China’s ‘temple economy’ thrives on the power of youthful prayer

{"text":[[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":6.65,"text":"It is nearly closing time at the Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou, and it is raining. By the gates, a few metres from a frenzy of shops and restaurants, an unmanned loudspeaker endlessly blares out a single sentence: “Esteemed guests, please get your reservations ready”."}],[{"start":21.8,"text":"Around the corner, a different atmosphere takes hold, already foreshadowed by the high yellow walls that you might find around a monastery or a bishop’s palace. Past grottos and rock carvings of Buddhas, through the temple’s renovated halls and courtyards, the guests are now swaying in the distinctive rhythm of prayer."}],[{"start":41.3,"text":"“This is just how we Chinese people are,” says 18-year-old Lin Xiangrui, who is visiting for the first time. “No matter whether it’s a [Buddhist] temple or Daoist shrine, we’ll go and pray.”"}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":52.5,"text":"The Buddhist Lingyin Temple, known in English as the Temple of the Soul’s Retreat and dating back to the 4th century AD, is one of China’s most famous. Tickets are now free and, in a sign of a need to ration demand, must be booked in advance. Elsewhere, a similar appetite for temples is evident, to the point that the term “temple economy” has arisen within the domestic tourism industry."}],[{"start":76.9,"text":"But that label does not fully capture this particular strain of worship. People pray on their knees on designated prayer mats, or bow by the incense burners. Others touch particular characters on a wall of inscriptions, hopeful that the words will come true. In front of a statue of the monastic guardian Bodhisattva Skanda, someone has left a small photograph of Chinese pop star Ma Jiaqi. “I’m not praying to him,” clarifies one young woman."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":102.9,"text":"Such an outpouring of spiritualism comes at an uneasy juncture in Chinese history, especially for the young. After decades of economic transformation that followed profound social change and the devastation of tradition, the country’s trajectory is suddenly uncertain."}],[{"start":119.30000000000001,"text":"Since the early 1980s China has permitted a controlled revival of religious activity, which was suppressed during the Cultural Revolution. But the matter of prayer, simultaneously public and private, is harder to gauge. It hints not only at the diffused resurgence of tradition but also its adaptation to breathless modernity in China, where even social media invocations to “lie flat” have a distinctly reflective tone to them."}],[{"start":145.35000000000002,"text":"“I’ve prayed several times today,” says Mike Li, a 20-year-old university student with reddish dyed hair who majors in management. Is he thinking about the past, the present or the future? “I in fact think about all of them,” he says, “because it’s a parallel state. Time is just a convenience to help us understand ourselves.”"}],[{"start":163.25000000000003,"text":"Li says he only understands Buddhism “superficially”, echoing others in the temple. Elsewhere, public worship of this kind might correspond to strict religious identities. But here, in a country where practices have long blended into one another, affiliation is less clear-cut."}],[{"start":180.10000000000002,"text":"“I wouldn’t say I count as a Buddhist believer right now,” says Lin, who suggests the attitude today is “pretty casual” and that “Buddhist belief requires a very long time period, a belief from start to finish.”"}],[{"start":192.8,"text":"“But it’s not that I’m saying I don’t believe,” he goes on, citing an old Chinese saying: “It exists if you believe in it, it does not if you don’t.”"}],[{"start":202,"text":"Of the various kinds of prayer associated with the five branches of religion officially sanctioned in China in the decade after the Communist Party took power in 1949 — Daoism, Buddhism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism — only the first two take place in temples. Both also involve a pattern of three distinct motions, though there are other differences."}],[{"start":224.15,"text":"At the White Cloud Temple in Shanghai, one attendant explains that in Daoism, in contrast to the frequently symmetrical palms of Buddhism, the left hand wraps around the outside of the right. One way of remembering this is through the term baoquan, an old Chinese rite of cupping one fist in another hand as a greeting. “[China] always had this,” he says."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":244.55,"text":"This is just one example of the interminglings that characterise China’s religious landscape, in contrast to the finely demarcated ecclesiastical distinctions of European history. Daoism, which originated in China, and Buddhism, which was introduced in the Han dynasty, around the time of the life of Christ, have for centuries vied with traditional folk beliefs and cultural rituals."