Tibetan Buddhism among the Han Chinese in China 1996

Introduction

A large number of Han Chinese of all ages in China are interested in Buddhism, but as in Tibet, the main problem is the lack of teachers. Many young people are receiving m­onastic ordination, but their quality is low. The majority of college-educated youth prefer to work and make m­oney, while those who join monasteries are mostly from poor and/or unedu­cated families, primarily from the countryside. There are only a few qualified e­lderly monks and nuns left who survived the communist persecution and can teach, and there is no one of middle age with any training. As in the Tibetan and Inner Mongolian regions, there are government Buddhist colleges with two, three or four-year p­rograms in many major Inner Chinese cities and pilgrimage sites, with political education as part of their curriculum, but relatively few of the newly-ordained Han Chinese attend them.

In general, the level of Buddhist education is lower in the Chinese monasteries than in the Tibetan ones. As in Tibet, people are focusing primarily on the physical reconstruction of Buddhism at the moment – temples, pagodas, statues and so forth – and this requires putting time and effort into raising money and building. In some cases, the Chinese government is helping to finance this reconstruction. As a result, many Buddhist temples are now open as museums or tourist attractions, with the monastics being the ticket-collectors and temple attendants, as in Lhasa. This allows for a veneer of “religious freedom,” an image much sought by the Beijing government. Most reconstruc­tion, however, is being financed by the local people, sometimes with foreign benefactors, and often by the monastics themselves.

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