Religion lost in contracting system

(Ecns.cn) – It is an emerging business. Without building factories or investing in high-end technology, the enterprising can easily pocket windfall profits by taking advantage of devout religious believers at Buddhist or Taoist temples in China.

In recent years, being a subcontractor of a temple ensured you a fortune, and putting a temple under contract has become a popular phenomenon across the nation. After an investor signs a contract with the administrator of a temple – usually a government department or a village committee - the investor holds the management and administrative rights of the temple for a fixed period and pays a certain amount of the contract fees to the latter.

Substantial profits come mostly from the sale of joss sticks and candles the faithful burn at the temple. As the temple business gets bigger and bigger, it becomes more and more difficult to discern the real identities of the Buddhist monks, nuns and Taoist priests who preside there. Indeed, some of them are only contract workers who pretend to be religious masters and resume their secular lives after work.

It seems to be good news that the temple business is creating jobs that need to be filled, thus easing local unemployment pressure, and these incomes tend to be higher than what white collars earn. However, under a contract system, places of religious worship are turned into premises for frivolous conduct, and their sanctity sullied by a form of commerce, charges China News Weekly.

Crazy business

The practice of farming temples out to subcontractors started around the late 1990s. Though the government has issued orders forbidding this, the profit motive has fueled large scale versions of this kind of business, with an accompanying rise in contract fees every year.

On October 12, 2011, Ou Peng went to Kunming on a business trip with his wife and two other friends. To make full use of this opportunity, they managed to find a half a day to visit the Stone Forest, a landscape attraction popular since the Ming Dynasty (1368 -1644). However, as they marveled at the natural stone masterpieces and were bewitched by the intricate formations, they were unaware the next stop was the Yanquan Temple at Yiliang County of Kunming.

Obviously they were part of a one-day package tour. After arriving at the Yanquan Temple, they were at first happy to listen to its history and enjoy the giant rocks with springs bursting out from their centers, but later it turned out to be a fundraising tour. All the travelers were asked to draw lots and listen to master Buddhist fortune tellers interpret the selections.

Ou remembers that a traveler drew forecast number 14, but when he went to the master fortune teller, he was told it was a No.40 lot, which indicates a family disaster and also a natural calamity that year. The master hinted to him that a method of avoiding his fate was to burn a specially-designed joss stick, but the price of it was 600 yuan (US$94.8). The man said he had brought no cash, but to his to his surprise, the fortune teller answered that he could swipe his credit card too.

Then it was Ou's turn. According to this same master fortune teller, Ou had a family disaster in store too, but it was said to be very serious. The favorable turn for him was that an exclusive limited joss stick would mitigate the effects for 10,800 yuan (US$1,708).

Ou said he was going to pray for blessings and good fortune, but the vicious behavior affected his mood for the rest of the trip, he told China News Weekly.

A typical mode

The case of Yanquan Temple is a very typical form of fraud, but it has gone on for over ten years. In 2001, when Jinxing Village was compelled to deal with its heavy debts, the Committee signed contracts with a travel agency and has done so ever since. From then on the temple was in the hands of the agency and its management acquired the right to run all the services at the site.

At that time, developing tourism was seen as a means of powering huge economic growth, and in the beginning Jinxing Village enjoyed a major revenue boost. Statistics show that the Yanquan Temple and a local waterworks plant were averaging a net profit of 5 million yuan (US$760,690) every year by February 2008.

With the profits came increasing social benefits for villagers. For example, all middle school students received a free education and free lunches, and those over 60 years of age got extra living subsidies.

But trouble soon followed the contract approach, because the public blames it for damaging the holy image of the Buddhist religion and turning the temple into a place to satisfy only economic interests.

On October 1, 2011, the temple was ordered to suspend business and bring itself up to standard within 15 days. However, after that warning and interruption, everything went back to the status quo.

Where to purify belief and faith?

Chiang Hsiao-yen, vice chairman of Taiwan's Kuomintang (KMT), once commented on the Chinese mainland's tourist sites by noting that all its temples, including the Putuo Temple, charge the visitor, while those in Taiwan do not.

In response, Zhou Kailong, vice director of the Mount Putuo management committee, denied that the temple charged a 40 yuan entrance fee. Since the 1980s, he said the temple has charged 5 yuan for flowers and incense - the earnings made are also used to renovate the structure. In any case, religious organizations are different from other institutions in that their primary concern is to attract more pilgrims. Renovating the Putuo Temple is of course necessary because it is a prestigious structure, but the fact that it only charges 5 yuan for flowers and incense while other temples charge much more for entrance fees casts doubt on Zhou's denial.

Being commercialized and industrialized is the fate of almost all tourism sites in China, including the geographical features of mountains, rivers and lakes, as well as man-made temples, burial sites and the former residences of historic and religious figures.