Kung Fu revenue fighting

Claims a hidden camera had been placed in the room of Shi Yongxin, the abbot of China's famous Shaolin Temple, have set the online community on fire in recent days, but that has proven to be almost insignificant when compared to the drawn-out commercial dispute that has enveloped the temple, resulting in men storming the ticket offices this month to seize control of sales.

A monk, who didn't reveal his name, denied the claims of hidden cameras on Wednesday. "Hidden cameras were never found in the temple. We have never heard of such a thing," he told the Global Times.

However, he did admit that the temple is not the quiet sanctuary many imagine and that a protracted struggle between the temple, the local government and corporate partners is damaging the sacred site, which is a massive source of revenue for the local government.

"Famous temples and governments always try to achieve mutually beneficial situations, however, it is not easy to find a fair way to distribute the profits between the two," Zhang Shangzheng, a tourism professor at Anhui University, told the Global Times Sunday.

Triangle of fury

The management committee of the Songshan Shaolin Temple Scenic Area and the Shaolin Temple made an agreement to divide the revenue from ticket sales, which states that 30 percent of the ticket revenue belongs to the temple, while the rest goes to the government.

However, the profits aren't always carved up this way. Abbot Shi Yongxin pointed out that the money received by the Shaolin Temple is less than the agreement stipulates, because the government controls all sales.

"We are not in charge of selling entrance tickets. So we are unlikely to know how many tickets are sold or what kind of tourists can enter for free. It all depends on the government," Shi Yongxin said in earlier media reports, adding that 70 percent of the income is set aside for temple construction, including the attached temples, 20 percent is to cover the costs of the monks' living expenses, and 10 percent is for charity.

"All that we can do to verify the amount of tickets sold is to count how many tourists enter the temple yard. That is the only way for us to know whether they are lying to us or not," the anonymous monk said.

The commercial situation faced by the temple was muddied by a 2009 agreement between a local government-owned tour company and the China Travel Service Hong Kong Ltd (CTS) to form a joint venture.

CTS is a powerful State-owned travel agency and owns a 51 percent share of the joint venture, which controls ticket sales for the scenic area.

According to the agreement, the ticket sales for the scenic area are regulated by the company. In return, CTS guaranteed at a press conference that it would invest up to 1 billion yuan into the construction of infrastructure at the scenic area over a three-year period.