuff openly these days), Taiwan (where a lot of communist foes settled after losing the civil war, also a Japanese colony), Hong Kong (where all the kung-fu movies are made, a British colony), Singapore (another British colony, where I live, big trade and technology center, formerly part of the Federation of Malaya), Indonesia (where we were basically second-class citizens), Thailand (the largest group of Overseas Chinese people), and of course, America.

We’ve got Muslims who were descendants of the Silk Road travellers, we’ve got Chinese-Uighur and Manchu and Chinese-Tibetans and Chinese-Kazakhs. We’ve influenced the Japanese and the Koreans. We were even ruled by a Mongol once, and that was seen as totally legitimate. But that’s a long story.

I mention all of this because I’m trying to give you a sense of scale. Everything I say is just incredibly subjective and has to be taken with the knowledge that I’m being super-broad and non-specific, and that I’m speaking from a post-colonialist stance. I’m not a mainlander, and my views have been colored by my nation’s colonialist history, but I’m as Chinese as any other.

That said, let’s continue.

The three major belief systems of the Chinese are Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. To the typical Chinese person, there’s no clear boundary. It was said in the past that “a man would be a Confucian in the city and a Daoist in the countryside.” All of it is part of the Chinese experience, all of it is compatible (to a degree) and all of it is subject to regional polytheistic variations that I can’t really speak of because I’m not part of those traditions, I never was, and I’m a Buddhist.

Daoism and Confucianism had its start in the Hundred Schools of Thought era of the Spring and Autumn Period, where possibly over a hundred different philosophies battled each other for intellectual dominance, whereupon the winners absorbed the teachings of the losers. Buddhism was a foreign export from India, where for reasons unknown it dried up in its native land. In Mandarin, we refer to religions as “taught.” Buddhism is “Fo-Jiao”, or “Buddha-taught.” Daoism is “Dao-Jiao”, “Dao-taught.” From here on, the general Chinese polytheistic traditions will be referred to as “Shen-Jiao.”

Confucianism was founded by the philosopher Confucius, or Kongzi (which means “Master Kong”, which is the “right” one because Confucius is the Latinized version). Kongzi’s philosophy was centered around personal and governmental morality, and the rightness of formal of social relationships. By extension, these teachings lead to strong family loyalty, ancestor worship, and respect of elders. It can also be described as a “making sacred of the mundane;” by honoring one’s father and emperor and place in the world, one becomes an ancestor worthy of worship, fed offerings by their future descendants. In many ways, Confucianism is a huge part of being Chinese. Kongzi was deified some time after his death, as per his tenets of ancestor worship.

Speaking of Master Kong’s deification, we have a…somewhat strange relationship with gods. See, even though we give offerings and tell exaggerated stories about Kongzi, we never deny that he was mortal. Guan Yu, a general during the late Eastern Han, is a major god, and we remember a lot of his exploits and traits in Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Some of ours gods are a direct result of fiction: Sun Wukong is worshiped by quite a few, and he was the creation of a Ming Dynasty “fantasy” novel. There’s even another “fantasy” novel/oral tradition that fictionalizes how the tyrant King Zhou was overthrown, with gods, demons, immortals and spirits fighting on either side. This story is known as the ‘Investiture of the Gods’, because it was promised (and fulfilled) that by gathering the names of the dead and making shrines to them, the heroic enemies of Zhou would be endowed with celestial rank and office after their death, making them gods. It’s really weird.

Moving on, we have Daoism. It’s a system that covers philosophy and ethics but also religion. “Dao” means “path” or “way”, a source of everything that has ever existed. Daoist practice vary from school to school, but all of them teach the importance of “Wu Wei”, literally “Without For”, but can be understood as action without action. You know when Bruce Lee talks about “being like water, my friend?” That’s a Daoist principle. Just as the planets spin without thinking, and water flows without effort, so to does the Daoist strive to be one with nature, to be naturalistic. Again, there’s that “sacred of the mundane” thread. Daoism also contains yin-yang theory (which is similar to masculine/feminine dualism but more accurately is more similar to computer binary), and five phases theory (where because everything in existence moves between five different states/energies, these states can be lengthened, encouraged, or shortened and dispelled by the application of its opposing or encouraging force).

Buddhism is the path I’m currently following. The most important lesson there is that “being is suffering.” We are continually reborn to live and suffer, because we are attached to life, to death, to our senses of self. Through learning, meditation, and the Buddhist community, one can attain liberation from all things, also known as enlightenment. There’s a lot more to it that I don’t have time to talk about, so I suggest reading up on it. Chan Buddhism is the local Chinese-developed Daoist-intermarried school of the Mahayana branch, which in particular spread to Japan and became known as Zen. It focuses most notably on the idea of emptiness and Gong-An (koans), stories to test the student’s understanding of the doctrine.

Those are the basics of the three belief systems. Now, to address your questions directly.

Yes, I believe it to be a living religion and tradition. We didn’t all die out for some reason, and we’ve moved everywhere and brought our gods with us. We’re still changing and growing and there’s loads of us.

I’ve looked up the term “pagan umbrella” and while I see the Taijitu (that’s the yin-yang symbol to you) under pictographs of the so-called umbrella, I don’t take this as informative at all. While the wikipedia article on Paganism describes it as any “non-Abrahamic, folk, or ethnic religion,” the article itself describes Paganism in Greek, Roman, Nordic, etc terms. In other words, a very western thing. In any case, while we’ve lost a lot, I don’t think we’ve lost so much that it needed to be reconstructed, and thus I do not believe it to fit under the pagan umbrella. At least, not in any way that is useful.

I don’t know what an “open” or “closed” religion is. If by “open” you mean “open to modern ideas”, then it depends but on the whole I’d say yes. We’ve mixed a lot with others, and changed in turn by the people we became neighbors to. If by “open” you mean “are you able to join without being Chinese”, then I’d say it depends. Daoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism are all philosophical systems, so you can study those without being Chinese. But Shen-Jiao traditions are very local and regional, so I think those are closed to ethnicity.

"Is Chang’e Daoist, Buddhist, Confucian, or Shen-Jiao?", you might ask. And the answer is; "She’s all of them, and none of them. She’s a story we tell to our children, and that story has a different context depending on what we are at the time." I don’t know the rules of the ritual cleansing, and I don’t know the standards of how to approach the deities and when. Until recently, I was a Protestant, and I’m still transitioning to Buddhism. And really, with so many sources, there’s no central authority. If you would want to know the rules, you would do well to find a temple or shrine of some kind.