Welcome to the new books network. This is the Nordic Asia podcast. Welcome to the Nordic Asia podcast, a collaboration sharing expertise on Asia across the Nordic region. My name is Hadi Maibach.
I'm the head of communication at the University of D'Arto Asia and South Estonia. Today with me, I have the pleasure to talk with Yu Shiang-Yoab, an associate professor at the Vogue Wang University, Taiwan, specializing in contemporary religions of Taiwan. Also, she's a research fellow at Oxford Center for Buddhist Studies. She has published various articles in Chinese and foreign scholarships from the CCK, International Scholarly Exchange for Thesis Fellowship, and the Fulbright American Study.
She completed her PhD in Sociology of Religion at the University of London in 2001, and her main regional focuses are religiosity in Taiwan and China, especially Buddhism in China and Taiwan, influences about the countries of religions and Zuchi. Currently, she's a professional fellow at the University of D'Arto for the Taiwan Studies program, which is a joint project between Kent University, Groningen University and Groningen University, and the Taiwanese Department of International and Cross-Straight Education. Welcome to the podcast. Please describe religious landscape of Taiwan.
Hello, and thank you very much. It's my honor to be here to talk to you about the religions landscape in Taiwan. I have been carrying on this study for the past. I've been teaching in for 20 years, and before that, I've been doing research in London about the religions landscape in Taiwan.
In total, I have been doing career research for almost 30 years. I must say, in recent years, we have very, very good news on Buddhism, because as you're properly aware, Taiwan was very democratic country and also very politically independent. So we have a vast amount of people who join religions. I think if you're doing the social survey that you would understand, actually, 90% of people who claim they have religious belief, and upon that, we have more interest in discovery than in Taiwan.
In the present moment, people have more than two religions. On the top of their traditional religion, we call it indigenous religion, maybe in academic term, we call it Confucianism or Daoism. But on the top of that, I think about 40% or even 50% people claim themselves as Buddhist. So Buddhist is very, very strong religion in contemporary Taiwan, especially the two movements which I have been doing research in the past 10 years.
One is Buddhist movement, and the other is Fogang Shan, an identity movement in my PhD research, which is a very important new Buddhism in contemporary Taiwan. If you talk to people generally in the street of Taipei or Taiwan, everybody will immediately announce to you that they know both movement and people might have a joint membership of this two Buddhist movement. So we are talking about a very, very important religious affiliation in nowadays people's life in Taiwan. And these two movements are corresponded in each other in many ways.
For instance, Fogang Shan is mainly a religious, a Buddhist tradition of Buddhism, which focus a lot on Shang-ga, and the Shang-ga is a very particular term we call it Buddhist monk and nuns. So Fogang Shan has trained about at least three thousand Buddhist monk and nuns in contemporary Taiwan, and they were sent to abroad to be a missionary to spread the seat of Taiwanese Buddhism. Whereas the other movement that I have been particularly interested in is the city movement. The city movement is literally found by Taiwanese nuns, and apparently they are fine-million lay people who join these movements.
These two movements are both international movements. So if you check very carefully in your local Taiwanese community or Chinese community, you will discover anywhere in the world that they have these two branches in their local Chinese or Taiwanese communities. Before we focus on the Sichi-leb of Tsuchi and the other movement, how does one differ compared to how Buddhism is seen and practiced in China or Japan compared with how it is practiced in Taiwan? Okay, it's very good questions.
And I was very lucky enough because I got to know the center of Oriental study that had a reading by the doctor, Abatina, Sohavatina two years ago. And at the recent time, the Buddhist study is getting very popular in the world, particularly, I think, in Asia and also in Europe and also in America. And we are going to see that Buddhism is going to be more and more prevalent in Australia. So I want to talk about the general and religious belief in Taiwan because Taiwan, mostly the 90% of Taiwanese population are Chinese.
And those Chinese, one very particular, because Chinese people begin to come to Taiwan normally about 400 years ago, because when the mainland China, they had a big political turnover, so that Chinese people would probably come to Taiwan. But in those days, the immigrants are kind of individual and they are in small group. And Taiwan only received very famous future population growth after World War II when Jiang Aishu was defeated by Mao Zedong after World War II. So we have two million people, migrant to China to Taiwan.
