Scholarship on Chinese masculinities center around the wen-wu dyad, typically translated as civil and martial (also military) skill. In the context of premodern texts, these virtues align with the state’s need for men to conquer and govern. In response to and going beyond the dyad, academic work has been done on Chinese masculinity as chenggong or (financial and career) success, a modernizing force, musical performance, sexual prowess, and networks of men and male bonding, etc.. Ni’s (2021) definition of gongfu or martial arts, as philosophy blurs the line between wen and wu. In contrast to other domains of life and selfhood, relatively little attention has been paid to religion and Chinese masculinity (with some recent work on Chinese Christianity). Regarding Chinese Buddhism, Buckelew (2023) examined masculinity in Song Dynasty Chan Buddhist texts as a way of uniting wen and wu, while Song (2023) discussed effeminate portrayals of the Tang Dynasty monk Xuanzang in contemporary Chinese television and film.
My paper argues for the category of the religious healer to be included in the conversation regarding Chinese masculinities. Using the case study of a contemporary Chinese American healer who employs qigong, fengshui, acupuncture, acupressure massage, and Buddhist chants, I explain how this religious healer attends to wounds in his community and for himself. The theoretical contribution is to highlight what has been missing in scholarship on Chinese masculinities: physical touch and intimacy in the healer-patient relationship. I engage with Kang’s (2013) “body labour,” which she defines as “paid work which involves direct contact with the body and attention to the physical and emotional comfort, pleasure, health and/or appearance of customers.” Though the key subject of my case study does not explicitly charge for his healing, his Asian American community practices the custom of providing cash in lishi, Cantonese for red envelopes (Mandarin: hongbao). Labor is only one lens to understand the exchange, as shown by the various different relationships he cultivates in his community.
Since 2012, CHEUNG Seng Kan (born 1955) has been at the center of a healing community that includes five dozen patients, students, friends, and relatives in the New York City-area. The money inside lishi given to him changes meaning depending on the relationship. The same twenty dollars in a red envelope can mean a tuition fee due a teacher from a student, a service fee for his capacity as a healer from a patient, or a gift from one friend to another. From 2012 to 2017, Cheung’s closest students regularly visited his Brooklyn house. They brought their friends, who also become students and patients, but he has one core group of students that spends the most time with Cheung. Their visits were as frequent as five days a week during the summers when people were less busy with work and school. Visits, when they happen, can last the entire day. Over time, this group developed into a community focused on collective practices of mutual healing and bonding, where conversation topics flowed freely between healing, Buddhism, the economy, and politics. Treatment is not limited to happening in his home as he has given treatment at a hospital and sent healing qi over the phone.
He has treated conditions ranging from a golf-ball-sized cancerous tumor, a balance and memory disorder, and stroke-induced facial hemiparesis, to frozen shoulders, chronic back pain, heart palpitations, and minor sprains. In addition to the use of Buddhist chants to bodhisattvas and healing deities, what marks Cheung’s healing as religious includes his use of what he calls his diliugongneng or sixth sense, which directs his hands to work on himself or his patients at the precise acupressure points needed to stimulate qi flow and clear up qi blockage. He describes the sensation as involuntary compulsion, but something he can stop if he wishes. Physical contact is not the only form of intimacy that develops in his relationships with those he heals.
There is no categorical separation in his practice between medicine and religion. As a healer, Cheung’s work is not limited to physical, mental, and emotional healing; it extends to the soteriological. In the summer of 2015, for example, he bought a few pounds of brine shrimp eggs for himself, a student, and a patient to breed and then release on the bodhisattva Guanyin’s birthday to cultivate karmic merit. This is a common Buddhist practice known as fongsang, literally the “release of life,” also known as animal release. For this specific patient, the explicit purpose was to address karmic causes of her cancer, for which his qigong treatments had been only mildly successful in alleviating her pain.
Cheung became a healer because he has constantly sought cures for his own various ailments. The major health issue that has affected him since childhood and continues to bother him is frequent stomach pains. A healer who is in need of healing is quite common. Carl Jung’s “wounded healer” archetype deals specifically with psychological injury, but it is not difficult to extend this to physical injury, especially when emotional and mental wounds can manifest themselves somatically and vice versa. Nouwen (1972) argues it is precisely the wounded and the suffering who are able to heal others effectively. It is understandable that someone with health issues would fervently pursue knowledge of healing arts. Admitting one’s wounds and need for healing is a vulnerability not typically associated with masculinity. Using the lens of wen-wu, Cheung fits both the civil and martial side as he had multiple teachers and is an autodidact, and since early childhood has practiced baguaquan, a form of boxing martial arts. Based on field notes taken since 2015, my case study of Cheung and his community aims to interrogate how his role as a religious healer moves beyond the wen-wu dyad through his attention to his own wounds and others’ in the intimacy that develops from his healing of relatives, friends, students, and patients.
My paper argues for the category of the religious healer to be included in the conversation regarding Chinese masculinities. Using the case study of a contemporary Chinese American healer who employs qigong, fengshui, acupressure massage, and Buddhist chants, I explain how this religious healer attends to wounds in his community and for himself. Admitting one’s wounds and need for healing is a vulnerability not typically associated with masculinity. Through the dominant the lens of Chinese masculinity, the wen-wu (civil and martial) dyad, this healer had multiple teachers and is an autodidact, and practices baguaquan, a form of boxing martial arts. However, my case study aims to interrogate how my subject’s role as a religious healer moves beyond wen-wu. The theoretical contribution is to highlight what has been missing in scholarship on Chinese masculinities: physical touch and intimacy in the healer-patient relationship. His healing is not only physical, but also soteriological.