The Wenzhou Folk Beliefs In The Missionaries’Eyes From The Late Qing Dynasty To The Early Republic Of China

From the late Qing Dynasty to the early Republic of China, there were hundreds of missionaries who came to Wenzhou to finish their evangelization work. However, only four of them left travel books which will be analyzed to discover the image of the Wenzhou folk beliefs in the missionaries’eyes. They are Grace Stott, William Edward Soothill and his wife Lucy Soothill as well as Irving Scott. This thesis is based on the theory of Imagology in Comparative Literature with the purpose of proving that the missionaries believe the Christian image is superior to the other image of folk beliefs from the interdisciplinary perspective. For the missionaries, God is the mighty one while the gods in Wenzhou are not capable enough to protect the idols made of clay. Therefore, discovering the useless aspects means highlighting the advantages of God. But undeniably, some changes and differences among the missionaries might be found after they stayed in Wenzhou for a period of time. As for the filial thought in the ancestor worship and the great Confucius in the sage worship, the missionaries show a little of their tolerance. But anyhow, they still insist that the self image is superior to the other image, with or without consciousness. To reach this goal, they spare every effort to depreciate the gods. This thesis has the significance of helping the western readers know Wenzhou better and improving the cultural communication between China and the West. What’s more, it helps to extend the research field of Comparative Literature, especially the interdisciplinary study of literature and Folklore. The author will divide the thesis into six chapters. In the first chapter, the literature review, methodology, text resources, significance and structure of this paper will be briefly introduced. The second chapter will talk about the image of demon belief and soul belief in the missionaries’ eyes as well as the strategy they take when the Satan image appears. The third chapter is the most important one among all the chapters because the nature worship and popular-gods worship are the main objects criticized by the missionaries. Also, these two beliefs are the biggest obstacle during the evangelization work. After the missionaries stayed in Wenzhou for a period, they realized that the attack on the gods only was not helpful for the mission work. Consequently, one of the missionaries, William Edward Soothill tried to build a relationship between God and gods to confuse the inhabitants. As the turning point, the ancestor worship and sage worship in the fourth chapter are studied to show the missionaries’changing of attitudes. Thus, the author can avoid the opposite voice that the viewpoint is over absolute. The fifth chapter will add some local color of the daily life in Wenzhou, which is closely related to the folk beliefs. Namely, they are wedding ceremony and funeral ceremony. Also, the missionaries showed their compromise when some traditional customs were against the Christian culture. The conclusion part will briefly summarize the main ideas of the previous chapters and emphasize again the missionaries’viewpoint of the superiority of the Christian image to the image of the folk beliefs in Wenzhou.