Far from the choked cities of the eastern seaboard, where the mainland's new rich are busy buying gold bath tubs and Louis Vuitton handbags, hermit Jiyan rises every morning at first light to meditate and chant Buddhist scriptures.
After a breakfast of corn porridge, Jiyan - whose religious name, chosen himself to mark his hermitage, means 'quiet rigorous' - leaves his 8th-century, wooden cottage and walks five minutes up a steep, twisting path on Nanwutai Mountain, 50km south of the city of Xian, to tend his small vegetable garden.
His days are spent farming, fetching water, clearing the mountain path and making repairs to his cottage, built under an enormous, overhanging rock face. Jiyan's perch is about 2,000 metres above sea level and the air is sweetly fresh. Occasionally, large birds crash through the undergrowth, startled perhaps by a wild boar.
It's a lonely life but when Jiyan lifts his shaven head from his chores, his brown eyes gaze across kilometres of peaks dotted with cypress and pine trees, the valleys below filled with white clouds. This view of the Zhongnan mountain chain, in Shaanxi province, is like a traditional ink-and-wash painting, the peaks receding in layers, each a lighter grey than the one before. When night falls, around 6.30pm, Jiyan cooks a vegetarian dinner then meditates and reads scriptures to purify his heart.
For the 38-year-old Buddhist monk from Jiamusi, in northeastern Heilongjiang province, this is as close to heaven on Earth as anyone could get. 'Every day, when I get up, it's a fresh, new feeling. It's not like in the city, where things are always the same. Here is the power and beauty of nature and things change all the time,' he says in a quiet voice, his gaze intent. Then he confesses: 'I do get lonely sometimes. But when that happens I calm my heart with meditation.'
From the poor to the wealthy, among the uneducated and college graduates, fascination with religion is growing, and some of the mainland's richest businessmen are avidly reading up on a variety of faiths: Buddhism, Taoism, Christianity and even Baha'i.
Multimillionaire property developer and well-known spiritual enthusiast Pan Shiyi says that while belief is on the rise, much of it is goal-oriented and superficial. 'Often, it's about praying for a baby, or praying for a job as a government official,' says Pan. 'But what is really in their hearts?'