21st century monks
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Master Huimin, abbot of Jing'an Temple in Shanghai, receives the faithful at the unveiling of a restored stone stele. |
The electronic footprint of Buddhist Master Xuecheng looks more diverse and comprehensive than your typical IT company CEO.
At Longquan Temple in Beijing where Master Xuecheng is the abbot, he has founded a Chinese, English and Japanese website, a personal blog, a personal microblog, a temple blog, a temple microblog, a charity foundation blog, personal English Twitter, personal and temple instant messaging groups and microblogs on sina.com and QQ.com in eight different languages.
Longquan made headlines within China last year when Peking University math whiz Liu Zhiyu left school against his parents' wishes to devote himself entirely to Buddhist studies at the temple in the city's northwestern suburbs.
Even before the Sina Weibo microblogging dominated the mainland field, Master Xuecheng had already long been at it via Chinese microblogging pioneer zuosa.com. Master Xuecheng in 2007 started adding video content to his blog, some reposted on video sharing websites. The Voice of Longquan Temple website went online in Chinese and English in 2008 and the Japanese version was launched this year.
On top of his Longquan duties, Master Xuecheng, 45, also heads up temples in Xi'an, capital of Shaanxi Province and Putian of eastern Fujian Province where he promotes yet more multiple online options to the faithful.
Born near the prefecture-level city of Putian in 1966, Master Xuecheng was originally named Fu Ruilin. At 23, he became the youngest Han Buddhist abbot since the 1949 founding of the New China.
Master Xuecheng was quick to recognize the power of the Internet. "Buddhism must keep pace with the times," he told Buddhism online in 2004.
"The advancement of information technology has given tremendous opportunities for the dissemination of Buddhism," he told the Buddhism news portal.
"We must grasp this changing era and use technological means to spread the spirit of Buddhism and share the wisdom of Buddhist sutras with the general public."
Forty days after his Sina and Tencent QQ microblogs were launched on February 17, they had more than 100, 000 fans.
Master Xuecheng's first encounter with information technology began in 2002 when a Sina vice president opened a blog for him. Since then, his blog has received more than 6 million views.
"There are about 400 million Internet surfers and 800 million mobile phone users in China," said Master Xianqi, head of blogs and websites at Longquan.
"People are accustomed to this means of communication. That's why we chose to launch multilingual microblogs."
The multilingual microblogs have attracted even more Chinese mainland media attention, with Master Xuecheng dubbed "a modern monk for the electronic age" by the China Youth Daily.
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