Identity in Transnational Buddhism—The Case of a Chinese Buddhist Nun in Shan State, Myanmar

Abstract

This paper will use the case study of a Chinese Mahayana Buddhist nun in a border town in Shan state, Myanmar, to explore the importance of identity in transnational Buddhism. Three life stories related to the Chinese Mahayana Buddhist nun will be told; that is, stories of her mother, her tonsure grandmaster, and herself. The main discussion of this paper is on the analysis of three dimensions of the nun’s identity, which are overseas Chinese, Mahayana monastic, and Buddhist nun. This paper will argue that identity is a crucial factor in transnational Buddhism, for identity helps an individual to communicate, interact, and take actions with others transnationally.

This paper will analyze the case of a Chinese Mahayana Buddhist nun in Shan State, Myanmar,1 near the border with Thailand to explore the role of identity in transnational Buddhism. The focus of the discussion will be on the case study’s identity as an overseas Chinese Mahayana Buddhist nun and the relationship between her identity and the Buddhist transnational network.

The information in this paper is based on my ethnographic fieldwork in the case study’s nunnery in July 2019 and January–February 2020 and two in-depth interviews with the case study (31 July 2019 and 13 June 2021). The interviews were recorded and transcribed later, and the second interview was conducted online because the previously planned fieldwork was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Unless otherwise stated, the ethnographic information in this paper comes from my fieldwork and the two in-depth interviews. Following the introduction, there will be two main parts of the discussion in this paper: firstly, I will give life stories about the case study and then move on to a discussion regarding the relationship between identity and the transnational Buddhist network.

1. Introduction

The term “translational” is often confused with the term and concept of “globalization”, which refers to “the compression of the world” (Robertson 1995, p. 40) brought by the improvement of technology and the increasing homogeneity across time and space; as well as the notion of “glocalization” which implies a particular local version of a globalizing and homogeneous phenomenon (Robertson 1995, p. 40). However, Kearney attests that the notion of globalization tends to refer to the “social, economic, cultural, and demographic processes” (Kearney 1995, p. 548) that are decentralized, while transnational processes tend to be “anchored in and transcend one or more nation-states” (Kearney 1995, p. 548). Transnational religion implies border-crossing networking from below by ordinary, culturally deprived people, fewer Western-centralized, and the flow of religious people and services (Kinney 2015, p. 385). The term “transnational Buddhism”, therefore, points to the networking of Buddhists across national borders and allows scholars to study border-crossing activities at an individual level (Cheng 2020, pp. 5–6).

Transnational Buddhism is not a new phenomenon. Sen has stated that networks of cross-regional activities in Asia, which can be traced back to as early as the first and second centuries CE and overtime, “resulted in the emergence of distinct identities, often imposed by others, among Buddhist communities that are important for understanding the diversity and multiplicity of the Buddhist world …” (Sen 2018, p. 1). In other words, a shared Buddhist identity is important in constructing and sustaining cross-border networking and is crucial to understanding “the Buddhist world” (Sen 2018, p. 1).

Identity is “people’s source of meaning and experience” (Castells 2010, p. 6). Identities are socially constructed, and social actors internalize identities and construct meaning around their identities (Castells 2010, p. 7). A person may have multiple identities (Burke and Stets 2009, p. 3), such as the case study in this paper. In Castells’ study, identity is the key factor for global networking in the information age (2010). Although Castells’ study focuses mostly on social and political networking, the contributors to the book, Buddhist Encounters and Identities Across East Asia (Heirman et al. 2018), note the importance of identity in Buddhist networks, especially Dessein, whose article highlights the significance of identity in Buddhist networking (Dessein 2018, pp. 320–39). Other studies of Buddhist identity include the discussion on Buddhist identities in North America (e.g., Numrich 2003), Buddhist nationalism (e.g., Rambukwella 2018), or monastic networks (e.g., Chia 2020). I hope this paper will contribute to the ongoing academic discussion on Buddhist identity and transnational networking.

2. Master Hong and Life Stories

I will call my case study and main nun informant ‘Master Hong’2. At the time of my fieldwork, she is the abbess of a Chinese Mahayana nunnery which I will call ‘Mercy Nunnery’ in this paper. Mercy Nunnery is located in a border town in Shan State (called “Rivertown” in this paper), just a few minutes’ drive from the border with Thailand. She was born in Shan state, Myanmar, in 1962 as a second generation of Chinese migrants from the Yunnan province. In the recount of her life story, she spent a great length of time talking about the two greatest inspirations in her life, her mother and her tonsure grandmaster, monk Grandmaster Xing (1924–1989). Because their life stories are important in understanding Master Hong as well as the Chinese diaspora in Myanmar, I will also include the two life stories here.

2.1. Two Life Stories

In her recount of her mother’s life story, her mother (hereafter “Jing”) had a lifelong struggle with patriarchal oppression and social upheaval. Jing was said to have come from an affluent family in Yunnan province, southern China. When Jing’s mother was barely a teenager, she was given in marriage to Jing’s father, a man of more than seventy years her senior. The psychological abuse in the marriage was so great that Jing’s mother committed suicide shortly after giving birth to Jing. When Jing turned fourteen, her much older half-brothers could not wait to marry her off. Jing’s marriage was an unhappy one, too. Jing’s husband, Master Hong’s father, was described as a spoilt rich boy who could not be bothered to work. With the Communist victory in China in 1949, the landlord-class family fled. Master Hong’s family became penniless refugees in the Shan state. Chinese civil war had spilled over to Myanmar, especially in the Shan state, and caused much social turmoil (Tun 2009, pp. 305–11).

As if reflecting the violence and lawlessness of the time, Master Hong told stories of kidnaps and robberies. Master Hong credited her mother for keeping the family together. She recalled Jing’s love for reading:

Although my mother had only one year of formal education, she loved reading. She would hurry us, the children, to bed around eight o’clock and use the rest of the evening to read. She was particularly fond of history and would read all kinds of history books!3

In Master Hong’s description of her mother, Jing was intelligent and hard-working and could have had a successful career had it not been for patriarchal constraints. This might explain Master Hong’s choice of a life outside of patriarchal marriage.

