ABSTRACT
At the opening ceremony of the 2012 World Buddhist Forum in Hong Kong, Chinese pop icon Wang Fei 王菲 sang the Heart Sutra (Xin jing 心經).1 Wang is primarily known in the West for her role in the cult film Chungking Express (Chongqing senlin 重庆森林), but in China she is an iconic star who is accustomed to performing in front of thousands of ecstatic fans. Her performance at the Forum, however, was more subdued. She stood still and sang with the microphone piously clasped between pressed palms. With rosary beads wrapped around her wrist, she merged her identity as one of China’s best-known Buddhists and most beloved pop artists. Next to her was the ultimate stage prop for a practitioner-a remnant of the Buddha himself. (This piece of bone had been loaned by a temple in Nanjing for the occasion.) Wang also shared the stage with some of the Chinese Buddhist world’s leading figures, such as the Buddhist monks Jueguang 覺光 (1919-2014),2 Jinghui 淨慧 (b.1933) and Guodong 果東 (b. 1955).3 Wang was followed by other Hong Kong celebrities-including the singer Shirley Kwan 關淑怡, the geomancer Li Chengze 李丞責 and Sandy Lau 劉 倩婷 (Miss Hong Kong 2009 and wife of Li)—who sang the Forum’s theme song.4 The scenes were a convergence of celebrity, religion and-drawing together Buddhist luminaries from ‘Greater China’—politics.
