The vocabulary of prayer in modern China

Many of the comments on the disappearance of MH370 by Chinese netizens mention their prayers (qídǎo 祈祷).  Since most Chinese are not religious (i.e., are not Christians, Buddhists, etc.), to whom are they praying?  In what way are they praying?  Even if they are Buddhists, is prayer (qídǎo 祈祷) an integral part of Buddhism?  Perhaps it would be common for Chinese Muslims to use this expression, but my sense is that most of the commenters quoted in the link below are not Muslims.

I really wonder when this expression of praying (qídǎo 祈祷) became such a common part of Chinese vocabulary.  I don't seem to recall it being very prevalent 40 years ago, except among Christian communities.

"Malaysian Airlines MH370 Plane Crash, Chinese Reactions"

You can see the original Chinese comments by mousing over the English translations.

Note that both of the characters in the expression qídǎo 祈祷 ("prayer") have the "spirit" radical / semantic signifier.  The characters that have this element usually are related to religious concerns.

Perhaps the religious significance / function of qídǎo 祈祷 has become diluted in modern China, such that it now just means "hope" or "wish".  Even so, I'm interested in the process whereby it was transformed.  Consequently, I asked about a dozen Chinese friends and students, as well as several scholars of Chinese religion, their opinions on this matter.  Here are the results (I have added Hanyu Pinyin for all Chinese terms and English translations when the meanings of terms were not clear from the context).

From a Chinese historian:

I think on the high end of education attainment, current Chinese intelligentsia has received very strong American cultural influences. The popularity of St Valentine Day and April Fool's Day are two examples. Qídǎo 祈祷 would be a natural word to use by these people.  Also after the "cultural genocide" (an apt phrase by an Italian reporter) inflicted by Mao, Christianity is making unprecedented inroads.  However, two traditional expressions, púsà bǎoyòu 菩萨保佑 ("[may] bodhisattva bless / protect [us]") and zǔzōng bǎoyòu 祖宗保佑 ("[may] the ancestors bless / protect [us]"), still have currency among less educated folk. Such expressions probably used to be called qiúfú 求福 ("seek happiness / blessings / good fortune / bliss")  and xǔyuàn 许愿 ("wishing"), but nowadays would also be characterized as qídǎo 祈祷.

Another word for púsà bǎoyòu 菩萨保佑 ("[may] bodhisattva bless / protect [us]"), etc. is qífú 祈福 ("pray for happiness / blessings / good fortune / bliss"), sounding a bit less "Westernized"than qídǎo 祈祷.

From a Chinese-American translator and scholar of literature and philosophy:

Chinese people my age did not seem to have any religion. My parents'  generation didn't seem to have any religion either, but in times of great stress (such as a child dying), they would qiu fo (appeal to Buddha).  Daogao (pray), and qidao (pray) strike me as Western terms, from Christianity. Many Chinese from the Mainland go to Christian churches and Bible classes here. One graduate Chinese Mainland student explained to me that Christianity fills a lack in the Mainland Chinese. It's about God's personal love for the individual, which you don't find in communism, or in Confucianism.  I think to pray to an Almighty in times of great personal stress is a basic human instinct. But I think daogao and qidao are words translated from the West and part of the whole imported Western culture, such  as Western clothes, Western cars, Western food and drink, Western school system, Western manners….

My grand-aunt was a tragic but stoic figure who immersed herself in Buddhism after her husband abandoned her for a younger woman, his university student. She came to live with us, and a word I heard for "prayer" in my childhood was nianjing 念經 ("recite sutras / scriptures"), which she was always doing.

From a scholar of Buddhism:

Unless it is Kwan Yin or Manjusri, I am not sure who they are praying to. This sounds very Christian or Islamic to me. Thai and Lao Buddhists do chant the Ratanasutta and the Jinapanjara and other parittas when in stressful situations like this. Chinese, of course, pray to a series of deities, but the use of the term "god" in these comments, sounds more Christian. I would have to read more in context to understand this situation.

From a Chinese graduate student in Egyptology:

Although most Chinese people are not religious, it does not mean that they are atheists. Most people just xiàng lǎotiān / shàngcāng qídǎo 向老天/上苍祈祷, which means they pray to the sky ("old heaven" / "cerulean above"). The concept of shàngtiān 上天 ("heaven above") is very abstract. It is not a god or goddess nor does it have any cult image, but people do believe there is some kind of divine power, which is above in the sky and determines the fate of everybody (not the fate-determination in the ancient Mesopotamian mythology!). So we usually say tīngtiānyóumìng 听天由命 ("heed heaven and follow fate").

For Chinese Christians, they seldom use the word qídǎo 祈祷 ("pray").  Instead, they use dǎogào 祷告("pray-tell") as a formal religious term for prayer to God.  For Muslims, I think they use lǐbài 礼拜 ("worship") rather than qídǎo 祈祷 ("pray").

For Buddhists, I do not think they pray. In this case, what they can do is to niànjīng 念经 ("recite scriptures / sutras"). Or they can say qífú 祈福 ("pray for happiness / blessings / good fortune / bliss"). But the way to qífú 祈福 is still niànjīng 念经. If you want the Buddha to do something for you, you have to xǔyuàn 许愿 ("wish") (also called qiú 求 ["request; seek; beg; beseech; entreat"]) before the cult image of the Buddha. If the Buddha fulfills your wish, you have to come before him again to huányuàn 还愿 ("redeem a vow to a god; make a votive offering; fulfill one's promise") by making offerings to him (e.g., incense, a sutra that you have copied many times, and / or money to support the temple). If the Buddha does not fulfill your wish, you should not complain. This may be what Buddhism means to ordinary people who are not Buddhists.

