Mystics, Ghosts and Faith Healers : FORCES OF CHINA'S PAST RE-EMERGE IN A NEW OCCULT CRAZE
April 19, 1992|MARLOWE HOOD | Marlowe Hood is an Asia scholar and writer based in New York.
THE QIGONG MEETING STARTS IN FIVE MINUTES," MY friend, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine, told me over the phone. "Do you want to go?" * It was August, 1988, and Beijing felt like a sprawling, polluted steam bath. The air was so sultry that even the thought of moving made me sweat. But that was not why I hesitated. * I was busy, busier than I had been since arriving in China three years earlier. Political and social tensions long simmering under the surface were suddenly beginning to boil over, and I was trying to get it all into newsprint. The steepest inflation under communist rule had sparked panic buying around the country and sent Deng Xiaoping into a helter-skelter retreat from reform policies; information trickling out of the annual summit-by-the-seaside of senior leaders pointed to a severe schism and a possible showdown; popular discontent over corruption and official malfeasance was more pronounced than ever before. These were, in hindsight, harbingers of the dramatic, tragic events soon to come. * Running off to hear a lecture about an arcane Chinese healing art seemed frivolous under the circumstances, but I needed a break. I told my friend Li Yi (not her real name) that I'd pick her up. *The Chinese press just then was full of enthusiastic paeans to qigong (pronounced CHEE-goong), and I had also heard firsthand testimony about its miraculous curative powers. It did sound intriguing, but as Li Yi outlined competing theories on how to project and manipulate qi --variably translated as "breath," "energy," or "vital life force"--my mind wandered back to the pile of dispatches on my desk. When she told me the presentation might last as long as four or even five hours, I almost turned around. *The hall, which held about 1,500, was an all-purpose auditorium for movies, political harangues and other forms of entertainment. When we stepped through the swinging doors, 20 minutes late, I was dumbstruck by the silence. Never had I seen a Chinese audience so utterly rapt. I counted four empty seats, two of them ours. On the stage, a young man in his mid-30s gave instructions in a measured, reassuring voice on the best way to sit and breathe in order to receive his qi . "His name is Zhang Hongbao," whispered Li Yi. I took my position along with everyone else.


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Surrounding me, judging by their dress and manner, was a representative cross section of urban China, as typical of Beijing's workers, students, soldiers, teachers and clerks as any group could be.

By way of introduction--to what, I wasn't sure--Master Zhang lectured on self-cultivation, interpersonal relations and a properly ordered society. "Each of you has tremendous power, and I can help you unleash it," he said with icy calm. After listening for nearly two hours to his insights and exhortations, I had the vague feeling that something crucial was missing from the broad sweep of his comments. Then it struck me: Not once had he even paid lip service to the Communist Party or socialism, a daring omission in a public speech on life's guiding principles.

Finally, I sensed, the main event was at hand. But Master Zhang's announcement that we were about to hear his recorded voice struck me as a bit cheap: At 10 yuan a head--three days' wages for most of those present--I expected a live performance. Before I could register my indignation to Li Yi, however, the gates to bedlam suddenly swung open.

I had, by that time, traveled, studied and lived in China on and off for more than a decade, but nothing in my experience had prepared me for what I witnessed. The auditorium reverberated with loud animal-like noises that made the hair on my arms stand on end--no words, just open-throated growls, hissing and maniacal, inhuman laughter. Within minutes, a middle-aged man, who seemed to look without seeing, began prancing down the aisle doing plies and pirouettes, grinning theatrically. His behavior was so at odds with the restraint common to most Chinese that I assumed that he was either disturbed or part of the show. But then, like kernels over an open fire, other people began to explode.

The young woman directly in front of me began to shake so violently that her wooden seat came unhinged and slammed into my knees. A People's Liberation Army soldier in uniform to my right shot out of his chair, stretched his arms toward the ceiling and sobbed hysterically, pausing only to gulp for air. There were about a dozen people in motion when a rotund, 50-year-old woman, whose likeness inhabits every neighborhood committee in the capital, stood up near the stage and let loose with a gut-wrenching, primal scream that raced in an interminable crescendo back through years, maybe decades of suppressed frustration.


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