Chinese Manichaeism is a big, complicated word that talks about a religion that was practiced long ago in China. Remember when you learned about different religions like Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism? Manichaeism is another one of those.
Now, let's break it down step by step. This religion is named after a man named Mani who started it many, many years ago. Imagine a long time ago in China, before there were cars or computers. Mani was a person who believed in many spiritual ideas from different cultures, such as Christianity, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism.
He combined all of these ideas into a new religion that he called Manichaeism. Manichaeism was all about the idea that there's good and evil in the world. People who followed this religion believed that everything in the world was split into two forces: light (good) and darkness (bad).
They thought that every person had a soul that was made of light, and they had to follow certain rules and pray in a certain way to keep that light shining bright. They also believed that the bad things in the world were caused by the evil side.
Manichaeism was popular in China for a while because it had some similar ideas to Buddhism and Christianity, but it also had some different beliefs that some people found interesting. However, over time, people started to follow other religions instead, and Chinese Manichaeism slowly disappeared.
So, in short, Chinese Manichaeism was a religion that believed in good and evil forces in the world, had rules on how to keep a person's soul pure, and was started by a man named Mani who combined different spiritual ideas into one religion.