So this comes with the Chinese Buddhism. Before that, Taiwan was colonial of Japan. So in those days, Taiwan was dominated by Japanese Buddhism. And Japanese when you're talking about Japanese Buddhism, you need to aware of one of some of a very, very specific future in the Japanese Buddhism, because in Japan, in the 13th century, Japan has a huge revolution on Buddhism.
And in those in the 13th century, the most distinctive future was Nijin and Buddhism. And this Buddhism group, which was the first group to claim that the lay people, not the monk or the nuns has the power to be enlightened, to become Buddhists. In the first in the 13th century, the Japanese Buddhism first announced that the lay people were the ability for the lay people to be enlightened, to become Buddha, or maybe at the second choice to become Bodhisattvadam. But this kind of evolution for being a monastic and then transmitted to for the lay people like us, we are late.
We don't need to live in the monastery that we can have a marriage life in this case. For Japan, take 700 years for them to develop in as a lay Buddhist organization. And only until then, I think in 1994, the only one first one lay Buddhist organization in the world has established the so-called Soka Gai Kha in 1944, 1994. And this took Japan for 700 years to develop in the monastic Buddhism to lay Buddhist.
But in Taiwan, that's why I want to talk about Sichi. Sichi is very important because Sichi is not only founded by a woman and a majority people who joined Sichi are also females. And apart from the obstacle I mentioned, for you to become a Buddha or be enlightened, we are not talking about Buddha or just being enlightened, you not only need to be in the monaster, you also need to become the shanga or the mountain. But Japan take this step for 700 years.
So in the beginning of the 21st century, the lay people are allowed to be enlightened and to be claimed themselves, maybe the self are even higher to be as a Buddha. But Sichi is very important. The founder is called Zhenyi, Master Zhenyi, she claimed because herself didn't receive a very strong traditional training. So Sichi is also a sense of fortunate for us because she literally shined on the whole training program that happened in Japan for 700 years.
So in 50 years, she developed a program for lay people, not only stay in the monaster, they can go out to recruit members and maybe asking donations and also give this donation to helping other people in the world. Like someone who else has a disaster has an earthquake that Sichi lay followers would immediately appear in the area and not only give their material support, they probably would stay there to build a city village there to help in the people and areas to recover from the disaster. So this is very important in Taiwan because Taiwan is a new territory for Buddhism. Even our history for Buddhism is only for 400 years.
And if you compare the huge histories of Buddhism in India and all the Buddhism in other ways, they have a very, very long history and very, very complicated way of training. And in the old days, there's no chance for women or even for women to become joined as a co-leader of this movement. So Sichi, and maybe in some time, for one time, because one thing is about for one time is there were also 80% of the monastic people are females. So we are talking about the future phenomenon of females who joined a very powerful maybe themselves and also make the religious group very powerful and become a leading node in society or even go back to India or in somewhere else, they are becoming very, very important movement for contemporary Buddhism.
So the reason for me to become a researcher, fellow Oxford Center of Buddhist Studies was also very interesting because of this research from the Dins. In 20 years ago, when I just finished my PhD, I have a great difficulty to publish my research. And I've been through a lot of other publishers and they all told me it's very difficult to publish a book which is only concentrating on Buddhism in Taiwan. And so the publication took me about 10 years to get the right publisher for it to publish it.
Then in the end, my friend who came back from England and after me about five years, she suggested me to find a publisher who which if we pay for then they probably would publish our manuscript. And as you know, things we were working in academic world, it's very important for us to have an upcoming in published time to time. So I was agreed. So we found this publisher called Global Orient who agreed to publish our book.
Now we can pay them some money for the cost of a publication. Then two years after we received a disaster from this publisher, Ben Crapp. So which means our last like a six years work is to demolish it because since the publisher is Ben Crapp. So it means two things.
First things if we are losing our money and second things our book was not published. So but two years after this disaster happened, I received a letter from Brio, which is very big publisher in Holland. They told me before Global Orientals, Ben Crapp was so to this big publisher in Holland. So they asked me to have a proper reviewer for our publication.
And at the time I already working in Taiwan for 10 years. I lost all my contact in the West or in the world. So I'd write to everybody. I know who had a slightly email address I had.
