Zhào Pǔchū

In 1953, Zhào Pǔchū speaks at the conference preparing the establishment of the Buddhist Association.

Committee meeting during the General Assembly of the Chinese Buddhist Association in Beijing. Sherab Gyatso (seated 2nd from left), Zhào Pǔchū, the General Secretary, at the head end.

Zhào Pǔchū ( Chinese  趙朴初 , W.-G. Chao P'u-ch'u ; * November 5, 1907 , † May 21, 2000 in Beijing ) was a committed Buddhist layman and for many years the General Secretary of the Chinese Buddhist Association after the liberation . In his free time he devoted himself to calligraphy .

Life path

Zhào Pǔchū studied 1926–7 “liberal arts” at Soochow University ( 東吳 大學 , Dōngwú Dàxué ).

Since the 1930s he worked in the freight forwarding industry in Shanghai . Already at this time, Zhào was committed to the Buddhist lay organization “Pure Karma Society” ( 上海 佛教 淨 業 社 ) in whose headquarters he also lived in the “Garden of Enlightenment” ( 覺 園 ). His full turn to Buddhism did not take place until 1934/5 when the Panchen Lama gave him the Abhiṣeka initiation ( 灌頂 ).

During the occupation he was involved in humanitarian activities, from 1937-40 as director of the “Refugee Reception Division” of the “Shanghai Mercy Relief Alliance,” whose refugee homes he placed under the direction of clandestine CP cadres. His good connections in the highest party circles originate from this time, which would later protect him from all contemporary turmoil.

Calligraphy by Zhào Pǔchū over the gate of a hall of the Qīxiá temple near Nanking .

Until 1949 he remained director of the Hua-t'ung forwarding agency in Shanghai. At that time he continued to live in the "Garden of Enlightenment" of the monk Yìnguāng . In June of that year he joined as a “democratic Buddhist” the CAFPOD founded by Mǎ Xùlún ( 馬敘倫 , Ma Hsu-lun , October 1949 to November 1952, the first education minister of the people's government.). From the beginning, Zhào was a member of the “ Political Consultative Conference of the Chinese People .” From its fourth legislative term onwards, he was part of the standing committee of its Central Committee. It is not clear whether or when Zhào joined the CCP, but his behavior in the 1950s suggests a cadre function, he also appeared as an unofficial representative of the "Office for Religious Issues" (today: 國家 宗教 事務 局 , Guójiā zōngjiào shìwùjú ) . In any case, he became a member of the Democratic League ( 中國 民主 同盟 , Zhōngguó Mínzhǔ Tóngméng ) party in 1950 .

Since the liberation, Zhào has not only been active in various posts in the military and administrative council of East China, but also on the board of the Red Cross and in several societies for international understanding. He was a member of the National People's Congress as a member of his home province Ānhuī 1954-88.

Buddhist Association

His main field of activity from June 1953 was that of the general secretary of the Buddhist Association (BAC), which was founded in Beijing in 1953/6. In this capacity, he traveled abroad to nine countries from 1955-65. On these tours z. B. to the World Peace Congress in Sweden in May 1959 or during the loan of the tooth relic to Ceylon (today Sri Lanka ) he was nominally subordinate to the delegation leader Sherab Gyatsho , but actually he held the strings in hand.

In the early 1960s he traveled seven times to Tokyo for the World Conference on Prohibiting the Use of A and H Bombs and for General Disarmament . Until the sixth congress of the “World Fellowship of Buddhists” in Phnom Penh at the end of 1961, he was also vice president of this association.

During the Cultural Revolution , Zhào did not go public, but kept his post and in any case came back (already) in 1972 as a member of the executive committee of the BAC.

In February 1979 he became one of the vice-presidents of the Red Cross (later its honorary chairman) as well as acting head of the BAC and its study institute. From 1980 to 2000 he then headed the organization.
From August 1978 at the latest, he was deputy chairman of his block party (until 1988). Since this year there has also been a resumption of busy travel activity. In April 1978 he was in Teng Hsiao-ping ’s entourage in Japan. In August 1979 he traveled to the " World Conference on Religion and Peace " in Princeton.

After the constitutional amendment in 1980 (on religious issues), Zhào reappeared in 1984 as head of the delegation to the World Fellowship of Buddhists in Ceylon. For his peace work he received the Niwano Peace Prize, endowed with twenty million Japanese yen . In September of the same year he led a Buddhist delegation to the free part of Korea , in November he accompanied the Panchen Lama to Nepal. He appeared in Bangkok in May 1987 for the celebrations of King Bhumipol's sixtieth birthday . In the late 1990s, he appeared as an opponent of Falun Gong .

death

Zhào was cremated in the Bābǎoshān cemetery for revolutionaries on May 30, 2000, nine days after his death . Half of Zhào's ashes were thrown into the sea a year later. The administration of his homeland Tàihú , which also received part of the ashes in 2004, opened a 23 hectare Zhào Pǔchū Park in 2002. In the Fǎhuá temple outside Hángzhōu , founded in 2003, there has been a memorial pagoda since 2006, also with the remains of its ashes.

Literature and Sources

• Stephan von Minden (Ed.): Chinese Biographical Archive. Saur, Munich 1996–98, ISBN 3-598-33937-2 , Fiche 414. (accessed via the Chinese biographical index, 2000, 3 volumes)
• Johannes Prip-Møller, Henry Lohner: Buddhist temples in China. 中原佛寺 圖 考 [ Zhōngyuán fósì túkǎo ]; Volume II, Norderstedt 2017, ISBN 978-3-7448-7273-7 , pp. 630-2, 647.
• David Ownby, Vincent Goossaert (eds.): Making saints in modern China. Oxford University Press, New York 2017, ISBN 978-0-19-049458-2 , chap. 9.
• Shuren Dao: 趙樸初 居士 紀念 集 (Zhao Puchu ju shi ji nian ji). Beijing 2002, OCLC 781484040 . (Chinese)

Works

• 趙樸初 文集 [ Zhàopǔchū wénjí ]. Beijing 2007, ISBN 978-7-5075-2177-1 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ For such activities see: Politics of Philanthropy: Social Networks and Refugee Relief in Shanghai, 1932–1949. In: Nara Dillon (Ed.): At the Crossroads of Empires: Middlemen, Social Networks, and State-Building in Republican Shanghai. Stanford 2008, ISBN 978-0-8047-5619-8 and Marcia R. Ristaino: Jacquinot Safe Zone: Wartime Refugees in Shanghai. Stanford 2008, ISBN 978-0-8047-5793-5 .
2. ^ Section after: David Ownby, Vincent Goossaert (Ed.): Making saints in modern China. Oxford University Press, New York 2017, ISBN 978-0-19-049458-2 , chap. 9.
3. ^ John Strong, Sarah Strong: Report from China: A Post-Cultural Revolution Look at Buddhism. In: China Quarterly . No. 54, 1973, pp. 321-330.

See also

Commons : Zhao Puchu  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Buddhist Associations of China

Note: This article places the family name before the person's first name. This is the usual order in Chinese. Zhào is the family name here, Pǔchū is the first name.