}],[{"start":266.6,"text":"At Shanghai’s Jade Buddha Temple, visitors similarly pray in three motions while holding sticks of incense, or kneel on prayer mats. “I came here today because what I was thinking of, the things I asked for, seem to have come true,” says one 23-year-old IT worker who asks only to be referred to by his surname He. “I’m redeeming a vow.”"}],[{"start":288.90000000000003,"text":"He is originally from Shandong province, where “the custom of kneeling is common”. “You just by seeing and hearing it learn how to do it,” he says, “No one really taught you exactly what to do, and no one was forcing you.”"}],[{"start":302.6,"text":"He had originally stumbled upon the temple by chance online after moving to Shanghai. On his first visit, he met a Buddhist woman in her eighties who told him the place was “efficacious” and treated him to a vegetarian meal. “Isn’t that a sign of yuanfen?” he says, a term that might be translated as destiny. “I don’t view it as part of religion,” he adds, of yuanfen. “It’s a kind of Chinese culture”, where many beliefs are together."}],[{"start":330,"text":"Zhu Yihua, who was born in 1975 and works in the temple, says “there are more and more” young visitors. When she was growing up, her grandmother was a Buddhist and they had a statue at home. “We belong to the generation in between,” she adds. “Older people, the earliest among them, are quite superstitious”, while “younger people who come to believe often are very rational, they lean on philosophy, dialectics”."}],[{"start":357.9,"text":"Being a Buddhist, she explains, requires a formal process called guiyi. As a result, “if you ask people if they are Buddhists . . . they will say no.”"}],[{"start":369.09999999999997,"text":"The Lingyin Temple’s hall of 500 enlightened arhats, in which the face of each saintly figure is cast in a distinct emotional expression, with no two quite alike, is the largest of its kind in China. The hall was rebuilt in 1999, one of the many examples of temple renovation to take place since the 1976 death of Mao and a 1982 reform allowed for a reflourishing of religion."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":394.2,"text":"The Cultural Revolution, with its attack on the so-called “Four Olds”, had for a time threatened Lingyin with destruction. But in subsequent decades, state control of organised religion through approved associations was followed by a governmental embrace of “tradition, culture and religion as a form of intangible cultural heritage”, according to Ian Johnson, author of The Souls of China: The Return of Religion After Mao."}],[{"start":419.59999999999997,"text":"The Lingyin Temple, which has been rebuilt many times, includes multiple examples of such heritage. It also displays murals of Ji Gong, a 12th-century monk who resided at the temple. “This was his home,” says Molly Hong, a 40-year-old tourist passing through the statues with a younger colleague, “and also the place he became a monk, so it’s very efficacious here, people who come here have their prayers answered.”"}],[{"start":443.9,"text":"It is not that the details of history and scripture are unknown, but prayer is a deeply personal matter. One financial professional in Shanghai, who spoke on condition of anonymity, recalled growing up in China, from a partly Christian and partly Buddhist background. “Twenty years ago, people said you’re so superstitious . . . why are you going to the temple? It offers nothing,” he recalls."}],[{"start":468.34999999999997,"text":"Now it was somewhere “to place anxieties and uncertainties”. “It’s the only place you’re not competing,” he says, of the temple. “You’re not competing for the same wish.” Prayer was not philosophical but both “practical” and “emotional”; it does not require a “strict religious code”. And anyway, “what if there is a mercy beyond what I can see?”"}],[{"start":488.95,"text":"Although rich in numerical meaning, prayers in China are not amenable to clear statistical analysis, especially by age cohort; those who visit temples may be unusually spiritual. It is tempting to attribute their sincerity to the stresses facing China’s youth, from unemployment to technology to plummeting marriage rates and a reckoning with urban ennui."}],[{"start":510.2,"text":"But there is also a mysticism in the voices of some young visitors that would be incongruous elsewhere, as though they are channelling something distant, or discovering the hidden cycles of history; as though they know what it means to be old."}],[{"start":523.55,"text":"“When I was young, my family used to take me to places like this,” says the 18-year-old Lin Xiangrui. But he had not visited such places since growing up. It is like a reunion after a “long separation”, like “meeting an old friend”."}],[{"start":536.65,"text":"“There’s incense inside,” he adds. “You can take it, light it, and pray.”"}],[{"start":542.3,"text":"With contributions from Wang Xueqiao"}],[{"start":544.9,"text":"Thomas Hale is the FT’s Shanghai correspondent"}],[{"start":549.1999999999999,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend on Instagram, Bluesky and X, and sign up to receive the FT Weekend newsletter every Saturday morning"}],[{"start":565.8499999999999,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1783770910_9505.mp3"}