Cross-Border Religiosity and the Revival of Theravada Buddhism in Xishuangbanna, Southwest China

Abstract

ABSTRACT Since the early 1980s, China’s southwestern borderland area of Xishuangbanna in Yunnan Province has witnessed an astounding rejuvenation of Theravada Buddhism among the Dai-Lue and Bulang ethnic groups. This has occurred in the larger context of a general revitalisation of religion throughout China and specifically Theravada Buddhist revivalism in the upper-Mekong region. The emigration of the Dai-Lue and Bulang peoples in Xishuangbanna from the 1950s through the 1970s and their reconnection from the 1980s through the 2010s reforged a sense of trans-regional belonging across this area of China, Shan State in Myanmar, and northern Thailand. This sense of belonging re-established religious connections in the borderlands. This article argues that trans-regionalisation in the upper-Mekong region and the revival of Buddhist traditions in Xishuangbanna were the result of a synergistic interaction. Theravada Buddhism was rebuilt through the cooperation between cross-border monks and laypeople. Monks of the Yuan Buddhist tradition facilitated the rebuilding of Buddhism in Xishuangbanna amid the social milieu of religious revivalism in China. Moreover, this article explicitly analyses the indispensable role lay devotees played in rebuilding their Buddhist tradition by working within the local temple-village structures.