During my very first trip to Chengdu I started a long-term research on a small nunnery, the Jinsha Nunnery金沙庵, via archival research and interviews to the resident nuns. The nunnery is built on a tiny and busy commercial alley, with the main gate quite hidden by surrounding shops. Jinsha is a small community, but it is also a temple that was built in the Qing dynasty, and whose history includes the succession of more than thirteen generations of nuns, which is a rare and remarkable achievement in the female history of Buddhism.
I have extended my research to, so far, a total of more than 60 nunneries, located in various districts, counties, and cities within Chengdu, and other areas like Suining, Leshan, Mt. Emei, Neijiang, Nanchong. More sites will be added in 2024.
Several of these nunneries display photos of previous abbesses and resident nuns, and also of other monastics who have been important in the histories of these sites, in small rooms and shrines; these ‘pagoda’ are not merely a memorial of the temple nuns, but they represent the collective memory of larger communities, which go beyond the borders of a single site, and show how temples and networks can intersect and develop in a micro-area.
Preliminary findings have been presented in several talks and later published. Among the articles, “Monk Changyuan 昌圓 (1879–1945), Nuns in Chengdu, and Revaluation of Local Heritage: Voicing Local (In)Visible Narratives of Modern Sichuan Buddhism” (Journal of Chinese Religions 49, no. 2: 191-239), addresses nuns and nunneries in Chengdu, with special reference to their schools and other education initiatives. “Buddhist Discourses in Modern Suining (Sichuan): Local Discourses within Chinese and Regional Narratives” (Asia Major 34, no. 2: 127-179) also analyzes nuns and nunneries in Suining from the late Qing up to today. And the piece in Chinese “汉传佛教多元化图景中边缘女性的经验：近现代四川比丘尼的隐形和显性” (西南民族大學學報, no.3: 50-56), which has been highly praised by Chinese scholars; this pieces summarises my argument on (in)visibility of nuns in Republican Sichuan, under the main headings of charisma and leadership, education accomplishments, contribution in the Sino-Japanese war, memorialisation strategies.
You can also see a digital map, with the sites that I have visited so far and details of Buddhist women leaders in their communities. While the majority of sites are temples, some others are schools created for improving nuns’ education. A brief overview of the history of the sites and their conditions today is integrated with names of resident nuns and images; the map is developed and maintained by Yuwei Zhou.
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