Jing appeared to be an important inspiration for education in Master Hong’s life story, for not only did Jing herself love to read, but she also strongly supported her daughters’ education:

There were ten children in my family, but every single one of us received an education …. My father opposed girls’ education, but my mother would say, “Just look at [my life]! How harsh life would be without education!”4

The aspiration for education even played a role in Master Hong’s joining the sangha. When asked why she became a nun, Master Hong simply pointed to her desire for education:

Back then, I wanted to study. One day, my mother told me, “Come, I will take you to study.” Then, she took me and my younger sister to Grandmaster Xing’s temple [in Lashio]5.

Apart from the family’s impoverished circumstances, Master Hong’s dubious citizenship status (more later) obstructed Master Hong’s educational aspiration. Education in a Buddhist temple seemed to be the only way out. Master Hong, then aged ten, and a younger sister were sent by their parents to Grandmaster Xing’s temple in Lashio, and both sisters entered the sangha.

Master Hong praised her mother for this choice:

My mother and father are not really Buddhists. However, the hardship in life has taught my mother what is anicca (impermanent), and she did not necessarily want us to enter marriage.

Given the hardship that Jing experienced in patriarchal hegemony, it is not surprising that Jing did not see marriage as a necessary outcome for her daughters6.

The other person who Master Hong spent a length of time retelling was her tonsure Grandmaster Xing7 (Master Hong’s tonsure master was a nun disciple of Grandmaster Xing; a point to discuss later). According to the gazetteer of his temple, monk Grandmaster Xing was born to an affluent family in the Gansu Province, western China, in 1924. At the age of twenty-three, Grandmaster Xing had an argument with his father and, as a result, ran away from home and eventually found himself in the renowned ancient monastery, Gantongsi8, in Dali, Yunnan province. It is said that he was “spiritually inspired” by the head monk and thus entered the sangha. Although Theravada Buddhism is prevalent among ethnic minorities in the Yunnan province (Shi 2014, pp. 595–624), Gantongsi is of Han Chinese Linji Ch’an lineage. This is also the Dharma lineage that the Mercy Nunnery later claimed.

That was a time of great turmoil in China, and Grandmaster Xing fled to Myanmar. After a short stay in a Chinese Buddhist temple in Yangon, Grandmaster Xing was invited to take up the abbotship of a Chinese Buddhist temple in Lashio, the northern Shan state, in 1955. The temple itself was built by a Chinese monk in 1946; nothing much is known about this monk, such as where he was from or the year of his birth, and it appears that the monk himself never took up the abbotship of the temple. The temple gazetteer does not specify why Grandmaster Xing was chosen for the abbotship9, but it records Grandmaster Xing’s struggle with the financial upkeeping of the temple and threats from local warlords and drug dealers. A significant point is that Grandmaster Xing transformed the temple from one with strong folk Buddhist characteristics to what is described as a “public temple”, or conglin, by the temple gazetteer: “the common property of the whole Buddhist sangha and to be operated in accordance with a common monastic rule” (Welch 1967, p. 4). This transformation indicates Grandmaster Xing’s knowledge and emphasis on Chinese Buddhist monasticism. His efforts to install Chinese Buddhist monasticism in the next generations had not gone in vain, for the temple gazetteer records branch temples established by his disciples in other parts of the Shan state, Thailand, and the USA.

Interestingly, after becoming the abbot of the temple in Lashio, Grandmaster Xing began to accept disciples of both genders for monastic ordination, resulting in the temple being transformed into a “mixed-sex sangha”.

I have noted the existence of mixed-sangha (where monks and nuns live in the same monastery compound, are required to observe monastic codes, including celibacy, and are usually ordained by the same tonsure monk master) in contemporary Taiwan (Cheng 2007, pp. 149–66). It is not clear how mixed-sex sangha emerged because the Vinaya demands sex segregation for members of the sangha10. It does not seem to have existed in premodern China either. For example, a Chinese monastic code of the Ming Dynasty, the Regulation for the Two Branches of Monastic Order (conglin liangxu xuzhi), states:

When nuns or female guests come to visit, it is necessary to arrange a reception room for the women. There cannot be any mingling [between monks and women]11.

The rule cited above shows that mixed-sex sangha was prohibited in premodern Chinese Buddhist monasticism. It might be a consequence of social upheaval in mainland China around the mid-20th century: monks who fled the Chinese Civil War and migrated to Taiwan after 1949 were poor and deprived of a social support network and, therefore, they accepted and ordained women who sought monasticism. Mixed-sex sangha started in such a social context. A historian of modern Chinese Buddhism, Prof. Cheng-tsung Kan, confirmed this speculation.12 Grandmaster Xing faced the same diasporic destitution as those mainland Chinese monks migrating to Taiwan after 1949. It is unclear why he ordained women, but he did.

Mixed-sex sangha may seem scandalous, but in Myanmar, it is acceptable for monks and nuns to live in close proximity:

Nuns and monks in the Saging Hill live in close physical proximity with one another, and it is not uncommon to see a nunnery built next to a monastery in the neighborhood …. To my surprise, there were no constraints against monks and nuns living on the same premises as long as they were separated into different living quarters (Kawanami 2013, p. 204).

“Separated into different living quarters” is also the characteristic of mixed-sex sangha that I observed in Taiwan and appears to be the case for Grandmaster Xing’s temple in Lashio too.