And no one responded my request for review my book. Only Professor Gombuji who responded my request. And after he read Professor Gombuji was my professor, Professor Gombuji when I was in London. So we didn't have much time to and then he did he was too busy to read our work.
So soon after he read my book, he discovered my book was very important. It's because I opened another field for the British studies. So he immediately made me to become the researcher, fellow of Oxford Center of British Studies. Then that was news 10 years ago.
And after that, last year we finished our second book, which is about Buddhism, Chinese Buddhism today with co-authors with Richard Gombuji. And this all consequently bring me to Tatoo University for the Taiwanese Chair this year. And we just finished my visit in the first of January. So I took this opportunity to introduce my students and also my audience about my two, this important research of my 30 years work.
This is really, really fascinating. Thank you for providing this context that helps us to understand the importance of your research and this topic related to Taiwanese Buddhism. You mentioned that it was very difficult for you to publish about at the beginning, it was very difficult for you to publish about your research. And you mentioned that Taiwanese Buddhism is very special and in some way revolutionary.
It changes the previous paradigms. How do other Buddhist countries where Buddhist is old, historical, sea-tianist Buddhism? Buddhism has very, very long traditions from India and maybe in other countries. But Taiwanese Buddhism has go through the two processes.
One is modernization and the other one is for city. It's much more cutting-edge in religious field. We call it secularization. So we mean secularization, which means it has been moved all the secularized from the part which in the past people never think its value of being a religious movement on which it doesn't consider as important to be religious in this point.
So for instance, some of the Buddhist group consider I remember once I was in Japan or in Taipei, I don't remember in a very, very traditional Buddhist conference. In that conference, I think the host was the jibouti-zams. But they invited a lot of very important monks and also important traditional Buddhist scholars from like Thailand or from England and from American. Everybody was comfortable with their research.
And for me, I was comfortable with female participants and also female leaders in which was big, big surprise in the conference, even in academic conference. They think this is too cutting-edge. And some of them doesn't believe we can call them as a Buddhism because as you know, the Buddhism should be like a traditional leadership, share their head and live away from their family. But the cutting-edge, like Taiwan, because we have a society which is very urbanized.
I have been to Estonia because Estonia is almost at the same size as Taiwan, but Estonia only have one million population, whereas Taiwan has 23 million populations. On the couple of days, two-thirds of Taiwan, less gap was inhabitable. So imagine our ethnicity of population is almost 100 times than Estonia. So we are living in a place full of people and very, very little people, the top place where was unreachable by humans.
So imagine we are living with these condensed populations. So people may not be able to find the ancient root to be enlightened or to practice the Buddhist traditional technicals. They can't really go to retreat and they have to stand as an urban center. We call it like maybe it's non-monasterly, normally we call it the Harra or Buddhist center, which is surrounded by lots of lots of people.
So in a way, the society and the geography make this religion to be modernized. To be modernized, they have to take the new dimension of the people from the society. So in this case, as perhaps lots of people know, we are still a society who is dominated by Confucianism. So Confucianism means that the male descendants of the male members of the family had to produce their next generation and carry out the family So in this sense, it's very difficult for the monasteries or for the religion like Buddhism to encourage the male members to live their family a joint religious movement.
So in this way, Sichi and the four grandsen is very geniusly. Let's discover that. Let's give the hope for the female because if female in transition, they are not wished to carry out the family in light. Perhaps the female will be more interested in their spiritual development.
So these two moments, they are generously to discovered that the new angles of the population and they can contribute much more than the older generation, the male generations. My research initially, I didn't want to talk about gender issues, but as far as I done research more, both in Sichi and the four grandsen, they were all constituted by the majority, I think at least three quarter of the participants are all females. And also the females also constitute the majority of lay leadership. So this is the area which traditional Buddhism, not even in India or even in Japan or even in Thailand, which is very rarely found.
The female can be the leading role of religious organizations, not even in Japan, because even Taiwan has a huge influence by the Japanese Buddhism, but Japanese Buddhist nuns still struggle very much to get their digital position in Japan, so they didn't have the form of a real organization or the really formal term in their society. But in Taiwan, you can go to each monastery or each temple or each religious center, they all occupy by women. So this is my other interest of research. I wanted to talk about female spirituality.
