When opium can be benign
China's Communist Party, reconsidering Marx's words, is starting to wonder whether there might not be a use for religion after all
“DEVELOP the dragon spirit; establish a dragon culture,” urge large green characters at the high school in Hongliutan, a poor village at the foot of a range of bleak loess hills. Though dragon can be a synonym for China, it is a god known as the Black Dragon that is being invoked here. Without funds from the Black Dragon's hillside temple, in a gully behind the village, the school would not exist. Nor, most likely, would the adjacent primary school and the irrigation system that brings water from the nearby Wuding River to the village's maize and cabbage fields.
This article appeared in the Briefing section of the print edition under the headline “When opium can be benign”
Briefing February 3rd 2007
From the February 3rd 2007 edition
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