Another characteristic of mixed-sex sangha in Taiwan is that even though nun-members usually outnumber monks, monks occupy the leadership roles in the sangha. However, according to the temple gazetteer, Grandmaster Xing had the intention to assign nuns to leadership positions. Master Hong’s nun tonsure master is quoted in the temple gazetteer saying the following:

[Grandmaster Xing] wanted his disciples to take turns to be the dangjia13 [the manager of the sangha] for a tenure of one year. When it was my turn, I refused and recommended [my nun disciples] to the Master because I think they were all very talented … However, Master Hong was studying in Taiwan at the time, so the Master wanted to pass it to nun Master Lin14 … The Master hosted an inauguration ceremony with the [devotees’] committee and announced that Master Lin would be the manager of the sangha. However, the members opposed strongly … The second time the Master wanted to give the abbotship to Master Lin, I said to him, “Matters of sangha are concerns only for sangha. There is no need to tell householders too much”. However, before he could give the abbotship to Master Lin, he became sick and passed away. After the Master passed away, householder devotees stirred up trouble again and demanded a bhikṣu. At that unsettling moment, I had no choice but to ask monk Master Kun15 to be the abbot in order to calm the situation.

The statement above shows Grandmaster Xing’s willingness to accept nuns in leadership positions despite the strong objection from householder-devotees16. It is reasonable to suggest that Grandmaster Xing had a gender-egalitarian outlook for his disciples. Saruya notes that “[t]he support of nuns and lay women by monks is not sufficiently stressed in scholarship” (2020, p. 171), so Grandmaster Xing’s support for nuns’ empowerment easily goes unnoticed.

In my 2019 interview with Master Hong, she spent more time talking about her mother (Jing) and Grandmaster Xing than her own life story. It shows the influence Jing and Grandmaster Xing had on her. Only in the 2021 interview did Master Hong talk more about herself; in that interview, Master Hong’s narrative of her life story focuses on education.

2.2. Master Hong’s Life Story

Despite Master Hong being a member of the Yunnanese community in the Shan state, her transnational network played an important role in her religious career. She claimed that while a young nun in Lashio, she came across a Buddhist magazine from Taiwan—Jueshi (“Awakening the World Monthly”), published by Foguangshan, which is one of the biggest Buddhist organizations in Taiwan17. Deeply impressed by the magazine, Master Hong wrote to the founder of Foguangshan, monk Hsin Yun (1927-). Afterward, Master Hong would receive a copy of Jueshi whenever it was published. Eventually, Master Hong decided to apply to Foguangshan’s monastic college in Taiwan. She was accepted and arrived in Taiwan one late night in 1986:

I was really naïve, and it did not even occur to me to arrange a pick-up from Foguangshan. I was at the airport and did not know what to do. I did not know anyone, and all I had was my godfather (qiandie)’s address18.

She counted herself lucky that she had met a kind taxi driver who took her to her godfather’s home. There, she met a Chinese-Myanmar monk who persuaded her to switch her study to the Yuan Kuang Buddhist College19, where she would spend the next three years studying before returning to Myanmar. By that time, Grandmaster Xing had passed away, and the headship of the temple was transferred to Master Hong’s tonsure master, a nun, and the temple was thus transformed from a mixed-sex temple to a nunnery. When asked about her tonsure master, Master Hong simply said, “For the elderly, reciting the Buddha’s name is good enough”20. In my interviews and time spent with her, Master Hong avoided talking about her tonsure master. I had the impression that the two nuns’ inspirations for life were quite different.

After only a little more than a year back in Myanmar, Master Hong accepted an invitation from a former classmate at the Yuan Kuang Buddhist College to reside at a nunnery in Taiwan. Master Hong stayed at the Taiwanese nunnery for more than two decades, during which time she became a naturalized citizen of Taiwan. She still makes annual trips to Taiwan for medical care.

When I asked why she returned to Myanmar, Master Hong replied, “I felt no purpose in life [while living in Taiwan]!”21 So, she took the opportunity to return to the Shan state in 2000.

Under Ne Win’s regime (1958–1988), Chinese education in Myanmar was suppressed; it was not until the late 20th century that the restriction on Chinese education was gradually eased. It became a common practice for the Chinese community in Myanmar to use teaching Buddhist sutra as a pretext for Chinese-language classes (Fan 2015, pp. 268–70). Those so-called “sutra study classes” must adjoin a Buddhist temple to legitimize the pretext of “sutra-study”. When the Chinese commercial community in Rivertown wanted to establish a Chinese school or a “sutra-study school”, they needed a Buddhist temple, so they built one. One of Master Hong’s older sisters had business ties with Rivertown and recommended Master Hong for the abbotship of the new temple (i.e., the Mercy Nunnery). The recommendation was accepted, and in the year 2000, Master Hong returned to the Shan state. However, Master Hong admitted that she had little to do with the “sutra- study school” adjoining her temple. The “sutra-study school” was run by the Chinese commercial guild of the town, and its teachers and teaching materials were supplied by Yunnan Normal University in China. Classes were held in the evenings, while students attended other schools in Myanmar or Thailand during the day. Initially, the Chinese commercial guild ran both the school and the temple, but Master Hong worked to change that. After much negotiation, the Chinese commercial guild agreed in 2010 to hand over the control of the Mercy Nunnery to Master Hong, and the Mercy Nunnery thus became a place for sangha rather than a “community temple” managed by householders.

At the time of my fieldwork in 2019, the Mercy Nunnery housed about three dozen nuns, aged from 5 to above 60 years old; most of the nuns were ethnic Yunnanese, while about half a dozen nuns belonged to other ethnic minorities. My nun informants in the Mercy Nunnery claimed that many of their young nuns came from deprived families and some were simply “dumped” by their parents at the temple because they were too poor to care for their daughters. Some parents would return to claim their daughters once the daughters reached puberty, but many young nuns chose to stay in robe22. A report written by one of Master Hong’s disciples states that by 2019, Master Hong had ordained forty-six nuns.

