- published: 26 Nov 2012
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Chinese Buddhism (simplified Chinese: 汉传佛教; traditional Chinese: 漢傳佛敎; pinyin: Hànchuán Fójiào) refers collectively to the various schools of Buddhism that have flourished in China since ancient times. Buddhism has played an enormous role in shaping the mindset of the Chinese people, affecting their aesthetics, politics, literature, philosophy and medicine.
At the peak of the Tang Dynasty's vitality, Chinese Buddhism produced numerous spiritual masters.
Admitting the impossibility of saying "when or how the first Buddhist missions in China began", Kenneth Saunders mentions Ashoka and the Fayuan Zhulin (written 688 CE) noting missionaries arriving in Qin Dynasty (221–206 BCE) China. This Buddhist encyclopedia claims that in 217 BCE, the monk Li Fang 李防 and seventeen others arrived in Xi'an – but this legend is uncorroborated by historical sources.
According to some European historians, Mauryan emperor Aśoka the Great sent the royal monk Massim Sthavira to India, Nepal, Bhutan, and China to spread Buddhism around 265 BCE. However, it has not been widely confirmed that these missionaries arrived in China or that they were responsible for establishing the teachings of Buddhism there.
China (i/ˈtʃaɪnə/; Chinese: 中国; pinyin: Zhōngguó; see also Names of China), officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is the world's most-populous country, with a population of over 1.3 billion. Covering approximately 9.6 million square kilometres, the East Asian state is the world's second-largest country by land area, and the third- or fourth-largest in total area, depending on the definition of total area.
The People's Republic of China is a single-party state governed by the Communist Party of China. It exercises jurisdiction over 22 provinces, five autonomous regions, four directly controlled municipalities (Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, and Chongqing), and two mostly self-governing special administrative regions (Hong Kong and Macau). Its capital city is Beijing. The PRC also claims Taiwan—which is controlled by the Republic of China (ROC), a separate political entity—as its 23rd province, a claim controversial due to the complex political status of Taiwan and the unresolved Chinese Civil War. The PRC government denies the legitimacy of the ROC.
As God's own tears fell to the groundSo did the salt
running down her skin
Her lips are numb and she hears no sound
Still she feels the unborn child within
A name unwritten, a life denied
She never made it to the other side
I'm standing on a hill
I hear a crying wave
Her soul is just the dust on another man's grave
A second child is a child too much, in China
The greater your flock becomes
The more their love surrounds you
A gift received from higher hands
Break down these walls between us for I hear your cries