Tales of a “CEO monk” obscure the business of faith in China

FOR NEARLY two hours the monks sit folded in the lotus position, motionless and silent. All are robed in grey apart from the cherubic man in saffron, their leader. When the last joss-stick burns down, he glides out of the room without a word, later offering a brief explanation of the meditation: “True wisdom emerges not from a calculating mind but from the wellspring of your heart.” It is the kind of line that might appear on a motivational poster. Voiced by this man, Shi Yongxin, the words sound heavier, weighed down by scandal.

Mr Shi is abbot of Shaolin Monastery, one of the world’s best-known Buddhist shrines. Tourists flock there to see its warrior monks, impossibly flexible young men who fell imaginary foes with flying kicks beneath the craggy peaks of Mount Song. Founded 1,500 years ago, it is the cradle of kung fu and Zen Buddhism. But in recent years it has had more infamy than honour. Mr Shi has been criticised for transforming hallowed ground into a crass business venture. “CEO monk” is his moniker, appearing in headlines again and again. Who could resist it? Under Mr Shi, a monk with an MBA, the monastery has expanded abroad and made plans to list on the stockmarket.

In 2015 the extent of his hypocrisy seemed to be revealed. Police opened an investigation after an accuser claimed that Mr Shi had enriched himself and violated his vows of celibacy. It was easy to dismiss the abbot as a sham, a venal man cloaked in religious garb. But Buddhist parables are rarely so straightforward.

Five years on, Mr Shi is still at Shaolin, cleared of all charges. He lives in a windowless room in its centre, looking less like a cunning mastermind than a quiet man of faith—one who may have renounced earthly desires but remains at the mercy of earthly forces. Religious institutions everywhere must negotiate between the articles of their belief and the realities of the world. In China that negotiation can get especially fraught.

When Mr Shi arrived at Shaolin at the age of 16, life there was much harsher. It was 1981, not long after the Cultural Revolution, when Mao Zedong had suppressed Buddhism and Red Guards had destroyed temples. Mr Shi found it in partial ruin. Just 20 monks lived there, subsisting on two steamed buns a day. Soon he had established himself as a lieutenant to its aged, nearly blind abbot. They trekked to government offices in Dengfeng, the monastery’s home county, seeking permission to rebuild temple halls, to perform Buddhist rites and, crucially, to sell tickets.

In a remarkable twist of karma, Shaolin became a hot destination. In 1982 “Shaolin Temple”, Jet Li’s debut, hit the cinemas, depicting a foundational story: how 13 monks, supposedly skilled in kung fu, saved a future Tang dynasty emperor in battle. The monastery went from 50,000 visitors a year to 2m in 1984.

Kung fu is just one aspect of Shaolin—a physical discipline that accompanies chanting and meditation—but easily the most distinctive. Tales of its warrior monks have been popular since the 16th century. Knowing that kung fu was Shaolin’s best hope for appealing to secular society, Mr Shi helped create a performing troupe in 1987.

From the outset, cross-cutting interests complicated matters. The main conflict was between the monks and the Dengfeng officials. For the monks, tourism was a financial lifeline to restore their monastery. For the officials, overseeing a poor county with half a million people, it was a kick-start for development. They squabbled over ticket sales. When the monks sold tickets at the temple’s entrance, the officials erected a new gate 1km up the road, controlling access.

Shaolin also became a magnet for profiteers. People flooded in from nearby villages to open guesthouses, shops and karaoke parlours outside its walls. In the 1990s the streets around it turned into a small city, with 20,000 residents. Dozens of kung fu schools, claiming to be the heirs of its fighting tradition, sprung up. Companies around China used the monastery for branding: with “Shaolin” cigarettes, cars and, most gallingly for the vegetarian monks, ham and beer. “We did not seek commercialisation. It was thrust upon us,” says Mr Shi.

He sought advice from officials in Henan, Shaolin’s province, about how to safeguard the monastery’s image. The only answer, they concluded, was for Shaolin to lay claim to its name. In 1998 it established the Henan Shaolin Industrial Development Co as a vehicle to file for trademarks—for tea, furniture, hardware and more. Today, Shaolin owns nearly 700 trademarks.

Having swatted away the impostors, Shaolin emulated some of their techniques. The monastery produced a kung fu teaching mobile app, backed a fighting-monk movie and launched a line of traditional Chinese medicine. Mr Shi also joined a dozen monks on a short MBA, a publicly funded course to hone their managerial skills. To its detractors Shaolin embodied the worst of modern China, an ancient religious order debased on the altar of riches. For Mr Shi the logic was—and remains—undeniable. “This is how to make Buddhism relevant.” If the pope can televise daily mass, why can’t a Shaolin monk seek publicity?

