Temple gains attention for strong IT team
Print Edition
The 1,000-year-old Longquan Temple in Beijing caught public attention for its growing information technology team composed of well-educated monks from top universities around the country, according to an article in Oriental Outlook magazine yesterday.
The IT team has developed a digital system to manage the temple’s more than 700 guest rooms and is building a platform in order to upload tens of thousands of Buddhist classics online.
It is said temple monks started using iPads to help chant sutras as early as in 2011.
Master Xian Xin, who founded the team in 2009, said the new project is designed to make classic works accessible to more people in user friendly forms.
He graduated from Beijing University of Technology and worked for years at technology firms before becoming a monk in 2009.
Jiang Taiwen works as a system architect in the team and told the magazine the huge project may take decades to finish.
The team has gained support from some 90 volunteers from top universities including Tsinghua University and well-known technology firms such as Baidu, Tencent and Sina.
The temple’s team has also participated in technology forums. Jiang Tao, founder of the largest developer community CSDN, said he was startled to see monks in yellow robes show up at its annual Mobile Developer Conference in 2011.
Longquan started garnering more attention when a Peking University graduate gave up an enrollment offer from US-based MIT, a prestigious university, to practice Buddhism at the temple, the report said.
Many other highly educated monks can be found on the temple’s website including PhD holders from Tsinghua University.
Abbott Xue Cheng also graduated from Tsinghua University. He started writing a blog in 2006, which was considered one of the biggest religious stories of that year in China.
He has also done interviews with US-based news channel CNN, Phoenix TV of Hong Kong and China News Service.
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