Monks from one of the world's most-renowned Buddhist temples are teaming up with an Internet auction site to help orphans in central China.

The Shaolin Temple began auctioning off 10 hand-carved statues of Buddha this week on Eachnet.com. Another 10 statues will go on sale next week, with all proceeds from the sales going to help orphans in Henan Province where the temple is located.

The sale is part of a campaign to aid 1,000 orphans in the central China province by selling 2,547 statues of Buddha, most of which will be sold at the Shaolin Temple.

The temple is still calculating how much money was raised by the first round of online sales, which ended yesterday. It did say the top price paid for one of the statues was 8,000 yuan (US$963).

Some 27,300 people took part in the four-day auction, according to Eachnet.

The second round of online sales begins today and runs through next Monday.

The temple will work with the Henan Charity Foundation to provide 500 yuan a year to 1,000 orphans until the proceeds from the sale run out.

"We never expected to see Buddha statues auctioned at such a high price, and so many people take part in our activity," said Yongxin, the chief monk at Shaolin. He couldn't say what the lowest sale price was during the online auction, but did note that the lowest bid was 300 yuan.

Shaolin is most famous for its Kong Fu training school but is also well-known for its charity work. In the past, however, most of its donations have come from a relatively small group of Buddhists.

(Shanghai Daily November 21, 2003)