How to Read the Analects Eight Hours a Day: The Variety of Dujing (Reading Classics) Experiences amid the Confucian Revival

Abstract

Since the 1980s, the Confucian revival in contemporary Chinese society has grown as a local, national, and even global phenomenon (Billioud and Thoraval 2015; Hubbert 2019). While the Confucian revival is often perceived as propelled by the official endorsement of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), this article focuses on a grassroots Confucian movement called dujing that is conducted in private settings outside state schools by adherents of the pedagogy, often contradicting the official educational policy and mainstream habit of reading. Dujing mobilises students (aged 4 to 18) to spend intensive time (eight hours a day) on repetitive reading aloud of ancient canonical texts without pedagogical exegesis (Billioud and Thoraval 2015; Wang 2018), which entails relinquishing mainstream schooling. Based on immersive and embodied participant observation, this article illustrates why and how students, teachers, and parents have become devoted to the radical practice of reading classics. Combining social study of Confucianism and anthropological scholarship on language and reading, this article articulates how the experiential repetition, long-term commitment, listening, interaction, and discipline in dujing schools help participants make sense of the dujing reading practice as the pursuit of dao, although this reading practice does not involve immediate interpretative labour to make sense of the classical texts being read. By comparing two dujing schools that practice distinct methods of reading, this article also shows the internal dynamic that drives the development, split, and reflection of dujing.