Master Hong allocated an area of the Mercy Nunnery to function as a classroom and hired tutors to teach her young nuns. The basic curriculum stressed language learning, and classes included Mandarin Chinese, Thai, and Shan languages. It explains why while the daily language at the nunnery was Yunnanese, all the nuns were able to communicate with me in Mandarin. A senior Theravada eight-precepts nun (thilashin) was invited to teach Pali and Burmese23. In addition to languages, Master Hong emphasized the need for studying Mahayana sutras and the doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism. One of Master Hong’s nun disciples explained to me, “Older generations only knew how to recite sutras, but [Master Hong] thinks Dharma is also important and so we must learn the teachings of Mahayana sutras”24. There had been monastic and householder volunteers from Taiwan to teach at the nunnery. In addition, Master Hong sent her older nun disciples to pursue Buddhist education in Taiwan with the hope that they would bring back Mahayana Buddhist teachings.

Furthermore, Master Hong organized free classes for householder children at the Mercy Nunnery. The classes were on weekends, and children learned Chinese, Buddhist stories, songs, etc. The adult householders’ classes take place in the evenings on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; those with a better Chinese reading ability studied Chinese Buddhist sutras; those with low Chinese reading ability started with Chinese language classes. In the adult classes that I observed during my fieldwork, almost all the students were women, and the language of instruction was Yunnanese25.

Master Hong said:

Many children enter sangha at a young age; some are very outstanding but disrobe later … [My ideas] differ from previous generations. They were more conservative. [They would ask], why study Dharma now when you are already in robe? Why do you want to study? What does education have to do with liberation and nirvana? For them, being a monastic means reciting the Buddha’s name and contemplating liberation. There is no [life purpose] and no Dharma … So, I thought maybe I should establish a place to realize my ideas. Do my best to keep some youngsters in the sangha. This is my wish26.

The statement above reveals the importance Master Hong placed on Buddhist monasticism and saw education as a way of preserving the Buddhist sangha. She was not satisfied with the traditionalist monastic lifestyle that focused on performing rituals (“being a monastic means reciting the Buddha’s name and contemplating liberation”). The idea of establishing a Buddhist academy gradually came to mind.

Master Hong began to search for land in the neighboring Thai town to build her Buddhist academy:

In [Rivertown], about sixty or seventy percent [of children] attend schools in the neighboring Thai town. They study Burmese after class. To benefit those students [from Myanmar], Thai schools add Chinese and Burmese to their curricula. All private and public schools have Burmese and Chinese classes. [Stateless children] can also attend schools in Thailand but not adults27.

Throughout my many conversations with Master Hong, it was obvious that she saw Thailand as a more open, tolerant, and welcoming country. The concern over Myanmar’s history of political instability and anti-Chinese sentiment28 added to Master Hong’s preference for establishing a Buddhist academy in the neighboring Thai town.

Having a the school in Thailand rather than Myanmar will also benefit her young nuns. Since young nuns at the Mercy Nunnery are “home-schooled” in the nunnery, they lack the necessary school credentials for pursuing higher education in the formal educational system:29

So, they will have a diplomat [from Thailand’s educational system]. Without a diplomat, it is inconvenient to pursue higher education …. If the academy is registered as a private school, [the Thai government will grant a diplomat]. Yes, Thailand is better30.

At the time of writing this paper, that plan was halted. Master Hong explained how:

The project has not had any progress. There are many reasons. At this moment, the karmic fruit has not ripened (yinyuan bujuzu). There are problems with land, teachers, and finance. Most financial support comes from abroad, especially in Taiwan and Malaysia31.

While Master Hong is able to find financial support from an overseas Chinese community, finding the appropriate teaching staff remains problematic. She has relied on volunteer teachers from Taiwan, but volunteers are not always dependable. Master Hong hopes that her nun disciples who are currently studying in Taiwan will one day become a reliable source of teaching staff for her new Buddhist academy.

Master Hong envisions the academy to be a Buddhist boarding school for girls and young nuns:

Our future Buddhist academy will be open to householder students too. [Everyone] will study together. However, we may only accept female householder students. So, it will be a girls’ academy. It will be more convenient for our young nuns to study together … yes, it will be a boarding school32.

Master Hong wishes Mahayana Buddhism to be an important part of the academy’s curriculum, and she perceives no problem in establishing a Mahayana Buddhist school in a Theravada Buddhist dominant country:

There should not be a clash [with the Theravada Buddhist establishment] because we do not want something grand or big. We just wish people to know something about our Chinese Buddhism, to know the difference from Theravada Buddhism, to have an understanding … [Myanmar] does not restrict the non-Chinese, from learning about Chinese Buddhism, as long as that person wants to. There should not be an objection from [the Theravada Buddhist establishment]. For example, there was a time33 when Theravada monastics came on Saturdays and Sundays to teach our children’s classes. Some of the children were Burmese, some were Tai (Shan), and some were of other ethnic minorities. We taught them Chinese and Dharma. We let them learn about Chinese Buddhism and the Chinese temple34.

Despite the rise in (Theravada) Buddhist nationalism in Myanmar35, Master Hong does not perceive persecution against Mahayana Buddhism, which arguably is a religious minority in the Theravada Buddhist dominant country.

After introducing the life stories of Master Hong, I will analyze the construction and the role of Master Hong’s identity in relation to her transnational network. There are three dimensions of her identity: overseas Chinese, Mahayana monastic, and Buddhist nun.

3. Overseas Chinese

During my time with Master Hong, it was obvious that the citizenship issue bothered her: identifying with a nation-state was a challenge. Myanmar, where she was born and raised, would not give her full citizenship and her rights in Myanmar are limited. China, her ancestral homeland, has not granted her citizenship either. Taiwan, where she has acquired citizenship, does not feel like home. “It does not matter how long you have lived in Taiwan,” she once sighed to me, “people still treat you like a foreigner”36. She would speak of her natal relatives who live in Thailand and have Thailand citizenship with a hint of envy. Repeatedly, she called herself “a border town resident”, likely an indication of her lack of identification with any nation-state. Therefore, it seems to me that it is more appropriate to describe Master Hong as an “overseas Chinese” than a citizen of a nation-state.

