Hi-tech Buddhism at Beijing’s Longquan Temple

(ECNS) – A Beijing temple has made headlines again by attracting as acolytes several tech-savvy graduates from prestigious universities, according to Oriental Outlook.

Located in Beijing's northwestern suburbs, Longquan Temple first made headlines in 2010 when Peking University math whiz Liu Zhiyu left school to devote himself entirely to Buddhist studies.

Recent temple devotees include Master Chanxing, who obtained a doctorate in hydrodynamics from Tsinghua University; Master Xianzhao, a professor at Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (also called Beihang University); Master Xianwei, from the Institute of Biophysics at the Chinese Academy of Sciences; and Master Xianli from the Institute of Hydrodynamics at Beihang University.

Netizens have joked that one must be very well educated to become a monk these days.

The magazine also said the temple has gone hi-tech, complete with an electronic book-lending system and mobiles with iOS and Android.

Visitors can scan a QR code outside the temple to access its website, which comes in multilingual versions. Monks in the temple have chanted with iPads since 2011.

The developments are partially attributed to Master Xianxin, who worked as an IT programmer after graduating from the Beijing University of Technology. He developed a modern management system for the temple the first year he joined, the magazine said.

Xianxin also attends major conferences for developers and has established an 80-member volunteer team that includes IT engineers from top companies like Baidu, Sina, Douban and Tencent, as well as students from Tsinghua and Peking universities.

The current project for Xianxin and the volunteers is to build an open reading forum that will make billions of Buddhist books reachable to the general public.