Philosophical considerations on the discovery of Dongsheng
The discovery of Dongsheng creates quite a stir in China's philosophical circles. One of the first consequences is the renewal of the theory of "universal mandate", which, although ritually proclaimed by every dynasty, has most of the time been tacitly acknowledged to be inaccurate, as it was usually quite obvious that the reach of the Imperial rule did not coincide with the world, or even with its larger portion. But here is a huge new continent inhabited by nomadic barbarians similar in their lifestyle and even their physionomy to those found on the periphery of the Empire, as well as two sedentary kingdoms similar to the Empire's vassal states ; what was conspicuously missing was the unifying and civilizing rule of Chinese overlordship. As Liu Xing, a court official, famously put it, Dongsheng was "an empty vessel waiting to be filled by the water of Imperial rule."
One of the first philosophers to visit Dongsheng is Chen Xianzhang (1428-1500). He is only 31 when he first arrives in Qingshan in 1459, but his mastery of both the Confucian and the Taoist classics is remarkable, and he has begun making a name for himself as the Master of the White Sands (from the name of his native village, Baisha, in the vicinity of Guangzhou). He spends the following eight years travelling in the coastal mountains and the interior plateaus of the new continent, meeting the natives and engaging them on philosophical and religious issues ; he soon realizes that these peoples, with their ancient traditions of shamanism, draw from the same spiritual wellspring as the founders of Taoism themselves. He later writes, in his treatise Reflexions on Man and Heaven : "Truly knowledge of the Way flows through every man's heart as the wind blows over every land ; for although the names differ, the intuition is true ; and names do not endure, but the Way does. Did not Laozi say, The name that can be named is not the enduring name ?" Leaving back to China in 1467, he brings with him a shaman from the Snohomish tribe, whom he teaches Chinese to and introduces to Taoist circles. That man, who is given the Chinese name Zhou Xuewen, stays in China for five years before returning to Dongsheng, where he founds a syncretic religion based on a Taoist reinterpretation of shamanism, the Way of the Spirit Breath, or Shenqidao.