Tibetan Buddhism in Han China 1994

In 1994, there were several academic institutions devoted to scholarly research on Tibetan Buddhism, with some offering graduate degrees. There were also several government Buddhist colleges for training a very limited number of ordinary Tibetan monks and, separately, a select group of tulkus. Both classes included a great deal of study of Leninism. There were a number of temples and stupas in Beijing and Chengde, the summer capital of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, but as in most of the Han Chinese monasteries throughout China, they were functioning mostly as museums and tourist attractions. The monasteries on Wutaishan (the sacred mountain of Manjushri) had mostly Inner Mongolian monks who performed some rituals but had very little learning. A large number of Han Chinese of all ages in China were interested in Buddhism. Everyone thought that Tibet was part of China and so, consequently, considered Tibetan Buddhism as just a form of Chinese Buddhism, and therefore were open to it. But there were no opportunities to study and practice Buddhism, as the Han Chinese monasteries had hardly any teachers who survived the Cultural Revolution, and ordinary people mostly went to the temples just to offer incense and candles to their ancestors.