Breastbinding and gender in Taiping China

IRL, 太平公主 "Taiping princess" is apparently Mandarin for "a flat-chested woman" (Taiping apparently doubles as "very flat.") In Andalusada today, I'm going to take a pun and use it to do horrible things to the universe. Here's how.

The Military Chronicle of the Beautiful Marshal

This last week in Andalusada has been spent mostly in my most favorite of all places: Taiping China. This week in the rest of my life, however, has been spent mostly offline, with my nose increasingly in books. This post was inspired by a passage from one of those books:

Whether described by Teresa of the Castle or Teresa of the antimacassars, the slow, painful, clearly marked journey is the same.... But in this anthology none of these maps or manuals or "ways" will be found to be described. For the mystic who happesn to be a Protestant, although he is not more isolated than the Catholic... the fellow climbers are not roped. For the Catholic there are "recognitions" everywhere. But for Jakob Boehme the sixteenth-century shoemaker, or John Wesley the founder of Methodism, or George Fox the Quaker, or Emanuel Swedenborg, there was no benefit of clergy, no scaffolding to hang onto, few guidebooks, and little in history to help.

-Anne Fremantle, The Protestant Mystics, p. viii

Even though Protestantism plays out differently (Güntheritism does have some mystical background, for starters), I'm guessing that this is still true - and nowhere is it more true than in Taiping China, which develops Christianity in radically non-Western ways.

Since I've already introduced one book, and have nothing better to write about just now, I may as well introduce another. One with a name so awful that I'm only going to use it three times in this entire post.

Scratch notes on Taiping hymnography

Taiping pastors are responsible for gathering up their flock for worship services. They're also responsible for escorting them to the designated places of worship (IRL, the Taipings never built dedicated churches; I'm not sure how their sacred architecture plays out in Andalusada.) In some cases, they may or may not also be responsible for escorting their flock from the churches too. (All those conditionals are necessary because the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is not noted for its organization.)

Which highlights one of the things that makes the Taiping Christian religious experience different from all others: it's actually more collective than any other Christian mode of worship. The Taiping faithful are formed into groups before they actually assemble into a single congregation, and because the pastor's responsible for handling them as such, they can also leave as groups, rather than going in peace as individuals.

It also doesn't synchronize exactly with the service.

And because of Taiping distinctivies, both IRL and in Andalusada, I have every reason to guess that Taiping piety involves a lot of very loud processional hymns (and a somewhat smaller number of recessionals.)

Attempts to establish a common cycle of processional and recessional hymns, for the sake of standardization, have all met with failure. As is ever the case with Taiping Christianity, chaos reigns.

Taiping pastors

Pastoral responsibilities are a bit different in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

For one thing, China has no tradition of collective worship, so the work of a pastor is literally to be a shepherd: they're tasked with making sure that people show up for worship, and accounting for their flock. (As per IRL, burning the attendance records is part of the liturgy.)

For another, interrupting the fixed parts of the Taiping liturgy is punishable by summary execution, and the movement of the Holy Spirit does not count as a valid excuse. So pastors are also responsible for pulling their flock out of the service before they get themselves killed.