ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an overview of Chinese culture and practices, identifying the salient aspects within Chinese religious traditions, in particular the concept of Tian which can mean Heaven, ruler nature, and/or the divine. With an understanding of how the Chinese view the divine, this chapter then establishes the spiritual discernment of the Chinese as “More in Life than Meets the Eye” (or the “More”), a notion of Transcendence/the Divine that relates to the concept of Tian. The central thesis is that this religious perception is identifiable as afterimages of Chinese directors and their films, an approach which draws on Richard A. Blake’s concept of afterimage as a framework to interpret mainland Chinese filmmakers’ movies. Where Blake teased out concepts of community, symbol, and sacrament, the approach here extends the study using Confucianism, Daoism, and the “More” in Chinese tradition.
