LANTAU ISLAND, Hong Kong, Oct. 23 — The high plateau of the Po Lin Monastery was enveloped by a low cloud this morning as monks in ankle-length robes of black, brown and gray moved among gold-roofed, red-walled temples and past the stone pedestal of an 87-foot-tall bronze statue of Buddha. Pilgrims, here for a purification ritual, took turns sitting near a life-size golden Buddha.
But by midafternoon the damp wisps of fog had retreated to the mountaintops and many of the monks had disappeared into secluded areas of the monastery. The pilgrims had dispersed. In their place walked scores of tourists with cameras, eager to see one of the most famous monasteries in southern China — and, increasingly, one of the most accessible.
That accessibility is now sorely testing relations between the Buddhist monks and the government of Hong Kong, which administers this outlying island. It is hard to say whether it was the cable car the government proposed building to the monastery, or the plaza that was to be bulldozed at the monastery's base, or the "tourist bazaar" of shops and restaurants planned to connect the cable car and the plaza.
The monks, strict vegetarians who have succeeded in persuading local vendors not to sell even seafood outside the monastery's entrance, are horrified by the thought of tourists trying to carry Big Macs and chicken legs past holy relics. At some point the monks declared that enough was enough.
In a step that caught Hong Kong's government off guard and captivated the public, the monks threatened an unusual form of nonviolent protest in newspaper advertisements this week: beginning on Friday, they would bar the public from the monastery entirely for seven days.
"We didn't want to have to close the mountain, but we were forced to do it," Siu Kan, a senior monk, said here today. The monastery could even move elsewhere if the mountaintop's tranquillity is too disrupted, other monks say — a step that would turn the whole cable-car system and tourist bazaar into a complete failure.
With the threat, the monks in their mountains showed that they may have a defter touch in Hong Kong politics than have the territory's leaders. They also provided a rare glimpse of the political influence that Eastern religions retain in some Asian countries.
Having previously expressed a determination to proceed despite the monastery's objections, Hong Kong's top politicians are now backpedaling to prevent even a temporary closing. Chinese- and English-language newspapers have sided with the monastery in editorials, increasing the pressure.
"The problem is with the management of the land," said Stephen Ip, Hong Kong's secretary for economic development and labor. "All that can be negotiated."
[On Friday, the monks announced that the government had promised the
monastery considerable control over most development on the plateau and said
the monastery would stay open. The government said that it would work
"flexibly" with the monastery.]
The monastery also portrayed the dispute as a struggle over religious freedom,
putting the government in an even more awkward position.
In the five years since China took control of Hong Kong from the British, local officials have sparred with the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is banned and violently repressed on the mainland but tolerated in varying degrees in Hong Kong.
But Buddhists, who make up about an eighth of Hong Kong's population, have loyally supported the local government and Chinese rule. A 13-foot-tall bronze urn at the monastery's entrance is prominently decorated with the signature of Hong Kong's chief executive, Tung Chee-hwa.
Until now, "as a community, they totally and completely supported the government," said Kung Lap-yan, an associate professor of religion at the University of Hong Kong. Local Buddhist groups have remained silent during the quarrel, but it is unusual to have a dispute involving a Buddhist institution at all, he added.
Despite serious differences with Buddhists in Tibet, Beijing has kept close ties to the Buddhist community here. It contributed nearly a third of the $25 million it took to build the 87-foot Buddha in the 1980's.
But it is that giant bronze statue that, in a sense, is at the heart of the dispute, for it has proved a huge magnet for tourists.
Construction of the monastery's temples began in 1925, but they attracted few visitors for decades. The site is a high plateau in the middle of a large, sparsely populated island. Until recently, it was reachable only by ferry from Hong Kong, followed by a harrowing, nearly hourlong bus ride on single-lane roads carved into the sides of steep slopes.
Everything changed when Hong Kong opened an international airport on the north coast of Lantau in July 1998. Suddenly, the island was connected to the rest of Hong Kong by a six-lane superhighway and high-speed train and subway lines. Scores of apartment buildings rose.
The airport is just two miles downhill and around a mountain from the monastery, though it still takes 35 to 50 minutes for a taxi or bus to travel the circuitous 14-mile route to the site. Private cars are effectively banned from the narrow road, but tourism has boomed all the same. While rainy weekdays may remain peaceful, as many as 8,000 visitors now show up on holidays.
Siu Kan said that such problems never occurred to the 30 monks of Po Lin Monastery when they began raising money in the early 1970's to build a giant statue. "We didn't think about the tourists," he said. "We just wanted the pilgrims to have a place to come."