Review: Religions of Beijing, edited by You Bin and Timothy Knepper and Photography by Bob Blanchard

Abstract

Religions of Beijing is a long photo essay on seventeen of Beijing’s most prominent and historically significant Buddhist, Daoist, Christian, Confucian, and folk religion places of worship. While far from encyclopedic in its coverage of these select sites, the text provides more information and cultural context than most tourist guidebooks, and could effectively be used as one. All of the religious sites examined are approved and regulated by the government of the Peoples Republic of China, of course.This attractively produced book is the end-product of an obviously intense, high budget faculty-student collaborative research project. The bilingual text, Chinese on the left-hand pages and English on the right, was written in short formulaic sections by Chinese students from Minzu University and then professionally translated into English. Drake University students subsequently edited the entries in collaboration with the Chinese student authors. Many of the Drake student-editors visited the sites as well. While artifacts of the original Chinese wording and construction are discernable in the text—as well as subtle signs of Chinese governmental indoctrination and analytical categories—the effect is mostly charming, and intelligibility is never a problem. Occasional normative passages reveal the students’ awkward efforts to sound sympathetic to traditions they do not follow. Again, this is part of the appeal. The more than one hundred color photos accompanying the entries were taken by Bob Blanchard, a professional photographer. They’re beautiful and bring the descriptions to life, but they undermine the students’ role in the collaboration, at least in my opinion. Surely many students possess the camera skills to document a project like this.In structure and design, Religions of Beijing is modeled on A Spectrum of Faith, a 2017 book exploring the temples and places of worship of major world religions in greater Des Moines, Iowa, also written by Drake students, edited by Knepper, and with photographs by Bob Blanchard. Both books demonstrate the value of faculty-student collaborative research and publication. Religions of Beijing, in particular, stands out as the most impressive outcome of a faculty-student research project I have ever seen.Given the ongoing suppression of religion in the PRC, student travel groups might wish to boycott the country, so this is a project unlikely to be duplicated, either in Beijing or in other communities within the country. As a stimulus for similar projects elsewhere, however, the book has solid value, both suggesting a format and serving as an inspiration.