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Good Karma, Now On Sale
I just paid a visit to Jiu Hua Mountain in Anhui Province, one of the four famous Buddhist sanctuaries in the country. It is quite a charming and picturesque area, although a fair side trip off the regular beaten tourist path. A small, circularly built town with recreated Ming Dynasty style one and two story buildings has been built in the foothills beneath the mountain, and this is where the buses disgorge the steady flow of domestic tourists. Many Buddhist pilgrims also make the trip, and the parking lots I saw a number of long distance double-decker buses with sleepers that must have been bringing people on overnight trips from as far away as Shanghai, Hefei (capital of Anhui), and other urban centres further inland.
While I do know a fair bit about the Buddhist faith and the number of regional incarnations it has taken over the centuries, I had to chuckle at the commercialism it suffers from in this village. I don’t blame them for trying to make a living and maintain the facilities of the village, but can not avoid feeling some reproach about their blatant schemes. At each step along the way, there are ploys to earn money in the name of enlightenment. Several shops had display areas out front with plastic cartons full of turtles they said had been captured from the wild, and that for a small price (dependent on the size of the little fella) you could “set them free” into the man-made pond in front of their shop. This “good deed”, the reasoning goes, can win you positive karma and score you points in the spiritual world. Even the local Chinese I overheard were wondering if at the end of the day, the shopkeepers don’t scoop them up and put them up for “re-liberation” again the following day. At one temple, a nun was positioned near the entrance to read blessings from Buddhist scriptures in beautiful and poetic prose for a small donation. On the other side of the same temple, having your name engraved in stone on wide plaques of marble would ensure 10,000 years of blessings, 500 RMB for yourself or 3000 RMB for your entire family. I wondered to myself if anyone ever tried bargaining for it.
A funicular takes visitors to the south summit, and at the top, there is more of the same. A long chain stretches along the walkway, and vendors stalls are set up every 20 metres selling padlocks of various sizes that can be engraved with the names of couples. The reasoning is that the engraved lock, if fastened to the chain, will secure an everlasting bond between the couple. The finishing touch to this is to throw away the keys. In the “One Hundred Year Palace”, a diminutive and perfectly mummified monk looks out from inside a glass enclosure. He was boiled posthumously sitting in the lotus position, and then bathed in a fine gold gloss. 500 arhats, bodyguard-like disciples of the Buddhist deities, adorn the upper floor of the palace, each with unique physical characteristics that embody their unique spiritual attributes. For 10 yuan, visitors are invited to reflect on a question or problem, bow three times, and then choose at random a number that corresponds to one of the arhats. A divination card with a description of the arhat is then pulled from a filing cabinet, and a local monk gives an interpretation for the seeker.
Jiu Hua Mountain does retain much of its charm and religious significance in spite of the blatant capitalism at every corner. Most visitors, and perhaps the many devoted and pious monks and nuns, just regard the whole phenomenon with a grain of salt and perhaps as a necessity to maintain their livelihoods. I made a small personal donation in the main temple, but was not at all interested in securing blessings through good deeds paid for, or in fortune telling, and hope that other like-minded visitors do the same.
last modified Aug 14, 2004 at 23:14
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