“Overseas Chinese” is a generalized term referring to “persons of Chinese ancestry living outside the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan” (Poston et al. 1994, p. 631). By no means does that “overseas Chinese” identity suggest a singular identity, shared ideology, or common agenda, for an “overseas Chinese” identity is constructed differently in different contexts. The number of overseas Chinese is contestable since a person with Chinese ancestry may or may not identify her/himself as an ethnic Chinese. For example, people who have Chinese ancestors and live along the border with China, Myanmar, and Thailand may adopt a “trans-localized Chinese identity” as social capital to utilize their Chinese affinity in certain situations (e.g., when dealing with entrepreneurs from China) even though they are officially categorized as “Akha/hill tribes” in Thailand (Toyota 2003). It is complicated further by the 1982 Citizenship Law in Myanmar, for it categorizes three types of citizens: 1. full citizens (with pink I.D. cards): consisting primarily of the eight national races and 135 subgroups (more later); 2. associate citizens (with blue I.D. card): those who do not belong to the recognized ethnic groups but whose parents or grandparents applied for citizenship under the 1948 Union Citizenship law; 3. naturalized citizens (with green I.D. cards): persons who do not belong to the recognized ethnic groups and acquired citizenship after 1982 (Arraiza and Vonk 2017, pp. 1–2, 8, 13). Naturalized citizens are considered “foreign nationals”, and their rights are limited (Ho and Chua 2016, p. 904; Fan 2015, pp. 246–48). A descendant of Yunnanese migrants in the Shan state often chooses to register with a non-Chinese ethnicity in order to obtain full citizenship (Gao 2018, p. 175). As the second generation of Yunnanese migrants, Master Hong is categorized as a naturalized citizen.

Different scholars give different numbers of ethnic Chinese in Myanmar. The Chinese Embassy in Myanmar gave the number of Chinese living in Myanmar as 2.5 million in 2005 (Fan 2015, p. 250). Based on the origins and periods of migration and the dialects used, there is a great diversity among the ethnic Chinese living in Myanmar (Ho and Chua 2016, pp. 902–3). The descendants of southeastern Chinese migrants (i.e., Fujianese, Cantonese, etc.) tended to congregate in lower Burma while the Yunnanese settled in upper Burma, but this geographical difference has become indistinguishable in recent decades because of internal movement (Fan 2015, p. 251). The Cantonese and Fujianese living in lower Burma are more likely to be assimilated into the Burmese culture and have a better command of the Burmese language than the Yunnanese living in upper Burma (Chang 2014, p. 56). There has been a new wave of mainland Chinese investors and the laborer migrating to Myanmar since the 1990s, creating a third category of the overseas Chinese community (Fan 2015, pp. 252–53).

The Yunnanese community has a strong presence in parts of the Shan state where members of the Yunnanese community use the Chinese language, education, and funeral customs to maintain their Chinese ethnic identity (Gao 2018), both of which are provided by the Mercy Nunnery. A study finds that a transnational network is important for members of the Yunnanese community (Chang 2014), and the same can be said for Master Hong.

In January 2020, I joined a group of volunteers, including doctors, dentists, acupuncturists, physical therapists, etc., from Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, and Australia to the Mercy Nunnery. Everyone in that group, with the exception of the Taiwanese, could be identified as “overseas Chinese”. We met up in Thailand, purchased medicines and medical supplies, and then crossed the border to the Mercy Nunnery in the Shan state, Myanmar. Rumors about a mysterious infectious disease (later named “COVID-19”) were circulating, and the health authority in the Shan state forbade the group to advertise their free medical service in order to prevent large gatherings and the spread of the mysterious infectious disease. Nevertheless, in the five days of staying at the Mercy Nunnery, over one thousand people (including non-Chinese Myanmarese) heard about it through word of mouth and came to receive free medical care. In those five days, the medical volunteers were also invited to provide service at a Theravada monastery in the nearby hill area. I observed these medical volunteers, apparently all Buddhists, giving offerings and monetary donations to local Theravada monasteries, an orphanage, and a nursing home. I was told that this group of medical volunteers had come every year since 2017 and each year, the number of people who came to receive free medical care grew only larger. Initially, Master Hong invited her doctors in Taiwan to provide medical service at the Mercy Nunnery, but the word spread and more and more medical workers joined in37. By providing free medical services and monetary donations, it is not hard to see that this group of medical workers had knitted a transnational overseas Chinese network that had helped Master Hong and the Mercy Nunnery to forge a good relationship with the non-Chinese communities in and near Rivertown38. Especially in a culture where giving is at its cultural essence (Kawanami 2020), this transnational overseas Chinese network of medical workers contributes greatly to the positive images of Master Hong and the Mercy Nunnery.

It is interesting to point out that the status of overseas Chinese is only one layer of Master Hong’s minority status since she lived in an ethnic-minority dominant region within the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. The Shan (or “Dai” or “Tai”) is an official ethnic minority in Myanmar. Believed to be ethnically and linguistically closer to the Thai and the Laotian than to Burmese, “it is likely that through the British, and on the basis of Burmese pronunciation, the Tai people in Burma became known to the world as ‘Shan’” (Khur-Yearn 2012, p. 15). Different subgroups of the Shan each have their own complicated long history and written scripts (Tun 2009, pp. 3–30). Today, the Shan is officially one of the eight major national races in Myanmar, whereas the Bamar (also known as the Burmans, Burmese) are the largest national race consisting of about 60 percent of the population in Myanmar (Thuzar and Cheong 2019, pp. 246–47). Another 135 ethnic subgroups are officially recognized under these eight major national races. Noticeably, several ethnic groups are excluded from the list of 135 ethnic subgroups, including the ethnic Chinese (Ferguson 2015, p. 16). Among the ethnic Chinese groups in Myanmar, only the “Kokang”, descendants of early Chinese migrants who had settled in the Kokang region, Shan state, are officially recognized as an ethnic subgroup under the Shan39. Latest in 2016, a group of Chinese descendants living in the northern Shan state was declared “Mong Wong-Bamar” and given full citizenship (Nan Lwin Hnin and Weng 2016). In Chiu’s study of Chinese Buddhist nuns in Yangon and Mandalay, she calls her informants “Sino-Burmese” (2022), an indication that her informants are officially categorized as “Bamar/Burmese”. As far as legality goes, Master Hong is not a “Sino-Burmese” because she has neither full citizenship of Myanmar nor is legally recognized as a “Bamar/Burmese”.

