Richard Madsen: Chinese turning to religion, "looking for hope, and a better life"
IR/PS affiliate quoted in the Toronto Star
08/08/2010
Bill Schiller,
Toronto Star
LINFEN, CHINA—Old Wang was fast asleep in his bed when the mob arrived.
It was 3 a.m. one Sunday last September.
“People shook me and told me. ‘Get up. Get outside. Hurry up!’ ”
What he witnessed on the grounds of the Gospel Shoes Factory – a rural Christian community where he lived and worked with 60 others near here – was complete chaos: a raging mob of more than 200 men were pushing their way through the darkness with flashlights, wooden clubs, bricks, hoes and pieces of metal, smashing everything and anyone in their path.
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Richard Madsen received an M.A. in Asian studies and a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard. He is currently Professor of Sociology and director of the Council on East Asian Studies at the University of California, San Diego. He is also a co-director of a Ford Foundation project to help revive the academic discipline of sociology in China.
