A Boyhood in Buddhism

Fresh-faced boy monks in orange robes recite prayers in dulcet tones, their young voices joining the chirping crickets and tweeting birds that welcome the warm tropical dawn.

And so begins another day for the novices of Jingzhen Temple in Xishuangbanna, a lush, enchanting corner of southwestern China, rich with thick jungle and emerald rice paddies.

Three decades ago, Mao Tse-tung’s Cultural Revolution, a political movement that sought to destroy relics from the past, swept through the region’s villages, as it did the rest of the country. Temples were attacked and shrines were desecrated.

When the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, normalcy returned. Today, many of Xishuangbanna’s 500 or so temples echo with the chants of young Buddhist monks.

The monks are Dais, from Xishuangbanna’s largest ethnic minority, who are more akin to people in neighboring Laos and Burma than to Han Chinese, China’s majority. Many Dai men join a temple at some point in their lives, often when young. Parents look to the temples to provide their children with a proper Buddhist education. In the past, those who did not join a temple risked the scorn of their neighbors and may have had trouble finding a wife.

Some boys join as young as 8, sometimes staying for three to five years. They sleep, eat and pray in the temples, which become the focus of their lives.

The monks often rise before dawn and split into two groups--one to recite prayers, the other to sweep the temple, inside and out. In a sign of respect, they kick off their shoes before entering a temple, leaving them in piles at the door.

Later, the monks’ parents bring breakfast--often big bowls of sticky white rice that the monks roll into balls and pop in their mouths with a pinch of roasted fish, beef or vegetables. After breakfast, they attend the village school.

Although their orange robes mark them off from other children, the boy monks are not teased or treated differently. After class, they head back to the temple for lunch. Afternoons are supposedly for study, but some prefer to play, sleep or climb trees. Occasionally, the head monk takes his young charges aside to clip or shave their hair.