Jade Buddha Temple battles unwanted visitors
The offenders? Aggressive beggars and fortune tellers at its gates, he says.
Located in Jing’an district, the temple is one of the city’s largest tourist draws, and people are being increasingly put off visiting, since they need to “negotiate an obstacle course of beggars and fortune tellers to reach the temple on Anyuan Lu,” Juexing, the temple abbot, told Shanghai Daily.
Juexing has gone public with the issue hoping that the city will chip in to improve the area around the 120-year-old temple.
In addition to complaining about the riffraff, the abbot also asked city officials to widen the narrow street in front of the temple entrance to ease traffic congestion.
The street is less then seven meters wide. So anyone visiting the temple -- known for its koi pond, vegetarian restaurant and two jade Buddha brought to Shanghai from Myanmar -- is confronted by beggars and wandering fortune tellers, who line both sides of the narrow thoroughfare.
“It has become a mission impossible for visitors and passersby to walk along this street without being disturbed or followed by beggars and fortune tellers,” a community volunteer worker, a middle-aged man surnamed Li, told state news reporters. “Whenever police arrive, they vanish in seconds.”
“We try to persuade them to leave, but as volunteers we have no legal authorization to punish anyone,” Li said.
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The abbot said that the crowds are also conducive to pick pocketing, which has got worse as the number of people outside the temple has increased.
“The temple is a historic tourist attraction and a place supposed to be peaceful and pleasant. It deserves a better environment,” the abbot said in his statement to the press.
