Citation: Baycroft, Anne. 2022. Narratives of Religious Landscape: Reading Gender and Chinese Buddhism in the Travel Writing of Christian Women. Religions 13: 1062. htps://doi.org/10.3390/rel13111062 Academic Editor: Mark Berkson Received: 5 October 2022 Accepted: 31 October 2022 Published: 4 November 2022 Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional afl‑ iations. Copyright: © 2022 by the author. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Atribution (CC BY) license (htps:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). religions Article Narratives of Religious Landscape: Reading Gender and Chinese Buddhism in the Travel Writing of Christian Women Anne Baycroft Department of History, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK S7N4L3, Canada; anne.baycroft@usask.ca Abstract: This article explores the narrative descriptions of the Chinese religious landscape embed‑ ded within nineteenth century Christian missionary writings. I demonstrate the potential use of Protestant missionary writings as sources in the academic study of religion in China for both the physical descriptions of religious places that they contain and the narratives they express regarding the religious activities and identities of Chinese women. Of particular interest to this study are the religious encounters experienced between Christian and Buddhist women. My analysis of the travel writings of three Protestant women, Eliza Bridgeman (1805–1871), Helen Nevius (1833–1910), and Is‑ abelle Williamson (d. 1886), illustrates that Chinese women were highly active within sacred spaces across China. This article contributes to discourses on the history of women and Chinese Buddhism, ofers historiographical insights into the origins of Western academic studies of Buddhism in China, and provides alternate source material for information about religious continuity and change in early modern China. Keywords: protestant missionaries; travel writing; missionary writings; Chinese Buddhism; Chinese religion; early modern China; women; religious landscape; narrative 1. Introduction In 1859, American Protestant missionary Helen Nevius (1833–1910) and her husband Rev. John Nevius (1829–1893) left Ningbo 寧波 to establish a mission station in the city of Hangzhou 杭州. While the terms of the Treaty of Tianjin 天津條約 would not be ratifed until 1860, which formally ended the Second Opium War, Nevius and her husband entered Hangzhou having no legal right to reside within the city. Some four miles from the city walls, Helen and John were granted lodging in a “old monastery” by the abbot who lived there (Nevius 1869, p. 135). This lodging was at the foot of the Liuhe Pagoda 六和塔 (Roma‑ nianized by Nevius as “Loh‑o‑tah”), which Nevius describes as “a most interesting object” (p. 140). Aside from the appearance of the pagoda, its lofty height, internal staircase, and ancient brick façade, Nevius explains that, on the day of their arrival in April, the pagoda was occupied by “crowds of worshippers; many of whom remained throughout the night, chanting, beating drums, and making prostrations. I noticed that the women here seemed particularly devout” (p. 141). Nevius’ observation about the ritual activity happening within a marked Buddhist space, particularly with reference to the presence and religios‑ ity of women—as this article shows—was a common narrative scene described within the travel writings and journals of Protestant missionary women. The personal writings of missionaries who lived in China during the nineteenth cen‑ tury ofer an intimate and informative source of information about the religious activities of Chinese women. By taking a ritual‑focused approach to these sources, this article explores the exemplary nuance of the Chinese religious landscape embedded within nineteenth century missionary writings. 1 Below, I introduce the writings of three missionary women, Eliza Bridgeman (1805–1871), Helen Nevius, and Isabelle Williamson (d. 1886). 2 I have chosen the travel writing of these three women for several reasons. First, for the common‑ ality these women share and second for the ‘pioneering’ nature of their lived experience. Religions 2022, 13, 1062. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13111062 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions