For most of its thousand-plus years, Longquan Monastery was a quiet temple on a remote hilltop in the westernmost portion of Beijing's Haidian District. Founded during the Liao dynasty, which ruled northern China from 907 to 1125, it passed through the centuries the way most Chinese monasteries did: periods of patronage alternating with periods of neglect, its wooden halls rebuilt after fires and wars, its monks maintaining their practice through dynastic upheaval. By the early 2000s, the monastery had fallen into disuse. Then, on April 11, 2005, it formally reopened under the leadership of Venerable Xuecheng, who was appointed abbot and would go on to serve as president of the Buddhist Association of China.

What Xuecheng built at Longquan was unlike any monastery in China. When the temple reopened in 2005, it came equipped with fingerprint scanners, webcams, and iPads for studying sutras. The monastery organized itself into five departments and three specialist centers, the latter covering Translation, Animation, and Artificial Intelligence. Monks with advanced degrees from China's top universities joined the community, bringing technical skills that most tech startups would envy. The monastery began publishing manga and anime, digitizing its information networks, and operating a multilingual social media presence in eight languages. By 2015, the robot monk Xian'er was greeting visitors and answering questions about Buddhist philosophy, becoming an unlikely international celebrity.

The monastery's embrace of technology was not an end in itself but a response to a specific modern condition. As The New York Times reported in 2016, China's tech workers, burned out and spiritually adrift, began turning to Buddhism in growing numbers. Longquan positioned itself as a refuge for these seekers, preaching connectivity instead of seclusion and emphasizing practical advice over deep philosophy. The shift was deliberate. Where traditional monasteries might focus on meditation retreats and scriptural study, Longquan offered guidance on resolving family conflicts, managing stress, and finding purpose in a society changing faster than its inhabitants could process. The monastery's charity arm, the Beijing Ren Ai Charity Foundation established in 2006, extended this practical ethos beyond the temple gates.

Walking the monastery's grounds today, visitors encounter a place that defies easy categorization. Ancient architecture houses modern infrastructure. Monks in traditional robes carry smartphones. The Ren Ai Foundation runs charitable programs across China, and Longquan has established overseas monasteries, including one in Botswana that opened in 2016. The paradox at the heart of Longquan is whether embracing modernity strengthens or dilutes the Buddhism it professes to preserve. Xuecheng himself argued that Buddhism can stay relevant only by embracing modern tools, that expecting people to attend daily lectures in person was no longer realistic. Whether that represents wisdom or compromise depends on whom you ask, but the monastery's crowded halls suggest that for many, the answer is clear enough.