From a Chinese graduate student in history:

I think "prayer" (qídǎo 祈祷) is commonly used in China. I still remember there was a song named  "Qidao 祈祷" which was very popular in the 1980s and 90s, and I think most Chinese who are not religious can pray to many different deities, such as heaven (tiān 天), the ancestors, the local deities such as Guan Yu (关羽), let alone the Buddhist and Daoist deities. I guess the fact that whether or not a man is religious does not affect his prayers.  The prayers here are more like "wishes" and "hopes".

From a specialist on contemporary Xinjiang society:

The traditional Buddhist version should be qífú 祈福 ("pray for happiness / blessings / good fortune / bliss")。 Qídǎo 祈祷 ("pray") is more likely a newer phrase that had some influence from Christianity or Islam, as the proper word for praying in Christianity or Islam often is dǎogào 祷告 ("pray" [lit., "pray / supplicate-tell / inform"]).

From a lecturer on Chinese language:

They pray to lǎotiān 老天 'the heaven'.  When Chinese people mourn their deceased parents, they would cry "Wǒ de lǎotiānyé a 我的老天爷啊" ("My old heavenly father, ah!") . It is a shìsú de 世俗的 ("secular") god.

From a Chinese Muslim:

I would translate qídǎo 祈祷 ("pray") not in a religious way, but as "hopes / wishes"….

There was a pop song that went "wǒ qídǎo 我祈祷" that means "I wish", i think, in the Chinese context.

From a graduate student of medieval Chinese poetry:

It is not a religious word. I think Chinese learned this from Western movies and TV dramas. No God for Chinese; they just "pray" to nobody (maybe heaven) for what they want.

From a graduate student in Chinese Islam:

I came across dǎo 祷 ("pray; supplicate") just recently in an 1871 inscription for the renovation of a tomb-shrine by a Muslim general from I think Sichuan who was stationed in Quanzhou. Talking about how the shrine would be able once again to bring blessings to the people (not just Muslims — it seems by the inscriptions that the shrines were visited by a lot of different kinds of people), he said shì zé wǒ jiào zhī xìng, yì yú suǒ shēn dǎo zhě yě 是则我教之幸，亦余所深祷者也 "this would be a blessing for our religion, and would be what I have prayed for deeply."  I tried to figure out where else dǎo 祷/禱 ("pray; supplicate") is used other than bài 拜 ("worship") or in the Quanzhou shrine's case shàngxiāng 上香 ("present incense"). In Digital Dictionary of Buddhism there is an entry associating dǎo 祷/禱 with zhùdǎo 祝禱 ("benediction"):  "On the first and fifteenth day of every month a benediction tablet (zhùdǎo pái 祝禱牌) is prepared to pray for the well-being of the emperor and the country and placed on the altar in the Buddha hall in the morning. The tablet is also prepared on the emperor's birthday and on official holidays." It might have some specific domains of religious use, and is maybe associated more with Islam, but I've only seen it in that one instance as far as I can remember.

From a scholar of Chinese philosophy, literature, and art:

Marx followed in the wake of Hegel. Hegel culminated the great era of German theology and turned it on its head. There is a faith-based world view that is implicit in the whole Marxist order as the "excluded other."

For a couple of decades in China, intellectuals were reading more Marxist works in translation than they read of anything else. Now everyone in China has to work through the legacy and aftereffects of Marx and Hegel. Now that Marx and Hegel have been superseded, Chinese people are naturally letting the "excluded other" trickle back into their thinking. Thus it seems natural to talk about prayer and perform prayer, acting in a way that would be natural in a faith-based world.  It doesn't even require an explanation or a profession of belief.

Not only do they have to work through what Marx suppressed, they have to work through Heidegger's massive corrections to Hegel. To me Heidegger's concerns with Being are like trying to struggle out of the quicksand of a faith-based worldview only to go deeper into it. There is such ultimacy to his concern with Being, but it is after all only meaningful if it's an ultimate dimension of reality, not as a language-based attempt to re-order our take on reality. Now the high-power academics in humanities have to know something about Heidegger. More imperiousness of the ultimate concern.

The Chinese people seem to keep stumbling onto corrections of the corrections, or maybe they'll just adopt Christianity wholesale in the end. It's a legacy of Marxism.

I think Buddhist "prayer" has been affected by this. Buddhism was bigger on vows and transfering merit and empathetic compassion. Now as Buddhism comes back, it seems to be picking up a little of this "excluded other" from the Marxism that it endured under.

For many people, it may be necessary to focus one's prayers on a deity.  In this sense, one prays to a god.  For others, one may simply pray that there will be such-and-such an outcome, without the intervention of any supernatural being or force being necessary or expected.  Comparing the religious practices that I observed in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China thirty to forty years ago with what we are witnessing now in the PRC, it would seem that the norms of monotheistic Christianity are gradually exerting an ever more powerful influence on religious belief and practice there, even for those who do not profess to be Christian.