Faiths.
"Every Chinese person," says an old proverb, "is a Confucian when things are going well, a Daoist when things are going badly, and a Buddhist just before they die."
This saying might even be a little conservative, as it fails to include the ancestor worship and Chinese folk religion that also pervade many aspects of Chinese life. Indeed, when it comes to religious faiths in China, it is difficult to overstate the muddled nature of the narrative. Even simple statistics about population percentages that adhere to this or that religion are unavailable or unreliable.
In Beijing, these several religions or belief system are an undercurrent of daily life, and manifest in subtle ways in the Chinese approach to relationships, business and life, even if the outward profession or practice of religion seems somewhat muted. The monotheistic faiths of the West also have had a longstanding presence in the capital, with Christianity, or surprising derivations thereof, making especial inroads in recent years.
A history of underground Christian churches in past years left Chinese Christians cut off from wider tradition, and the result has been a flowering of Christian-flavored texts and philosophies that are especially popular among the younger generation in Beijing. More traditional churches are also available, though often exclusively for foreigners.
Beijing’s native Muslim population is composed of the Hui and Uigher, with the Hui clustered around the Niu Jie Mosque in the southern part of the city, and the Uigher mainly visible through the presence of Xinjiang restaurants throughout the city.
Marco Polo, writing in the 1200s, reported on the prevalence of Jewish traders in Beijing. Today, Jews of many nationalities reside in Beijing in numbers of over 800, according to Chabad Lubavitch, a Jewish community organization in Nuren Jie.