I think this is very important on the 21st century, because female got the same type of education and they were socially or financially independent. So they are not really confined in their traditional role. So they can travel, father, they can go somewhere longer journey to be able to discover their own spiritual belonging. So the 21st, we are not only in the 2024, but we don't know maybe by the end of this century, the whole religion's less kept in the world that will be changed, because the female is getting more stronger than in the past.
What we see in Europe and for instance in North America is that often, although mostly men are leaders of religion, they are priests and other types of leaders, women are the ones who carry on religious traditions and who work, who do educational work in religious organizations. Why there is this gender difference in Taiwan in comparison with Japan? That's a very good book. I think a fun part of one of the American scholars, she also doing research on Japanese Buddhism, which I inspire so much on her research.
And she said that in special in the world of East Asia, she said because the pollution, if you're familiar with cultural terms, women as pollution and also culturally, we are dangerous because we have a period and then also we carry on stable culture, you know, and then because women need to marry to men's family, and this kind of pollution would cause that social chaotic and make, you know, the thing that would in transition, that would think women is dangerous even in Christian church or even in Judaism. So they have to focus on the leadership for the male because male doesn't have a problem with their period and that type of culturally being polluted. But in Oriental society, as far as remember, because our pollution and our female as gender as dangerous in our culture is not as strong as Christianity or not as strong as in Judaism. So female is easier to carry on, like although the in Chinese traditional society still leadership is only handled on the handle of the men, but from female to have a spiritual role, although it's quite new thing that people doesn't really against that much because normally they still think that cultural thing is not that, you know, that spiritual believing is still very feminine, carry on by a lot of feminist beauty.
And as you understand in my research, I discover those those females, even the leaders or even just the participants, they are volunteer, they don't really charge it. And they don't really indentures with their family finances. So which is very, very important for a religious group. If you have an abundant or female volunteer labels or even they can go to work for the religious group, which is, you know, for a religious group, where we because in Taiwanese society, we don't have our political situation is a church and the religious belief are separated.
So we don't got any sponsorship from the government. So all the religious group have to depend on their own income for their own finances. So in this sense, to seeking all the donations is very important for every religious group. And imagine, especially these these women, they can go out to recruit people and just collecting very, very small money, as far as I research, I discovered in the beginning for every city member that they collected, that said, everyone can save like one cent, like a European Europe, one euro to save a family life that in 30 years ago.
So each people can just give them one euro per month. In order, but if you consider your family has five people, which means you have to give one euro, five euro per day. But this we call it commissioner, we come to your home to collect your monthly donation. And the one, the other thing is their financial transmission was so transparent.
Every month, you will gather free, you know, live later to identify how much money you give to this movement and how much you have been spent and then we elaborated a story like we never use people's donations on our private funds. We never go used for our pocket. They have a lot of elaborating story of how they're precious on people's donations. And the other good things on the city is that they didn't go back to the original Buddhist leg.
We are going to enlightenment to become a bodhisattva or become Buddha. So you take another route that become a medical charity. So if you are a medical charity, it will experience different miracles. For example, in Sijis, the head of master will always talk to people like our donation.
It's not only safe for them to live all their poor life, but actually, they will give them the new eyes or give them the new lens. Also said to give people a new, the new chair or the new leg. So I think this is very important movement for Sijis from the traditional religious group. Going to have one more step from a medical charity.
And once if you are part of medical charity, you will encounter with a lot of medical sciences. So when you are encounter with medical sciences, you blow out your mind. Everything is become evolutionist. Everything is going to do with science development.
So this immediate switch, people is no longer superstitious. They will no longer go into the better witchcraft and other directions. So I think that this is all because the Japanese Buddhist infants, it's not come from India, it's come from Japanese infants. So from the traditional Buddhist, go one more step to the medical charity.
It's very, very important. So one page changes, they will get rid of all the superstitious, all the gender equalities, all the traditional baggage. So this is a religious group which is able to face the future because they are scientists, medical science based. So this is very important for religious group to transfer into a medical charity.
So I think this megatonity is so much different from Buddhism in India or Buddhism in Thailand because then they did encounter with the medical science. And if the movement did encounter with the medical science, it would come back to their old transition, like with the fortune tailings, with your back camera, with a lot of things. But because fortunate enough, we have encountered with the medical science in our religions. And this is a big evolution to be with the new civilizations of Taiwan.
And if I have another chance, I would talk about the new development of for consent, because for one's sake, it's a monastery odors. So they would like to have more people to join the religious monastery to become a monk or nun. And as you know, Taiwan may be in the future to Estonia too. We are facing the very, very dangerous of a very, very little birth rate.
So now our day is higher than the birth rate. So we are the decline nation, the decline rate of the birth rate is really become a national crisis. And I think this happened to everywhere. But the founder of Fogang Shanhu is Master Xingyun.
Unfortunately, we lost him last year. He died after New Year's. But he is very, very foreseen. He think that the booty is especially Chinese booty that is so good.
So he came to mission allies in the booty then. So in the world, now we have about 200 branches in the world with Fogang Shan branches. And he tried to switch Fogang Shan in African, but as you know, African has very, very strong anti-religious because they are colonial histories. So our missionally work is not very successful in African spatially in South of every country.
And then a very controversial document to talk about, we try to convert people into black Africa into Chinese booty then. So this was I think it was two years ago in Toronto Film Festival. This document was showing which caused very few controversies in our missionally work. But fortunately enough, Fogang Shanhu has a very successful missional work in India.
As you know, India has in other booty then has been disappeared in India for many thousand years ago. But because most especially he really wanted to have booty then to go back to Indian again. So I think that he has I haven't been to India myself, but we are now we have an Indian black Indian who are Fogang Shan's monk. And we have at least 15 of them.
And those booties monk, especially we can call it as a Chinese booty monk from India. They can be the future of Chinese booty then because those people they are very confident and they are good with their English. So they wanted to be trained in Fogang Shan and I have interviewed few of them who had been starting with me in my university. He told me he he wanted to become a booty monk himself.
But the problem is because now there's a different section of a booty's monasteries. And especially if you want to be trained to be a professional monk, in all this perhaps it would take you about more than 10 years to be a disciple or to be the trainee for 10 years and then you never become a master. But because for one's and we for novivot become a Buddhist month as a systematic code them of curriculum which I argue in my latest book through like four years of university education. And noviz can be trained as a Buddhist master.
Then soon after he graduated as a university degree, maybe he will learn all the rich and all the languages he needs all the knowledge of what he needs to be a Buddhist priest. Then he will follow the missionary to go to abroad, maybe go to India or go to America who he can establish the new missional work. This is not, we have to be very careful at this. We are not talking about colonialized but just be spreading the Buddhist seed from to other as a next group and in the property center.
This teaching is work to them. So this might be there in the future of the development. So I'm very I'm very happy for in the end that we got this 15 Indian monk in in for Gung Shan. Does the organization so she also do some sort of missionary work?
Because as you know it is a major Buddhist humanitarian aid organization today in the world and they have been also called an octopus organization to be sized a number of work fields. You mentioned medicine but there are also others. So is missionary work part of their toolbox as well or not? Yes, especially I think Buddhism is a missionary religion.
Because when Buddha first they get 30 disciples, he asks them, you have done enough things on me already. Please go back to your home and spread the Buddhist seed. And this is particularly very important but I think that I done there. I have done research on them for many many years.
So we have to understand how that's the operator when they are in foreign countries. And for Gung Shan and the city are really two different types. For one thing it's very much central control. So if the the main one person run the youngsters in Malawi, let's say maybe in Malawi.
And if this young man deciding to want to become a monk in Fogang Shan, no matter where they are, they have to come back to Taiwan and perform the triple ordination in Taiwan, then being educated in Taiwan to then all over the central world. So in the same way, all the Fogang Shan branch in the world, they receive the money or the finance from central control. So Master Xin was the head figure. He decided and then sometimes I read about his story that he went to trouble with his disciple, maybe five or six of them.
And then they, for instance, they were in Brazil and then he discovered why not there's no Chinese Buddhist temple there. And then he said, who wants to stay here? And then they said, oh, I want to stay here. Then Xin will left him there.
And then the dresser group will come back to Taiwan. And this guy will try to survive. And then the headquarter will send him some money. And then he probably will work in China time and find their apartment place.
And then in the end, Fogang Shan will give them the finance and then the people help from Taiwan. But Xin is working completely different because Xin actually is a lay movement. So Xin need to find out their resources by themselves. So as I mentioned earlier, Xin is a member of the Chinese member.
