5 Murmurs This Week | Who Can Be Enlightened?

Shaolin’s fallen monk, vertical drama obsession and learning behind bars

Images

Testing out this format for a bit, so far it’s been an oddball mix of news from my home country, literary voyages, and scattered murmurs. Think of it as my small attempt to deliver meaningful, human-sized bits of information (very biased and impressionistic) in the sea of everything overload era (with a lot of spoilers in brackets, of course).

The biggest headline broke earlier this week: the abbot of Shaolin Temple is now under investigation for a number of scandals involving sexual relationships with multiple women, fathering at least one illegitimate child, and multiple embezzlement charges. Online comments quickly split: some argued he had simply touched someone else’s cake—that is, stepped on the wrong toes while doing what he had always done, which had previously gone unpunished; Others, like my dad, condemned him for corrupting religion. He’d vowed to stop donating to Buddhist temples (not that he has been generous before).

What astonished people most was the wealth. Shi Yongxin (netizens mocked his dharma name as “forever believe”) was called the “CEO monk” for a reason. He transformed the Shaolin Temple from relative obscurity into a multimillion-dollar business, in dollars because Shaolin operates as an international corporation. Apparently, there were more than 40 business entities associated with Shaolin, spanning entertainment, publishing, real estate, and more industries (even NFTs). Most of the news coverage focused on his financial empire and political connections, not so much the sexual misconduct—as if that part wasn’t even newsworthy anymore. What caught my attention, though, was that just in February, Shi Yongxin had met with Pope Francis in the Vatican. Though it was presented as part of an NGO event, it was still a sign.

Coincidentally, a friend had recommended a TV show to me weeks earlier: The Young Pope, starring Jude Law. He said it’s on his top 3 favorite show, maybe even no.1. I binged the ten-episode series in two weeks. I marveled at the visuals, each frame with carefully designed lighting, looked like a Renaissance painting, and at its slower-than-ever plot pacing (by Netflix standards), so I had to pause multiple times within one episode at the beginning of the watch.

The Pope is constructed as the ultimate anti-hero: arrogant, unpredictable, cold, who resembles the opposite of love and compassion. He repeatedly declares, “I don’t believe in God,” sometimes seriously, sometimes comically. He has two plans: one is to remain mysterious (never showing his face), and the other is to be as strict as possible, insisting that God’s compassion isn’t something cheap and abundant, like dollar-store donations. People must behave in order to be granted faith. He’s an unreasonably strict father figure, punishing, withholding. The line between heavenly religion and personal power runs so thin that the devil and God sit side by side. It’s almost as if the Pope has to enact a demon in order to chase away the real devils.

Over lunch, chugging his Qingdao beer, my dad declared his official conclusion about the Shaolin monk story: everyone has two extreme sides living inside them. And one shall not be fooled by appearances.

Amen, Dad.

Tech

The Psychology of Vertical Drama

A new WIRED newsletter, Made in China (yay, pls subscribe if you haven’t! ) launched last week with its first issue investigating the rise of vertical dramas: those snackable, ultra-dramatic series shot in 9:16 ratio for phone screens.

Are they the latest guilty pleasure? I tried watching You Fired A Tech Genius after a friend’s recommendation. It was over-the-top and heavy on physical comedy. In one scene, a woman is fired by a nepo bay CEO over an action desk figure on her desk. In another series, an intern pretends to be a matchmaking contestant and ends up engaging to a billionaire. Her disguise from her boss was mostly a wig. And yet, I found myself building full storylines in my head: How would they date each other? What would do if he finds out? That’s the thing, vertical dramas aren’t meant to be examined closely. They’re engineered for to hook your attention.

Despite their nonsense, they tap into something primal, for example, rags to riches, back to rags, and then back to riches again. Transformation. It’s the same emotional formula that made the Brothers Grimm timeless.