The classification of ethnicity in Myanmar is often attributed to the British colonial administration. Since introducing a census in the nineteenth century (the first time was in 1872), people have been required to register an ethnicity (Ferguson 2015, pp. 4–5). Prior to British colonial rule, the “ethnic boundary, if there was any, was rather blurred and easily transgressed” among the Yunnanese and other ethnic groups in the Shan state (Li 2017, p. 39). Under the British colonial administration, however, the ethnic boundary between the Yunnanese and other ethnic groups in upper Burma became fixed through official documentation (Li 2017, p. 43).

Denied full citizenship and official ethnic minority status in Myanmar, Master Hong appeared to identify herself more with an “overseas Chinese” identity than with any nation-state. Adding to the memory of the anti-Chinese riot in 1967 (for more, see Fan 2015, pp. 200–25), there is a sense of marginalization and insecurity. Her choice of founding a Mahayana Buddhist academy in Thailand rather than Myanmar has to do with this sense of marginalization and insecurity.

Although the “overseas Chinese” identity is not a clearly defined or unitary category, it provides a space of affinity for networking with other overseas Chinese. Important to note that the transnational overseas Chinese network of medical workers were all (or, at least, “most of them”) Buddhists and enthusiastic about giving, which, as Kawanami points out, is very much a Buddhist characteristic (2020). In other words, they were drawn to Master Hong not only because of their shared overseas Chinese identity but also because of their Buddhist faith. Master Hong’s Mahayana Buddhist monastic identity is another factor in constructing the transnational network.

4. Mahayana Buddhist Monastic

The second dimension of Master Hong’s identity is Mahayana Buddhist monasticism. When talking about religions in Myanmar, there is a tendency to simply divide religions in Myanmar as Buddhism and non-Buddhism, and seldom to note that within Buddhism itself, there is diversity.

Theravada Buddhism is the mainstream religion in Myanmar. Juliane Schober points out that: “The identification of the Burmese ethnicity with Theravada Buddhist authority was already central to the hegemonic discourse of precolonial polities” (Schober 2011, p. 3). In pre-colonial Burma, keeping an idealized Buddhist society (pativedha sāsana) was considered the Burmese king’s duty (Schober 2011, p. 25). Burmese kings occasionally carried out monastic reforms (i.e., promoted the purification and propagation of the sāsana) in order to claim political legitimacy (Schober 2011, pp. 24–33). The idea of establishing an idealized Buddhist society continued after the Independence. In 1980, a body called the “State Samgha MahaNayaka Committee” was established to oversee the regulation and conduct of sangha (Ashin and Crosby 2017, p. 199). Among the duties listed on its website are “examinations” and “Vinicchaya Affairs”:40 two factors designed to uphold the purity of Buddhism but which effectively helped to maintain Theravada orthodoxy.

“Examinations” refer to the five types of Buddhist Pali examinations41 and are a legacy of precolonial monastic reform (see Schober 2011, pp. 2–39). The examinations emphasize the memorization of certain Buddhist Pali texts (Kyaw 2015, pp. 410–11). Passing those examinations is still a source of prestige, and those who do are considered worthy recipients of the devotees’ support (Kawanami 2020, pp. 104–5). However, the Buddhist Pali examination test only selected texts, and this results in monastic education “[being confined] to narrow syllabuses of the state-controlled examinations” (Dhammasami 2004, p. 39). The curriculum and teaching method of the Theravada monastic education in Myanmar, which are influenced by Buddhist Pali examinations, have evoked concerns about whether monastic education has, as a result, become alienated from the changing society (Dhammasami 2004, pp. 279–96).

Another contributing factor to Theravada’s orthodoxy is the monastic court system (vinicchaya). Under the “Vinicchaya Affairs” web page, the list of its duties includes “religious offences which must not be accepted and investigated”;42 in other words, to determine the rights or wrongs of Buddhist discourse. A study reveals the extensiveness of the vinicchaya court cases: from questions regarding sīmā, bhikkhunī ordination, and meditation technique to various doctrinal interpretations (Ashin and Crosby 2017). The combination of Buddhist Pali examinations and the monastic court system create an inflexibility in Buddhist discourse and an agency for Theravada orthodoxy. In addition, orientalist scholars since the late 19th century have the tendency to see Theravada Buddhism as the “authentic Buddhism” (Perreira 2012, pp. 444–52), which consequently constructs Theravada orthodoxy and devalues other forms of Buddhist expressions. Nevertheless, we can still find Buddhist expressions in Myanmar that are deviated from the Burmese Theravada orthodoxy, such as an esoteric meditation movement described in Foxeus (2016) and Chinese Mahayana Buddhism.

One of Master Hong’s nun disciples once showed me her pink I.D. card. She was the third generation of Yunnanese migrants and had full citizenship in Myanmar. What is striking is that on the I.D. card, the nun appeared to have long hair even though she had entered the sangha as a young child and was a Buddhist nun at the time of applying for the I.D. card. “I photoshopped the hair onto the photo,” she explained, “because as a Chinese [Mahayana] Buddhist nun, it is very difficult for me to obtain an I.D. card”. She did not know if it was her ethnic Chinese identity, Mahayana monastic identity, or both that made applying for an I.D. card difficult43. However, it was an I.D. card for householders; a monastic I.D. card is denied to all Chinese Mahayana monastics (Chiu 2020, p. 226). Chinese Mahayana monastics are not recognized as Buddhist monastics in Myanmar. Without being legally recognized as a Buddhist monastic, on one hand, provides more freedom for personal movement and sangha management; on the other hand, it means a lack of state protection (Chiu 2020, pp. 226–28).

