By Philip Yeung
The true religion of the Chinese
It is my long-held belief that many Chinese are, at heart, irreligious. They are too down-to-earth to be unconditional believers. Confucianism itself is closer to a philosophy than a religion. Don't forget, their religious instincts are often watered down by centuries of ancestor worship, each family being watched over by its own dead guardian angel. Unique among cultures, we worship the god of money who vigilantly guards the doorway to our dwelling.
China's religious landscape is littered with temples that have fallen into disuse because the resident gods have failed to deliver the goods asked for. Plenty of Chinese worshippers at the grassroots level have a purely quid-pro-quo relationship with their deities. They soft-soap their gods with offerings of incense and gifts of cash. But if their prayers go unanswered, these gods will instantly fall from the altar into disfavor, like bankrupt bosses. For my taste, their man-god relationship is too transactional to qualify as religious. A philosopher once wisecracked that religion is false advertising; it sells a product that doesn't exist. The case of the fake monk proves his point.
A monk who lives like a monarch
For weeks on end, the man who hogs the headlines in China is not Donald Trump, although he, too, stinks to high heaven with the dirty smell of money. It is a Buddhist monk, the almighty abbot of Shaolin Temple, Shi Yongxin. Rumors run wild that he is the 7th richest man in the world, kept busy with 51 wives and having fathered over 170 illegitimate children. The robe he wears is said to cost RMB 160,000. Wrapped in mystery, we may never know the real numbers. There are enough Chinese men who blame monks like him for taking marriageable women off the market, distorting normal supply and demand.
A fake monk but a true business genius
You don't need X-ray eyes to see through a fake monk. In the case of Shi Yongxin, it is a piece of cake. His face looks financial. His eyes radiate lust and an absence of the spiritual. He is just an ordinary Joe, with no redeeming or sanctifying features. Most bona fide monks look skinny and starved. He is overfed and chubby. But you cannot deny that the guy is a commercial genius. He has turned kung-fu performances into world-wide money-making machines, with Shaolin Temple itself licensed for cartoons. He has over-commercialized the temple of kung-fu kickers into a global business empire, with himself as CEO, boasting an MBA degree. He may be a fake monk, but he is a true business hero. He has outperformed any MBA from Harvard.
Until his downfall, he had moved in stratospheric circles, globetrotting and rubbing shoulders with Queen Elizabeth of England, political saint Nelson Mandela, Apple's iconic Tim Cook, and even Pope Francis. As a demi-god, he has grown a Midas touch. His calligraphy commanded eight-figure prices, with one fetching 50 million RMB. Business titans eagerly paid him to bring them an outsized slice of luck. Now indicted for embezzlement and misappropriation of temple funds, his calligraphy has plummeted in value by as much as 99.9%, hardly worth the paper it is written on. In Chinese society, the line between the glorified and the fallen icon is paper-thin.
Beyond reach of the long arm of the law
Shi owes his monastic longevity to a clever move. He managed to get himself elected and re-elected as the Deputy head of the Buddhist Association of China, a supervisory body over religious affairs. With this sacred protective cover, he was untouchable---until now. Once exposed, his magic has evaporated. He is just a scammer, guilty of grand theft on an astronomical scale.
What to do with his women and money
Chinese religious fervor, often skin-deep, has vanished into the ether. Donations to temples are sure to dry up for the foreseeable future. The question now is what to do with the billions squirreled away by the defrocked monk. Why not turn them into a state-supervised charity fund for the genuinely poor? As for his brothel of beauties, they should be returned without delay to the marriage market to quench the needs of confirmed bachelors who have been praying in futility to the gods of marriage and fertility. Shi lived like a monk during the day, but as a lustful monarch at night. He now finally enjoys a true taste of celibacy. A sexless life of poverty may be his final redemption. But I feel sorry for prison officials. Just imagine the logistical nightmare of organizing prison visits by his army of kept women and bastard kids, not to mention hordes of angry debt collectors and truckloads of high-priced lawyers.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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