In a piece from Zheng Mian Lian Jie (one of the few self-funded media outlets still conduct investigative journalism in China), a British woman named Jen, living in the suburbs south of London, explains her obsession with these shows. She runs a fan account for several actors and says she watches because they offer certainty in a moment of extreme uncertainty: “When life becomes difficult, people hope to see justice over evil”.

Literature

Enlightenment in Prison

I don’t know why I’ve always been fascinated by human conditions in extreme environments — whether it’s surviving in the wild, college kids inventing on a budget, or people trying to find freedom while incarcerated. This New Yorker piece captures that last one, movingly. The writer, a philosophy and literature teacher, spent ten years teaching at a maximum-security prison in upstate New York.

Men sentenced to terms far beyond their natural lives are called lifers—they’re also key markers in the prison’s internal code. When they shift their behavior or mindset, it can influence the entire prison culture. One lifer described his first time in class, when he was asked to share his thoughts on a passage:

“I sat in bewildered silence… I now realize that moment felt so long because I experienced cognitive dissonance. This was caused by my disbelief that someone thought my ideas and opinions mattered.”

The human transformations were astonishing to read, a real manifestation of the power of knowledge, and of community empowerment. Until that program was shut down in 2024.

In China, a similar artistic effort exists: Yu Wang (a homophone for “desire,” but also the characters for “prison” and “lookout”) features prison-created art, drawing from both Chinese inmates and global references on WeChat. They publish a digital magazine regularly, open to the public. Let me know if you’re curious about this, I’m considering a deeper dive soon.

Place

The remaining indie cultural hub, postpost

With the recent shutdown of several beloved cultural spaces in Beijing, namely Fruityspace, Bye Bye Disco, etc…it’s becoming increasingly clear that the few remaining indie cultural spots must adapt to survive. There’s one place I always take visiting artist friends to, postpost, a space that reminds me a little of Berlin. After the major crackdowns on indie publishing a few years back, it’s refreshing to see shelves once again filled with carefully curated Chinese books—on voodoo, mushrooms, ink painting, and more. I once wrote a piece introducing one of the co-owners, Xiao Yong. Defiantly independent, Xiao is that rare mix: part businessman, part cultural connoisseur, with a deep knowledge of techno. Last week, he posted that the Yangrou Hutong location is struggling: rent is up, and they haven’t found a new space yet. For now, you can still visit their Sanlitun store.

Murmur

Survival Tips from an Art Photographer

Sometimes, being exposed to a certain kind of information too often creates a tunnel vision, like everyone you meet is just trying to survive the cultural doomsday. But that’s not the whole picture. For work, I met photographer Chen Ronghui, whose work struck me first at college, it’s an image of a gender-ambiguous child in a blue cropped top, sitting on a sofa, head lowered in quiet contemplation. The backstory: the child had been left by their parents and now livestreams to save up for gender-affirming surgery. That tender sorrow, so raw on a young face, stayed with me. That photo is part of Ronghui’s long-term project documenting youth life in one of China’s coldest regions. He joked about his initial intent for doing it: coming from the warm south, he was simply curious about how his peers lived on the opposite end of the map.

Even though we were on a scheduled shoot, Ronghui couldn’t help but wander around. He was especially drawn to a crystal healing room in an office building, I wish we had gone. He later sneaked into the crystal museum (free admission) without needing to show ID, saying he’s always “invisible”, not even his camera was ever stolen in Europe, a point of pride for him. With a background in journalism, his first assignment was covering a major train crash, dead bodies and chaos. That was about ten years ago, when hundreds of reporters would show up at a single event. A golden age of journalism, he said, now gone. Most of his old colleagues have switched careers or left the country. Still, “There’s always something you can do,” he smirked. After earning a MFA degree in photography from Yale, he wrote WeChat columns totaling hundreds of thousands of words, chronicling his journey and critiquing the absence of real critical discourse in Chinese art schools.

Such a daring and darling man.

That’s it for last week. If you’re curious about any topic above, let me know, I’d love to do a deep dive in a future paid post. Until next time!