We call it the commissioner. If you want to become a commissioner, you need to have at least 30 people, 30 members to pay you monthly. So if I'm in Estonia, I want to become a commissioner. I need you and other people to pay me monthly.
No matter if I you are or 50, you are, but at least I need to have 30 people. Who is my member? In the end, then I will use my home at the center. So called information center, then gradually, maybe someone donated a piece of land or we have a permanent place.
So city is working so totally different. Everything is locally by their own local resource, both 3G and Fogang Shan. They all follow in the headquarter's missions. So everything is directly centered, directly from the headquarter's.
I remember I went to for one song one because I've been to the city for many, many years. Every time every morning, when there's a congregation service, the international branches, no matter the time differences, they will still do the morning service at the same time. And so it's really a modern movement. So they are high tech.
It's very, very important for them. So they are really, very careful on using the modern technologies to receive the first information and the first guideline from the headquarters. So each every day, they will listen to the master's speech. No matter where they are in South America and South Africa, they will do the same work every morning.
But the only difference is they are doing the service for their local people. So in the end, the local people perhaps, maybe if they wanted to have a father engagement with this religious group, but they still have to come back to Taiwan to have their ordination or to have their, we call it a satisfactor. And you probably are aware now that we have quite a lot of the people from China, because in the end, we are still talking about these are the two very, very more than Chinese Buddhism. We are a lot of teaching and practice are very appealing only to the Chinese.
So these two movements are very, very important in China. And they all have branches in China, especially for one's and because for one's and is traditional Buddhism. So in fact, for one's and is the only one Buddhist group is all allowed to preach in China by general Xi Jinping. And Xi Jinping was allowed, but Xi Jinping is the first MPO.
This is a two-month movement. It appeared to many Chinese. A lot of teaching and practice is only work for the Chinese and maybe all of the foreigners will think that it's too much logic for them. It is fascinating.
Very, very interesting to give into account everything that takes place in the world, especially in China. But this leads me to my next question. We know that at least with the GGG, there has been this anti movement against it in Taiwan since 2010. Can you tell us where it emerged and what is the motivation to work against such an organization?
Xi Jinping, for me as a researcher, I think Xi Jinping really, you know, they draw a piece of cake and literally it works. You can eat a cake so that the master draw a piece of cake on the paper, but that is really at the bottom. But because it's too radical, as you know, it doesn't really have like a monastic training. And also, it really goes out to collect people's money every month.
And also, that's a lot of them. Most of them are later. So, and you must know that Xi and for once then, it appears to lower middle class, not only teachers, or very low rank of the civil servant, Xi are to them, businessmen, to a lot of people who have international offices, and they are very high tech people. So, Xi caused the controversy in 2010, because as you know, Xi was, they used ordinary, as I told you, how do they find their center is they use people's homes as a beginning.
Then in the end, when this movement becomes bigger, they will probably ask the the movement to purchase this piece of land to become in the center of Xi Jinping's permanent place. And normally, my understanding is, normally this type of purchasing sometimes close to the government to change their land policies. Because in the old days, this land, perhaps it's not usable because the water preserve or maybe because the air pollution and this type of things. But as you know, Xi, they are very deep roots in people.
So, they will go to the local office like every day, every day, became like a group. And imagine if they have a member who happened to work in on this console, they probably would change the regulation in order to meet that the city's need. So, this gradually caused a lot of controversy because why not my piece of then has a difficulty to change, to change the regulation to make it like a usable property land. But you are able to change this piece of then to become a commercial using and as I told you, because a lot of people come from upper middle class.
So, if this center of this land is only for Xi's charity, maybe the rest of the piece of then is usable for the developing of the property. They probably will build a flux or the housing and the rest of land. But during the transaction of the land changes, not only this land change, the rest of them will change it at the same time. So, this caused a lot of controversy because when the local people said this land, we are not allowed to use this land for commercial purposes of the developing.
You say to us, in the beginning, you only apply this land at your center for people to do the medication. So, not the rest of them will ever, especially when, as you know, when, because now, lots of our religious leaders are in OA. So, people will try to give them very luxury, like they probably go out with luxury cards. But they are all serviced by their members.
