Meeting of Cultures and Architectural Dialogue: The Example of the Dominicans in Taiwan

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The article flows naturally but it could be enriched by re-visiting and remodelling section 3, especially the sub section 3.2 and 3.3.  For the logical and historical development, the order between the two sessions could be interchanged. In fact, the dialogue the author mentioned could be well explored in the private buildings on which missionaries have less impact than the public ones. In line with the three different attitudes mentioned in the encounter, the signs of cutting up and rejection of chinese tradition should be mentioned. The fact for instance that families of convert got rid of ancestor tablets is also one way of cultural dialogue. 

In  section 3.2. Public architecture, an elaboration should be made regarding the change of policy among Dominicans and which enabled the emergence of architectural innovations such as St. Catherina da Siena in Gaoxiung or St. Dominic in Taipei. Which is the history behind, which was the leading theology... and that shows the mental progress gained within the order and which could be responding to a certain effort of inculturating the christian faith. At least the Church of St Dominic could claim to be an illustration of an inculturated church in the Chinese context.  This being the case, explaining the architecture, the author could illustrate the evolution in the dialogue occuring in the minds of Dominican missionaries and that is reflected in their religious buildings.    

In this session, the paragraph 231-237 should be extended and develop further as a locus of the dialogue the author is claiming to be taking place through religous architectures. 

Other considerations are regarding the choices of words: 

line 6: factors that obstructed - perhaps 'impacted' or 'affected' would be alternatives 

line 54:  ' were destroyed, looted, and burned'.... 'were looted, destroyed and burned. 

line 95: the 'hate' toward Western people... I wonder whether 'hate' is not too strong.

line 136:  The Discovery of America  

line 137: 'can be considerate as a process composed by ' - can be considered as a process compsed of

line 144:  which is neutrality, indifference. (suggest to keep only one term. I don't think  'neutrality' and 'indifference'  are synonyms. 

line 191: built on 1863 - built in 1863

Last, some characters have disappeared and should be either restituted or deleted: 漢族，閩南，正廳，陰陽，八卦，萬有真原。

Author Response

Dearest reviewer,thank you very much for your help and invaluable comments on my article. I followed your advice by changing the order of the sub-paragraphs on public and private architecture, and I really believe that the article benefited a lot.
I corrected the problems with the Chinese characters that were unfortunately due to a LaTEx-related problem. Thank you for pointing this out to me.
I wish you all the best,

the author 

Reviewer 2 Report

The overall argument is important and it is introduced well. For this reason, the article should be published, but only subject to a number of revisions. The problems are listed in the next section, with recommendations for revision.

Advice for Improving

1.     English expression: all scholars need a good copyeditor, especially when English is a second language for academic writing. To be publishable, the author needs to show that Dominican missionary is more important than we knew and that it changes the traditional Taiwanese cultures by means of architectural and ideological influences.

2.     Comparative research: It seems that the theoretical discussion on Chinese traditional philosophy and Christianity is not systematic enough. Owing to the comparative nature of such a research project, the discussion on both two cultural studies becomes sporadic and insufficient. For instance, the following expression is unclear and misguiding: “world and the whole universe. Interestingly, in the church of San Dominic the Yin-yang symbol is substituted by the word love, the true principle according to which, according to the Catholic tradition, God created the universe and all that it contains.”(Line 228-230).

3.     This manuscript lacks the section of Introduction. At the start of the essay, the author should synthesize the existing literature on the topic and questions into different theoretical perspectives from which the conceptual framework (maybe inspired by Todorov and Lazzarotti’s book?) is derived and developed. That is to say, the literature review of the existing publications should be clearly and closely relevant to the research and explains the basis for the assumptions to be investigated. Introduction is NOT a just historical background. If author read some well written research papers published, you should know how to use those papers as a template to develop a paper that would follow the logic of research design and the standard template and format. In any way, the paper should be revised to meet the above standard.

4.     Discussion about Chinese traditional worships. The author wrote, “Dominicans tried to make a semantic translation of some of the main symbols of the Taiwanese Popular Religion. The main idea that underlies this semantic translation is that the Universal (Catholic) Church is a family and that Jesus should be considered the first ancestor.” (Line 233-236) However, the author should give an explicit definition of “Taiwanese Popular Religion”. In Chinese society, the Buddhists, Daoists and Neo-Confucians became more aware of the similarities among the different traditions, and therefore the ideas of “the three traditions merge into one” （san jiao heyi，三教合一）was the tendency. According to me, this syncretistic thought might be an essential attitude also for the ancestor’s worship in Taiwan. Besides, the author should also pay attention to the worship of Mazu(or Matsu, a Chinese sea goddess), because it is popular in Taiwan. Her temple festival is a major event in the country, with the largest celebrations around her temples at Dajia and Beigang.

5.     Technical errors about quotation or translation.

these are listed below:

1.     “Han ethnic group族”< 汉族

2.     “Minnan 南”< Hokkien闽南

3.     “Wanchin Basilica of the Immaculate Conception 金母殿” < 万金圣母殿

4.     “Immaculate Conception Cathedral 母原罪主教座堂” < 圣母原罪主教座堂

5.     “God of Heaven天” < 天主 or 上帝？

6.     “Bagua” < 八卦，Eight Trigrams

7.     “(fengshui水)” < 风水

8.     “Long Xi Tang 西堂” < 陇西堂

9.     “Clan Li李” < 李家

10.  “Wan You Zhen Yuan有真原” <万有真原

Author Response

Dearest reviewer,thank you very much for your help and invaluable comments on my article. thank you very much for your help and invaluable comments on my article. I followed your advice to add an introduction to my article and I really think the article has benefited a lot.
I have also taken care to better explain and present the concept of Taiwanese People's Religion as you rightly suggested. It actually makes the whole paragraph much more understandable.
I corrected the problems with the Chinese characters that were unfortunately due to a LaTEx-related problem. Thank you for pointing this out to me.
I wish you all the best,

the author 

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

I'm satisfied with the author's revision. I recommend the paper for publication.