FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM
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Austrian, the women outnumbering men by about two to one. After he had given them a few months' training at his small temple in Shanghai, he looked about for a monastery that would ordain them. Arrangements were finally made at Ch'i-hsia Shan near Nanking, which agreed to hold a special ordination for their benefit in the autumn of 1933. About 140 Chinese were ordained at the same time. The ceremony lasted over forty days. It was not an "easy" ordination, such as those given to foreigners in Taiwan during the 1960's. Aided by an interpreter, Chao-k'ung's disciples went through most of the same training exercises as their fellow ordinees. The retired abbot of Chin Shan, Ch'ing-ch'üan, came to preside. Members of the diplomatic corps attended. "Tens of thousands" of lay visitors watched the rites, and many newspapers in Nanking and Shanghai published accounts of it.
Despite this auspicious beginning Chao-k'ung never seemed to be able to shake off misfortune. Two of his disciples committed suicide, one died, others he expelled. Although three of them eventually returned to Europe and worked intermittently as Buddhist missionaries, they did not bring back more Europeans to be ordained, as many Chinese monks had hoped. Nonetheless the latter still speak of Chao-k'ung with affection and pride. For all his checkered career (of which they are largely ignorant) it was he who at the end of a century of Christian privilege had enabled them to turn the tables on the missionaries.
Relations with Chinese Overseas
The overseas Chinese tended to be more conservative than their cousins at home. They did not face the task of modernizing China. The anti-religious movements that swept the mainland during the 1920's found few echoes in Singapore and Penang. Also, their roots lay not in the official classes, which had a commitment to Confucianism, but among the poor and uneducated. For both reasons they were more religiously inclined. In fact, except for food, clothing, and shelter, they spent more of their income on religion than on anything else.47 This was not only because of their religious inclinations, but also because of their cultural pride, which was all the stronger for residence in an alien environment. As some overseas Chinese families prospered,