You know, the media is very popular. Now, so, perhaps sometimes it's just taking a picture by the, by the people pedestrians in the streets. So, this becomes a like a scandal. So, Xi must be, it would have to be really careful spatial and land development, because as you know, and in the way, for one's sake, it's still more cautious on this sense, because, as you know, it's still monastic development.
So, they still want to be away from people's that still try to keep their monasteries to odors. But this is like a weakness and strength, because the Xi is so late or re-entered, so make it so rich and powerful. On the same time, for one's sake, it's so conservative and the standard remorse on the people. Maybe it's less successful than the Xi.
But on the same time, for one's sake, it's only one allowed to preach in China, but the PCR government, you have to be balanced on the development of the future of the religion. So, so Xi now, because if you know the media, it can be so powerful. So, and but actually, Xi has to recruit the most successful media professions in their group. They are media, they are commercial, everything, they win the world, most of the times.
So, Xi is very, very high-tech, but they are still the richest in Taiwan. We are approaching the end of our discussion. But before ending it, I would like to ask you to be a so-called Poitian seller. What do you think the future will bring to these two movements, but also to time in its religious landscape?
Will we see more security, or will this two organization and its real-ality, religiousness in Taiwan be as important as it is today? I think for Xi, Xi is their master, Zhen-Yin. It's just like an angel for a lot of lay people. As you know, the histories of Chinese people, it's very difficult for the lay to have their own lay leaders.
And it's just fortunate that they have this master who is aware of that Xi need to go with the medical charity, make these religions very, very successful. But my personal thing is, if my protection is correct, I think that is just like once a palm the angel has arrived to them. And Chinese for the long histories, it would still go back to the history. We have a masters and a monasteries.
So they would go back to the old fashion, even though to be modernized doesn't necessarily mean to be secularized. But as we see, there's now that we have more females coming to become monastic members. Well, the leadership is still on the hand of men, mostly. So even now we have 90% of them are females, but still the leading position is still on the hand of men.
And even the women still have to be held like men in the religious organization. So it's just one upon the time there's a female coming out. And maybe it's a nice thing to talking about. Now we have so many females, but who knows, maybe we'll go back to a very conservative route.
I guess this is something that we can only see what the future will bring us. And then we can discuss it once we're there. As you mentioned, there is so much to research. There are so many interesting topics and necessary topics for others to understand.
What are your upcoming plans regarding publications, projects or planned workshops that you can and want to mention? As you know, I was working with Oxford for my research. And recently we come up with an interesting topic. You see, because I recently I get to know quite a few Koreans.
And as you know, Korean and Taiwan were very similar because we both were Japanese cloning before World War II. But the whole Korean became a Christian country, but the Taiwan became Buddhist country. And we say the majority, they are Christian. And then in all the Taiwan majority are Buddhist, all around on the bottom of that, we are all Confucianists.
So we wanted to find out the and my hypothesis of my next research is because religion is to do with your psychology fear. And Korea and the South Korea and the North Korea, because South Korea is relatively bigger than North Korea. So South Korea need to be Christian because the fishing is a very positive religion. They are very fight for and at the same time, Buddhism is a very pessimistic religion.
In a way, even with we call ourselves as a modern Buddhist, in a deep sense, our philosophy is still very pessimistic. But the whole and the majority of Taiwan become Buddhist rather than a Christian, because before World War II, we were a lot of missionally Christian missionary in Taiwan. And our deeper psychology fear was because China is so bigger. Taiwan is so small.
So we can't positive it's not working in Taiwan. We have to be pessimistic. So we choose a pessimistic religion. And if I have a more time, I will try to develop in the theme bigger.
Is the Asia is so important, not only geographically. So it's very important to know what the people's deeper desire in their heart. In the end of this month, I probably will go to Sri Lanka to present my paper to them. But the still think of my my research is not Buddhist enough.
It's not really a Buddhist paper, but I will try to talk to them. The Buddhism has a lot of new forms. And also female can be leaders of Buddhism. So this is a current research plant.
And hopefully I can do more research with Oxford and maybe with tattoo. We are very interested in cooperating with you. And we wish you luck with your current upcoming projects. And these topics are fascinating and very, very important, as you mentioned.
My name is Edi Muybak. Thank you for joining the Nordic Asia podcast showcasing Nordic collaboration in studying Asia. You have been listening to the Nordic Asia podcast.