A Buddha called Belinda

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Published: 12:00am, 27 Jul 2000

LAST SUMMER, Belinda Peng Shan-shan was running a stall at a book fair at the Convention and Exhibition Centre, selling Zhuan Falun, the book of teachings by Falun Gong Master Li Hongzhi. Less than a year later, she claims to be the master herself, and that Mr Li has completed his mission as a spiritual leader.

Her claims have caused a split within the local Falun Gong spiritual movement, which practices qi gong and combines elements of Buddhism and Taoism, while the mainland's persecution of practitioners continues. Ms Peng, who ran her own trading company and is in her 30s, has emerged as the leader of a splinter faction. Wendy Fang Wengqing, the six-months-pregnant woman from San Francisco who has held hunger strikes after trying several times to come to Hong Kong without a visa, also belongs to the faction - which is only about 30-strong - as do the three mainland overstayers who were engaged in a 14-hour standoff with immigration officers last Friday while being holed up in a Happy Valley flat. They threatened to jump from their flat while trying to avoid arrest.

Mr Li has been adopting a low profile for almost a year. The last media report of him appearing in public is dated last July, when he gave interviews in New York where he has lived since leaving China in 1998. His Falun Gong followers claim to have seen him in Chicago as recently as last month, and his Web site (www.falundafa.org) includes many articles claiming to have been published in the past few weeks, including a statement on July 22 calling for governments worldwide to act on his group's suppression in the mainland.

Mr Li drew world attention to his group last year when 10,000 Falun Gong members protested outside the Chinese leaders' Zhongnanhai residence, causing a crackdown across the mainland that has led to hundreds of arrests and alleged deaths in detention. While Falun Gong followers claim Mr Li simply teaches meditation and exercises, others say he claims to be descended from the Buddha and teaches harmful medical treatments that have led to followers' deaths.

Now Ms Peng's followers claim that her new status will be proven when the Big Buddha statue on Lantau Island - which the group calls the Temple of Heaven Buddha Statue - 'manifests' itself in the near future, meaning some supernatural phenomena will occur. An 'Open Letter to the People of the World' posted on a Web site set up by Ms Peng's followers (www.falundafa.com.hk) says the imminent manifestation will be the greatest moment in the history of the universe.

Enjoying a cult status, albeit only within a tiny faction, Ms Peng has also adopted a low profile recently. There are pictures posted on the faction's Web site of her making a pilgrimage to the Buddha statue on Lantau with a group of mostly women followers. Some of them are kneeling down paying their respects to her. But her current whereabouts are hidden from all but a few of her followers. And where she lives or how she supports herself is also a mystery as those followers refused to divulge any information, citing concern over her privacy.