God and the Communist Party

Lots of recent press about China has focused on its intolerance towards religions the government sees as a threat - see the regime's attempt to appoint its own Catholic bishops, who were immediately excommunicated by the Vatican, or its installation of its own candidate to be the next Panchen Lama in a Buddhist monastery in Sichuan (see an excellent couple of articles in this week's Economist) but one of the things that most surprised me about the country was the presence of religious minorities who have lived among the Chinese with no tension for centuries - a big community of Jews in Kaifeng, and Muslims nearly everywhere, something I didn't expect. My sister says religious intolerance makes no sense to the Chinese; they apparently have no word for religion, preferring 'philosophy' and not seeing any competition between faiths - the same person will happily pray at a Buddhist temple one day and at a Daoist one the next day, apparently.

My preconceptions about Buddhism were completely shaken up on this trip as well - I thought it was an ascetic religion involving vows of poverty and putting aside worldly concerns to meditate on the sound of one hand clapping, so I was surprised to see Buddhist temples as ostentatiously overdecorated as any Catholic church, full of idols covered in gold leaf. They also seem to have enthusiastically embraced capitalism - they charge to have prayers said and flog kitschy merchandise and plastic Buddhas at every temple gate. I was starting to get very disillusioned, when my sister got talking to a monk at the (very commercialised) Shaolin temple - he was so pleased to see a foreigner show some interest in him that he pulled us into a side room, to see beautiful fifteenth-century frescoes forbidden to other tourists. Monks aren't chatty - he wouldn't answer many of our questions, except to say that monks join the monastery very young, and no, they don't get bored of meditating - but the serenity and peacefulness he and his colleagues exuded brought me round to the idea that they may, indeed, be living on a higher spiritual plane than the rest of us.

Xi'an Mosque, which is over a thousand years old.

Muslim snack stall, Xi'an.

A demon at the Shaolin Temple.

Burning (rather expensive) incense, Shaolin Temple.

Our monk friend.