Yang In China

Reading about Chinese religions helped me develop a better understanding of the Chinese world perspective. What I found interesting was the section on yin-yang and the "Ten Thousand Things". According to Bilhartz, the Chinese rejects the assertions of a Creator deity that needs worship or that creation itself is an illusion. The Chinese consider the world to be a sacred place with no boundaries that separates the natural from the supernatural realms. They also believe that the universe is constantly changing and they attribute this changing of the cosmos to the cosmic forces, yin and yang (Bilhartz, 2006, p. 262). "Yin represents that which is passive, cold, earthly, wet, dark, soft, changeable, and female. Yang is associated with that which is active, hot, heavenly, dry, bright, hard, steadfast, and male" (Bilhartz, 2006, p. 262). What was particularly fascinating about yin and yang was that they are opposites that always act in harmony to maintain order of the universe. I have always thought they were conflicting forces like other classical philosophical dualisms (i.e., good and evil).

Another thing I found interesting was that during the early Zhou period, every male subject in the different level of the
However, the Daoists strive to live in harmony with it. According to Bilhartz, the Daoists believe that there was no clear distinction between class, states, genders, and even between human and animals during the golden age (2006, p. 268). They described the world during this time as an "uncarved block" where everything was in chaotic wholeness and everything existed. Then the world fell into a state of imperfection when the "uncarved block" began to divide itself into distinguishable parts (Bilhartz, 2006, p. 268). I found this intriguing because it is different from the Western religions belief that humanity's deviation from God was the cause of