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Religion and Beliefs
The religious life in China was always distinguished by its dynamics and variety. Three main doctrines - Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism - have been strongly influencing it for centuries on end, making up a syncretic unity in the Middle Ages. As to the strength and the duration of influencing the society, Confucianism occupies the top place. These teachings were influencing the mentality of most Chinese people through various local cults; corresponding customs, beliefs, rites, festivals and the like. In imperial China local cults possessed their own hierarchy, complex in structure. In the villages the cults of fertility gods were of primary importance, as well as various community cults, closely connected with the cult of ancestors. By now many traditional cults have vanished, but the most popular of them have become well-known and began to acquire the national scope.
In China of the late Middle Ages there emerged a tradition of syncretic sects with a fairly simple ritual life, usually resembling traditional forms of gods’ worshipping and presupposing peculiar ways of meditation.
In the 8th century AD Islam penetrated the country. The Chinese Muslims are traditionally considered a separate people, or more precisely, a “national minority”. In the end of the 14th century the first Christian missionaries – Jesuits – reached China. They were not engaged in religious propagation and preaching only, but were spreading European knowledge, opened and maintained hospitals, schools, orphanages for children and disabled, as well as other charity institutions. The missionaries considered Buddhism and Taoism to be idolatry; their attitude to Confucianism was that of scornful neglect. The Christianity failed to become an integral part of the national ideology, the less so - of the national mentality in China.
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