The title of this book, Guide to Buddhist Temples of China, might suggest that it is but another addition to the rapidly accumulating array of guides for tourists in China, the sort of thing one might find in the travel section of a reasonably good bookstore. In fact, however, it is much more than that.

Written by a scholar and Catholic priest with long experience of living in China and a record of serious engagement with Chinese Buddhists, this unparalleled work will surely be received — by scholars of things Buddhist and Chinese, as well as by tourists — as an invaluable resource. I know of nothing quite like it, not even among the many surveys of Chinese Buddhist monasteries published in Chinese.

I have myself visited a number of the monasteries that Fr. Cochini has included in his survey, some of them several times, and yet in nearly every case I have learned from this book something useful that I had not previously known.

What Fr. Cochini documents so well in this very thorough compilation is the remarkably vital Buddhist dimension of the contemporary religious revival now underway in China. No serious scholar of this phenomenon, certainly no serious student of Buddhism in modern China, and no tourist intent on an intelligent encounter with Chinese Buddhism should undertake a visit to China without a copy of this excellent book in his or her possession.

Christian Cochini, S.J.

Christian Cochini s.j., theologian and sinologist, has been living in China for many years and is involved in interreligious dialogue with the Buddhist communities of China. He is the author of Guide to Buddhist Temples of China, first published in French by Les Indes Savantes in 2008, followed by an English edition by the MRI in 2009.

The present publication in three languages is an echo of the last Ricci Concert in 2010. It was designed from an original idea to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the death of Fr Matteo Ricci in 1610. Two specialists in Johann Sebastian Bach’s music, Yuan Sheng from Beijing and Philippe Charru from Paris, came to Macau to give a joint concert entirely devoted to Bach. This joint participation of a Chinese pianist known in Europe and America and of a French organist known in China and Japan marked the beginning of cultural exchanges under the auspices of music, between China and the West, at the organ of St Joseph’s in Macau.

Philippe Charru, s.j.

Born in Bordeaux, Philippe Charru, s.j., is titular organist of St. Ignatius Church in Paris. He also teaches musical aesthetics at Centre Sèvres, the Jesuit Colleges of Philosophy and Theology in Paris, where he is head of the Department of Aesthetics. He has given concerts and organ recitals in France, in Japan and in Beijing. For several years, together with Christoph Theobald, he undertook an interdisciplinary research, teaching and publishing on Johann Sebastian Bach’s works, from theological and musicological perspectives.

Yuan Sheng

Born to a family of musicians in Beijing, Yuan Sheng has gained international recognition through his extensive perform- ances in more than twenty countries as a recitalist, chamber musician and concerto soloist. His performances and researches on the music of Bach have also attracted international attention in recent years. During the 2009-10 season Mr. Sheng gave a 5-recital-series of Wanquan Bahe (Bach exhaustive) as well as a 5-lecture-series on Bach at the Beijing Forbidden City Concert Hall. Since 2005 Mr. Sheng is on the Faculty of Piano of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing, China.

"Who are those masters of life and wisdom who had written the great cultural and spiritual story of the introduction and diffusion of Buddhism in China? Here are fifty biographies of the main architects of that success and of that saga, selected in the entire two-thousand years of Buddhism in China since the Eastern Han dynasty(25-220) up to the modern time. One can meet illustrious masters with universal reputation, like Xuanzang, Bodhidharma, Huineng, Taixu, among others whom we already know. Some Foreign monks, at the risk of their lives, had made considerable efforts to let this religion originated from India be integrated into the Chinese cultural world, allowing the teaching of the Buddhatruly accessible to the Chinese and to their sensibility. All these exemplary lives make us take part in this amazing processus of transformation whose political, cultural and spiritual influence has been considerable, up to and including modern and contemporary China."

Christian Cochini, S.J.

Christian Cochini s.j., theologian and sinologist, has been living in China for many years and is involved in interreligious dialogue with the Buddhist communities of China. He is the author of Guide to Buddhist Temples of China, first published in French by Les Indes Savantes in 2008, followed by an English edition by the MRI in 2009.