Prison Art From China's Ming Dynasty Reflects A Restriction Of Religious Freedom
Ying Zhang. Photo from The American Academy in Berlin, by Annette Hornischer
Ying Zhang, associate professor of history at Ohio State University, is exploring the connections among prison, art and religious freedom in a unique and meaningful way.
Zhang’s Nov. 1 lecture at The American Academy in Berlin accompanies her book “Confucians and Confinement: Imprisoned Officials in Ming China (1368-1644).” It’s the first book-length study of prison culture in premodern China, and it offers new insight on how religion adapts, how art helps express spirituality and the effects of imprisonment on the modern idea of religious freedom.
Religion in China during the Ming dynasty was widely interfaith, combining Buddhism, Confucianism, Daoism and other spiritual beliefs.
Prison was also a large part of the culture. Most Chinese bureaucrats were imprisoned at one point, as it was standard legal procedure to imprison government officials while they were investigated — guilty or not. They could be investigated for a wide variety of actions, and the imprisonment was indefinite. Zhang says that in her research she read stories of officials imprisoned for varying lengths of time; some were only in prison for a few days, but the longest example she found was a man who was imprisoned for 38 years.
Unsurprisingly, the conditions in these prisons were subpar. Prisoners wrote about crowded toilets, leaking roofs, narrow corridors and the consistent beat of the night watcher’s drum. Winters brought harsh cold.
Like many incarcerated do, these officials created art while they were imprisoned. This art often expressed a heartfelt desire for human connection and spirituality — and often served as a replacement for it.
Zhang describes the art that prisoners made during their imprisonment, with a focus on music, painting and calligraphy.
Most importantly, Zhang focuses on these art forms in the context of what she calls the “art of living.”
“I use the art of living as my main analytical framework in order to place religion at the heart of the prisoners’ artistic activities,” Zhang said. “These art forms all involved the educated man’s pursuit of self-cultivation — efforts to understand the nature of life and align life with cosmological transformations as manifested in nature and in this world.”
In this way also, the art of prisoners was an act of resilience against their surroundings, and the situation required prisoners to adapt their religion to their circumstances.
The story of jailed official Huang Daozhou is one example of this adapting religious belief that Zhang talks about in her lecture. Huang, who was being investigated for a serious political crime, practiced calligraphy. While in prison, he copied the Confucian text “Classic of Filial Piety” 120 times and circulated them inside and outside the prison. The final copy, in what Zhang describes as a “transformative” act in piety that was rare but highly regarded in these religious traditions, was written in ink mixed with Huang’s blood.
Huang was later deified, and his work became widespread; some migrants to Taiwan, most fishermen and merchants, worshiped him as a maritime and military deity.
Still, the limitations prison placed on the lives of the incarcerated can’t be overlooked — particularly when it comes to religious freedom.
All religion in a sense is lived, meaning it’s essential for believers to be able to fellowship with others, attend services and create community and routine connected to that religion. Zhang says this was especially true of the Ming dynasty in China.
Religious practice came primarily from ritual, performed by most in the society. When closed off to society, the incarcerated officials no longer had access to the practice of their religion.
The main purpose of the art created in prison, Zhang says, was to replicate religious ritual. The art was beautiful and spiritually rich, connected to nature and the rest of the world. But ultimately, Zhang says, it was “inadequate” as a replacement.
Zhang’s full lecture can be viewed on The American Academy in Berlin website.
Jillian Cheney is a contributing culture writer for Religion Unplugged. She also writes on American Protestantism and evangelical Christianity and was Religion Unplugged’s 2020-21 Poynter-Koch fellow. You can find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.