[Promoting these old ideas has been a priority for President Xi Jinping, who has rekindled enthusiasm for traditional culture as part of a broader push to fill what many Chinese see as their country’s biggest problem: a spiritual void caused by its headlong pursuit of prosperity.]
By Ian Johnson
GUIYANG, China — Nearly 500 years after he died, the Chinese
philosopher Wang Yangming once again wielded a calligraphy brush, carefully
daubed it into a tray of black ink and elegantly wrote out his most famous
phrase: “the unity of knowledge and action.”
A crowd murmured its
approval as his assistant held up the paper for all to see.
“I respect Wang Yangming
from the bottom of my heart!” blurted Cao Lin, 69, a retiree.
Watching the scene unfold
was Zhou Ying, who manages Wang — or at least a very realistic robot that not
only looks like Wang but is able to imitate his calligraphy and repeat more
than 1,000 of his aphorisms.
“This is exactly what we’re
hoping to achieve with the robot,” Ms. Zhou said as Wang began writing another
saying. “We feel this is a way to get people interested in these old ideas.”
Promoting these old ideas
has been a priority for President Xi Jinping, who has rekindled enthusiasm for
traditional culture as part of a broader push to fill what many Chinese see as
their country’s biggest problem: a spiritual void caused by its headlong
pursuit of prosperity.
And when China’s most
powerful leader in 40 years endorses a philosopher, even a long-dead Confucian
one, people rush to take action.
The epicenter of Wang’s
revival has been this city of four million people perched on a plateau in
China’s mountainous south. When Wang spent three years in exile here in the
early 16th century, Guiyang was a remote outpost on imperial China’s southern
border.
Today, as the capital of one
of China’s poorest provinces, it has high-speed rail service to the coast and
is trying to position itself as a center of big data — and traditional culture.
Since Mr. Xi began promoting
the philosopher three years ago, officials in and around Guiyang have built a
Wang Yangming-themed park, constructed a museum to showcase his achievements,
turned a small cave into a shrine in his honor and, yes, commissioned a robot
to bring him to life.
“It’s a way to promote moral
behavior in society as a whole,” said Larry Israel, a scholar at Middle Georgia
State University in Macon who has written about the revival.
Restoring a sense of public
morality has been a policy goal of Mr. Xi, who is set to be reappointed as
Communist Party leader at the party’s 19th congress starting Wednesday.
In his efforts to address
the country’s spiritual shortcomings, Mr. Xi has spoken favorably of Confucius,
praised Buddhism and presided over a revival of traditional religious practices
that were once condemned as superstitious.
But he has seemed most
comfortable praising the life and works of Wang Yangming.
Born in 1472, Wang was a
scholar with a promising career in the imperial court in Beijing when, in 1506,
he spoke out against the cruelty of a well-known courtier. That offense earned
him banishment to faraway Guiyang.
During his years here, Wang
ran a post house on the edge of town. That gave him time to meditate on the
philosophical problem that would define his legacy: understanding how people
know right from wrong. His conclusion: People have an inborn conscience that
they must act upon, regardless of the consequences.
It was this advocacy of
moral action that apparently appeals to the no-nonsense Mr. Xi, who has cracked
down on vice and corruption within the party’s ranks. Mr. Xi frequently refers
to Wang, who regained favor in 1509, and then loyally served the emperor as a
military leader who quashed a rebellion.
However, some see Wang, with
his emphasis on following one’s internal moral compass, as a risky thinker for
an authoritarian state to embrace.
“Wang Yangming can pave the
way for a philosophy of autonomy — that standards don’t come from outside. that
they are inner,” said Sébastien Billioud, co-author of a recent book on
Confucian thought in today’s China. “And of course autonomy is always dangerous
for authoritarian regimes.”
During the first decades of
communist rule, Wang’s works were banned as “bourgeois.” Even into the 1990s,
it was still risky to talk about him at academic conferences.
“We held small private
meetings” to discuss Wang, recalled Zhang Xinmin, a philosophy professor at
Guizhou University on the city’s outskirts. “We were monitored the whole time,”
he said.
The ban on Wang began to
lift around 2000 with a revival in the popularity of Confucian studies. Then,
in 2014, Mr. Xi explicitly told local leaders to promote Wang’s thoughts.
Suddenly, Wang Yangming was China’s hottest philosopher since Marx.
“It was completely
unexpected,” Professor Zhang said.
Wang’s rehabilitation has
turned Guiyang into a hive of activity. One reason is that until a recent
promotion, the province was led by one of Mr. Xi’s protégés, Chen Min’er.
Mr. Chen’s loyalty is on
display at the Guiyang Confucius Academy, a vast complex of museums, fountains,
dioramas and lecture halls on the city’s outskirts. When it opened in 2013, it
made little mention of Wang. But now there is a museum devoted to him nearly as
big as the hall to Confucius himself.
“Both Uncle Xi and Chen
Min’er love him,” said Xu Qi, the party official in charge of the museum.
Guiyang’s embrace of Wang
can also show how much work Mr. Xi still has before him.
On the city’s north side is
the Yangming Cave, where Wang taught and whose name he adopted as his own. (His
name at birth was Wang Shouren.) The cave is now encircled by a cultural park
that is the centerpiece of a 600-acre real estate project of luxury high-rises
and malls.
A senior local official, who
asked not to be identified because of the delicacy of the issue, said the
project was being investigated for corruption. When asked what he intended to
do about it, however, his answer didn’t seem exactly in keeping with Wang’s
advocacy of independent moral action.
“We are waiting,” he said,
“until after the 19th Party congress to see how to proceed.”
Adam Wu contributed research
from Beijing and Guiyang.