Master Hong and other nun informants claimed to have an amiable but distant relationship with local Theravada monastics: Theravada monks would come to the Mercy Nunnery for alms-offering ceremonies, and a Theravada nun had taught at the Mercy Nunnery. Otherwise, there was little interaction44. Free medical service and monetary donations given by the Mercy Nunnery and its associated transnational network of overseas Chinese medical workers may have helped to forge a good relationship with the local Theravada establishment. However, the amiable relationship may also be attributed to the fact that the form of Theravada Buddhism in Rivertown is Shan Buddhism rather than the dominant Burmese Theravada Buddhism.

Either because the pressure of Burmesization is a shared sentiment among different ethnic minority groups in the Shan state or because of the good community relationship built by their philanthropic works, Master Hong and the other nun informants claimed not to have experienced much discrimination from their Shan neighbors. One Mandalay-born nun informant in her twenties told me, “Shan monastics are milder and friendlier”45. Although also Theravada Buddhism, Shan Buddhism differs from Burmese Buddhism in many ways, such as visual culture (Karlsson 2012), the language used in monastic education and Buddhist Pali examinations (Dhammasami 2009), ritual practice, and literature (Khur-Yearn 2012, p. 17), etc., to the extent that Shan Buddhism is sometimes accused of being “heretical” (Khur-Yearn 2012, pp. 228–30). Possibly also feeling the pressure of Burmesization, Shan Buddhist monastics are thought to be more sympathetic towards Chinese Mahayana Buddhism. My nun informants at the Mercy Nunnery rejected my use of the word “discriminated” to describe their relationship with their Theravada neighbours46. As far as they were concerned, the relationship was good.

Another reason for the good relationship was the visits of the Chinese Mahayana monastics from overseas. An ethnographic study of the Yunnanese community in Rivertown47, as well as my search on YouTube,48 revealed that there were frequent visits of Chinese Mahayana monastics from Malaysia and Taiwan to the Mercy Nunnery for preaching, rituals and charity works. The ethnographic study states that those overseas monastic sermons were popular among the Yunnanese in Rivertown. The Chinese Mahayana monastics’ transnational network is nothing new: for example, Chia details how Chinese Mahayana monks in the mid-twentieth century established transnational networks (2020), and Chinese Mahayana Buddhist organizations may seek global expansion (e.g., see Reinke 2021). Just as Chiu speculates that transnational visits from the Chinese Mahayana monastics to Yangon and Mandalay improve the relationship between Theravada Buddhists and Sino-Burmese Mahayana monastics (Chiu 2020, pp. 230–35), the transnational visits of Chinese Mahayana monastics to the Mercy Nunnery may have helped to improve the Mercy Nunnery’s relationship with the local Theravada establishment.

Master Hong’s Chinese Mahayana Buddhist monastic identity means the deprivation of certain privileges given to Buddhist monastics in Myanmar but also means the construction of a transnational network with Chinese Mahayana Buddhists elsewhere.

5. Buddhist Nun

The third dimension of Master Hong’s identity is that of Buddhist nun. The Buddhist nun’s identity means that she is a woman in Buddhist monasticism and this gender and religious specialty has led her to promote Buddhist education for young nuns and girls.

Buddhist monasticism across Asia has had a long tradition of providing education; for example, in pre-modern China, Buddhist monasteries were important centers for translation, scholasticism, and education (Robson 2010, p. 44). In Myanmar, too, Buddhist monasteries have been important places to provide education, albeit when British colonization brought challenges and reform to the education provided by Buddhist monasteries (Suante 2022, pp. 4–9). For Buddhist monastics in contemporary Myanmar, passing the Buddhist Pail examinations is a source of pride and respect (Saruya 2020, pp. 156–58). For Theravada Buddhist monastics in Myanmar, education emphasizes scriptural learning (pariyatti) and the study of Abhidhamma (Kyaw 2015, pp. 406–14). For children from disadvantaged backgrounds or with disabilities, schools provided by Buddhist monasteries49 are an important source of education because their families might be too poor to send them to government schools (Lall 2020, pp. 106–7, 110). Education provided by Buddhist monasteries is also instrumental in preserving the languages and cultures of ethnic minorities such as the Mon, Karen, and Shan since those schools may not use the Burmesized curriculum as in the case of government schools (Lall 2020, pp. 123–26). Given the background, Master Hong’s future Buddhist academy would appear to be similar to an ethnic minority school, not too different from other schools provided by Buddhist monasteries in ethnic minority areas.

While Buddhist monasteries have a long tradition of providing education, girls’ access to education remains limited (Kawanami 2013, p. 159). Although support for Buddhist nuns’ education is comparatively less for monks’ education, many Burmese nuns succeed in becoming renowned teachers and scholars (Kawanami 2013, pp. 160–70). Kawanami (2013, p. 171) and Saruya’s (2020) note that passing the Buddhist Pali examinations is one of the main objectives for Burmese Buddhist nuns to pursue education, is not the case for Chinese Mahayana Buddhist nuns in Myanmar. As my fieldwork and Chiu’s study of Sino-Burmese nuns (2022) show, the passing on of Chinese Mahayana Buddhism to the next generation is the main motivation for providing Buddhist education.