Karmic cycle

For a time Mr Shi was riding high. He was officially named abbot in 1999. The monastery grew to more than 200 monks. He worked out an agreement with Dengfeng county: 70% of ticket sales to the government, the rest to the monastery. Officials razed the streets around the temple, relocating the residents in town—a move that solidified Shaolin’s bid for UNESCO world-heritage status, obtained in 2010. Shaolin became a weapon in China’s soft-power arsenal. Mr Shi met Queen Elizabeth and Nelson Mandela. He was also skilled at aligning the monastery with the Communist Party. He made the case that Shaolin was not a religious threat but the government’s humble servant, promoting Chinese culture. From 1998 to 2018 he was a deputy to the National People’s Congress, the first representative of China’s Buddhists in the rubber-stamp legislature.

Yet trouble was brewing. Dengfeng county officials wanted greater economic dividends from Shaolin. In 2009 they formed a joint venture with China National Travel Service (CNTS), a big state-owned company. Dengfeng would inject its share of Shaolin ticket revenues into the venture; CNTS would invest in local tourism infrastructure. Pointedly, the abbot did not show up at the company’s inauguration ceremony. Word soon spread that Shaolin wanted to list on the stockmarket, raising as much as 1bn yuan ($150m). Media reported it as another extravagant example of the abbot’s worship of mammon. There was just one problem: he was adamantly opposed, fearing it would make Shaolin a for-profit business. He asked questions that reached Beijing. Wen Jiabao, then China’s prime minister, quashed the listing, saying it would harm Shaolin’s identity.

The Dengfeng officials were furious. They saw Mr Shi as “a monk who won’t obey authority”, according to one intermediary. They started building a rival temple, to lessen their reliance on Shaolin. In May 2015 national authorities halted the project over concerns that it might damage the area’s cultural heritage. Local media reported that it was the abbot who had again foiled the plans, though he denied that. Three months later, salacious accusations surfaced online. They were posted by “Shi Zhengyi”, a self-described Shaolin monk whose pseudonym meant “justice”. He accused the abbot of raping a businesswoman, having two children and embezzling millions.

The Henan government investigated Mr Shi but in 2017 exonerated him of all the main accusations. Evidence in the public domain had always been thin. Paternity tests revealed that neither child was Mr Shi’s. Being China, though, doubts persisted about the investigation’s credibility. Perhaps the abbot had mighty backers. Or perhaps China did not want to sully Shaolin’s image. Yet those doubts were hard to square with the government’s zest for corruption prosecutions in recent years. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has repeatedly shown that he believes that institutions matter more than any person (with the notable exception of himself). Surely, the same logic could apply to Shaolin.

With the abbot’s name officially cleared, the obvious question was whether someone had framed him. Local police told him that they had identified suspects and asked whether they should pursue them. It was as if they were looking for his blessing to let the conspirators off the hook. Mr Shi obliged. “What could I do as a monk? So long as I’m fine, I hope everyone is fine.”

For all the controversy about Shaolin, its most striking feature is its smallness. On an autumn afternoon, yellow leaves swirling around, a woman prostrates herself outside its gate, howling inconsolably. Inside, several buildings have warped roofs. The monks urinate in an open trough before entering the Chan Temple, its holiest site. “Jing’an [a gold-trimmed temple in Shanghai] is worth ten Shaolins,” says one.

And for all the headlines about Mr Shi’s business acumen, there exist many examples of his restrained, even naïve, approach to commerce. Shaolin’s most notorious project was a $300m temple-and-hotel complex in Australia, including a 27-hole golf course. Mr Shi had thought the temple would bring Shaolin more followers. Instead, the golf plans—pushed, the abbot says, by local partners—brought scorn. Moreover, Shaolin never had the money to complete the project. It lent its name and seed funds, trusting its partners to raise the rest. Construction has yet to start.

There is money to be made in all the kung fu schools near Shaolin. One has more than 30,000 students. But Shaolin has no involvement in the big schools. They offer no Buddhism instruction and their graduates go on to serve in the armed forces or as bodyguards. Some members of the much smaller Shaolin fighting troupe have left to found their own schools. Mr Shi has limited sway over them. Occasionally he asks for donations—more supplicant than master.

CNTS put its stake up for sale in October. It has lost money on Shaolin this year, with tourism hurt by the pandemic. But a dearth of bidders so far points to a deeper reason for the sale: the abbot has outmanoeuvred the investors. He has also read the changing political winds in Xi Jinping’s China. In 2018, for the first time in its history, monks raised the national flag over Shaolin. At the ceremony Mr Shi pledged to do more to fuse Buddhism and Chinese culture, a message perfectly aligned with Mr Xi’s prescriptions for religion.

At lunch the monks gather in a hall, sitting in neat rows. Mr Shi is alone on a raised platform, with a painting of a lion, jaws agape, on the wall behind him. For a second or two he looks fearsome. Then young monks come by with pots of rice and vegetable stew, slopping some into his bowl. Head down, he eats silently and quickly. In the afternoon a line-up of locals want to see him, to discuss personal problems and matters of faith. Some bring sweet potatoes as gifts; others apples or tea. Visitor numbers may be down, but those entering the monastery are, the abbot says, more serious about their Buddhism. “This is what we want to see.” ■