Wu into Bonze

The Chinese press of Peking told excitedly in dainty, complex characters, last week, strange news of the great but fallen Scholar War Lord, Wu Pei-fu.

Chinese readers scanned the ideographs and saw in their minds eye a far, high monastery in remote Tibet. They read of how Wu Pei-fu had journeyed thither from China, traveling by wearisome forced marches until he reached the monastery and was welcomed by its Buddhist brotherhood. Even in so remote a place, men know that Marshal Wu Pei-fu was War Lord of Central China prior to his overthrow by the Nationalist Revolution (TIME, Oct. 25, 1926).

The story hinted at much stately converse between Wu Pei-fu and the Buddhist abbot of the monastery. The War Lord who has been all his life a scholar, and a great one, was said to have explained that his last military followers had finally deserted him, and that he wished to become a bonze or Buddhist monk and to retire utterly from the world. What good Father Abbot would reject the chance to garner such a son?

The final news that Wu Pei-fu had actually become a bonze brought forth in the Peking press a grim description of his initiation: 1) The hour chosen was midnight, at which time the whole assembly of the monastery knelt in its Temple; 2) The crux of the ceremony was to burn deep into the shaved head of Wu Pei-fu nine brands, each the width of a man's thumb, and serving to remind him of his nine vows as a Buddhist priest; 3) The branding was made endurable by covering his scalp (except on the spots to be branded) with pieces of raw turnip, damp and coolingly efficacious.

Occidental skeptics at Peking pointed out, last week, that the ceremony just described is common enough in the Buddhist monasteries of China but differs slightly from Tibetan practice. They doubted the exactness of the Chinese newspapers as to details, but hoped that Scholar Wu Pei-fu has indeed attained a seclusion and a retirement congenial to his tastes.