Worthy of notice is that the judges that sit on the Buddhist monastic courts (State Samgha MahaNayaka Committee) are all monks (Ashin and Crosby 2017, pp. 210–12);50 this arrangement ensures patriarchal hegemony. This can be seen from a monastic court ruling that excludes laypeople and nuns from the interpretation of the word “sangha” (Ashin and Crosby 2017, p. 229) and another that rules against bhikkhuni ordination (full ordination for nuns) (Ashin and Crosby 2017, pp. 238–41).

There is a cultural practice of an outward display of nuns’ subordination to monks. However, Kawanami disagrees with the suggestion that an outward display of subordination by the Burmese Buddhist nuns (or Buddhist nuns in general) means that the nuns are helpless victims of patriarchy. She argues that Buddhist nuns can be seen as independent agents:

That is, the very processes and conditions that secure a subject’s subordination can also be the very means through which she becomes a self-conscious “agent.” The agency or self-determination of a nun in this context is formed as she becomes imbued with the communal ethos and strict discipline and undergoes new situations of “subordination” in the monastic life (Kawanami 2013, p. 93).

In other words, the Buddhist nuns’ outward display of subordination within the communal ethos is, in fact, a performance of self-discipline and the exercising of self-determination. Outward displays of subordination do not necessarily lead to subordination in other areas. The assistance and support of nuns to monks actually contribute “towards the establishment and maintenance of ‘interlocking relationships’” (Saruya 2020, p. 163), in which monks rely on nuns for their religious career.

Chiu reports that Sino-Burmese nuns display outward subordination to monks (Chiu 2022, pp. 15–16). While I did not have the opportunity to observe Master Hong’s interaction with monks, I had the opportunity to travel with Master Hong’s nun disciples. In a Theravada meditation center in Rivertown, the two nun disciples paid homage to the head monk;51 on other occasions, but when they encountered monks whom they did not previously know, they either put their palms together to acknowledge the presence of the monks or simply passed each other by52. A YouTube video shows the visit of a well-known monk from Taiwan and his householder devotees to the Mercy Nunnery. In that video, the monk was invited to sit on the high seat in the Buddha Hall while Master Hong stood and delivered a welcome speech. Crucially, Master Hong and her nun disciples did not pay homage to the monk by kneeling down; this indicates a more gender-egalitarian practice. On a ritual ceremony that I attended in the Mercy Nunnery on 2 February 2020, approximately three hundred devotees participated, and there was no monk: Master Hong and her nun disciples were the only ritual ministers53. It is, therefore, safe to conclude that an outward display of gender hierarchy is likely to exist in formal ceremonies for nuns of the Mercy Nunnery but presents no obstacle in daily life.

Nothing in Master Hong’s life story or demeanor suggests a passive actor or a mere subordinate to monks. On the contrary, Master Hong is a strong and independent agent, for she exercises her own agency for the benefit of Buddhist nuns. Patriarchal oppression fills the life stories that Master Hong told of herself and her mother Jing. In the life story of Grandmaster Xing, Master Hong recounted his struggle to promote nuns to leadership roles in the sangha. Clearly, Master Hong is aware of gender inequality and works to resolve it. Master Hong may not use feminist language or have a feminist consciousness, but her determination to found Buddhist education for nuns and girls is, in practice, an empowerment of Buddhist nuns.

6. Conclusions

It is perhaps ironic that I have chosen identity to be the center of discussion about a Buddhist nun because, as Schmidt-Leukel points out, the Buddha taught non-self and essentially sees identity as an illusion (Schmidt-Leukel 2022). On the other hand, it is through creating a Buddhist identity (i.e., the acceptance of the Buddha’s life story, the Buddha’s words, the Vinaya, and the Abhidharma) that Buddhist networking across borders becomes possible (Dessein 2018, p. 328).

My case study’s identity has three dimensions: overseas Chinese, Mahayana monastic, and Buddhist nun. All three dimensions of identity are important factors in making a transnational network. Firstly, identity is the connecting factor that generates communication among actors, transcends the limits of the nation-state, and facilitates transnational interaction. The “overseas Chinese”, “Mahayana monastic”, and “Buddhist nun” are not identities confined to a nation-state but are identities that one can find across time and space; in other words, they connect people transnationally. Since identity is essentially a set of meanings that others rely on to interact with the person (Burke and Stets 2009, p. 49), shared identities make it easier for Chinese Mahayana Buddhists to communicate, connect, and establish networks across borders. Secondly, identity is the symbolic factor that motivates actors to take action transnationally. My case study shows that while being marginalized by Theravada and patriarchal hegemonies, her Mahayana monastic and Buddhist nun identities become symbols that motivate actors who share the same identities and/or are sympathetic towards these identities to act for the benefit of Mahayana Buddhism. It is exemplified in the case of overseas volunteers to the Mercy Nunnery, the transnational network of oversea Chinese medical workers, and the visits of Chinese Mahayana Buddhist monastics.

Perhaps, more importantly, is that an in-depth analysis of Master Hong’s identity reveals the overlapping and complex identities of religious practitioners. In the discussion of “Buddhist nationalism” or “Buddhist violence” in Myanmar, the complexity of identity is seldom mentioned; instead, a simple statement such as “[…] with the recent acts of Buddhist-influenced violence against Muslims, it mobilized transnational Buddhist groups in condemnation and in support of the violence” (Jerryson 2015, p. 320) is made. Though also a Buddhist, Master Hong is also a religious and ethnic minority in the Shan state and in Myanmar in particular, and one must be careful not to equate her Buddhist transnational network with “Buddhist-influenced violence against Muslims” for no evidence suggests so. While Master Hong’s Buddhist and overseas Chinese identities help to construct and sustain her transnational Buddhist network, the dimension of her other minority identities (including being a nun) means that she has to struggle against various kinds of oppression as much as other religious minorities in Myanmar might. In other words, transnational Buddhism can only be understood through the examination of the complexity of a practitioner’s identity, and as mentioned earlier, identities “… are important for understanding the diversity and multiplicity of the Buddhist world” (Sen 2018, p. 1).