Where is the revival?

This is the time to recap what I've been doing so far. I had conducted multiple interviews and participant observations in the past few weeks. Although I had identified certain area that I want to look into, the question of how to locate the revival is still a crucial one.

This point is confirmed by one of the activist I interviewed. He used 'boiling water' as a metaphor to describe the situation about the revivalism now. Without the support of the government and the obscure treatment from the media, which make it difficult to observe what's going on here now in China in terms of the revival. Like the bubbles in boiling water, things are keep changing and transforming every minute and it is hard to describe/ pin-point what is the current status is like.

For instance, in terms of learning about Confucian classics. Different groups who are doing it in different ways, have different purpose in mind and do it in different ways. There are private Shishu, which charges a lot for summer camp and extra-curriculum classes on reciting and reading the classics. There are also rural full-time schools that only teaches Confucian classics and serves as the only education institute in the area. And of course, there's free/ volunteer classes provided by individual and group. And when they talk about 'classics', the definition is also varied : some only refer to the Four Books (Confucians classics), some include classical literature, and some even include English classical literature.

Things could be even more complicated in terms of worshiping Confucius. I don't think that we can see this worship as a worship of deity/god at all. It is more appropriate to understand this as a symbolic political rituals. Two things I need to understand is the purpose of doing that for the state; and also the purpose of doing that as an individual.

I feel that there's revival. As one of the interviewee told me that 'yes, the government and the media had talked a lot about it. But they can only talk about it because there's this kind of interests from the people!' But to describe it what exactly had revived and how it is reviving, I'll still need more research and thinkings to sort it out!