Pleasure Island by Amar Grover

The masses stood in line. Waiting. Here in Ningbo's ferry terminal, the workers were not going to work and thousands wielded picnics rather than picks. Half the city, it seemed, was set on holidaying on Putuo Shan and I had joined an impatient migration.

Lying in the East China Sea about 200km south of Shanghai and 80km east of Ningbo port, Putuo is one of China's four sacred Buddhist mountains ("shan" means mountain). Its shrines and monasteries have drawn pilgrims for at least a millennium. Lapped by warm, azure seas and girdled by cliffs, coves and beaches, Putuo doubles as a weekend escape for nearby citydwellers. The combination appealed so, like everyone else, we pushed our way aboard.

Freighters and barges slid by as we cruised down the Chunhua River, its muddy currents soon veining the open sea. Monks gazed on impassively as families posed for pictures. Foreigners in China are typically the centre of attention, if not amusement, so it wasn't long before we too posed with couples. Amy ("My Western name" she fluttered), eager to practise English, clarified an unexpected treat.

Guanyin, China's most popular deity, was to be feted with celebrations at which even Chairman Mao might play second fiddle. In legend, the 'Goddess of Mercy' turned back from the threshold of heaven on hearing the world cry in anguish. This was her island (she reputedly floated in on a water lily), tomorrow was her birthday and after a decade-long Communist holiday, it seemed she was back in fulltime work.

Four hours later we nudged Putuo's jetty with several rusty packets. People streamed off and away like millipedes. Our friends dashed to the booking office and queued for tickets. "Tomorrow go back" said Amy. I asked about their hotel and they simply laughed. "No hotel!" she beamed, "all full. Guanyin birthday”. They planned to stay up all night.

Landing fees had been specially doubled for the festivities. And what's good for government is good for the people - hoteliers and landladies were showing no mercy either. The alleys teemed with room-less and forlorn Chinese tourists. Finally one shy old woman who'd tailed us nervously for ten minutes beckoned. She led us up a narrow lane and through a round stone portal into a courtyard of huge water urns, bicycles and birdcages. Beyond rose a wooden house mottled beautifully with age.

The authorities frown on foreigners staying so but we had been offered, and declined, pricier rooms in dull, modern homes. This was different, impromptu. Several families shared the mouldering house and ours were perfect hosts, curious but not intrusive. We slept in a musty bedroom, ignoring their television but grateful for the table fan. Rickety walls bore hooks, a clock and calendar, and the whole place shook when neighbours stretched. Outside, on stools, we'd sit and exhaust our phrasebook; they were old islanders, more at ease with the local dialect than Mandarin.

Few westerners come here (in three days we saw two) and the very first behaved terribly. In 1661, a Dutch fleet pillaged its temples and maltreated monks, the only inhabitants. Incidents like this merely confirmed the ruling Manchus' suspicion of foreigners. Canton apart, China clamped shut for another two hundred years until the Opium Wars prised open so-called Treaty Ports.

From 4000 monks in Putuo's heyday, only around 2000 remained during the 1949 communist takeover. Reputedly just 29 grimly hung on during China's Cultural Revolution of the late '60s and early '70s. This was Putuo's closest brush with destruction when almost anything old, gracious or remotely interesting was hacked or burnt by Red Guards.

One can hardly tell today. Several monasteries have been converted into charming hotels, all leafy courtyards and venerable ambience. Most accept Westerners though at peak times they're inclined to shoo you away curtly. Other monasteries were swallowed by jungle or utterly erased. Visitors are left with three main complexes which, all things considered, have weathered the turmoil rather well.

We strolled by Puji Si - the oldest, dating from 1080 - and its frontage of formal ponds carpeted with lillies. Old men in shorts and vests played chess in a breezy pavilion as families surged across a twee, humped bridge. Thousands milled about the nearby lanes of Putuo's commercial heart, where Guanyin paraphenalia (badges, pamphlets and cloth bags) competed with grocers and ice-cream vendors. The island's speciality is dried seafood, and trays of whiffy prawns and cuttlefish stained the evening air. Other produce - fluffed slime or tentacled globules - were simply baffling. As night fell, children darted about with candles or luminous baubles and we savoured the expectant atmosphere.

Putuo may run short of beds but no one goes without food. There are swanky restaurants with spot-lit tables, functional ones with aerated basins (full of eels, crabs and lobster) by their entrance... and then our earthy choice. Chance led one Professor Miao to come and sit with us; few here spoke English and none so informatively.

He too had come for the day and, yes, tonight was the big one. We should rise early, he suggested, and go to Puji Si. And didn't we know Guanyin had three 'birthdays' - her true birthday, her enlightenment and her death? "She is a bit like your Mary," he explained "popular with women and children". She protected from sorrow and bestowed fertility. Fertility? In this land of one-child families? He fumbled for an answer; then gravely, "Maybe people pray for change".

We dutifully shuffled beside Puji's yellow walls at dawn. Fierce statues, the four Heavenly Kings, loomed in the gatehouse and a massive ochre-tiled roof glinted through stately trees in the courtyard. Amidst plumes of wafting smoke, pilgrims spooned ash from sooty urns into dainty red packets. Spirit-money was flung into pagoda-like stone kiosks which spouted flames. With joss-sticks pressed tightly to foreheads, women rocked to and fro before carefully placing them in burnished cauldrons.

In the main hall beyond, monks chanted hypnotically as others induced a bewildering discord of thuds and crashes from drums and cymbals. Golden banners hung from decorative ceiling panels. Overlooking us all, a multi-armed Guanyin statue glinted benevolently in candlelight. It was a ceremony of no apparent beginning nor end, impressive more for the weight and stamina of devotees than any tangible ritual.

At nearby Chaoyin Dong, the sea-cave whose crashing waves are said to echo Buddha's call, a less heady atmosphere prevailed. Here in more sombre times monks hurled themselves in the surf to be battered on the rocks. Today an adjoining mile-long beach, the island's longest, tempts bathers rather than martyrs though, never crowded, we wondered whether swimming might be bad form.

With just twelve square kilometres, Putuo's limited roads only support minibuses linking the main sights. We hopped in one to Fanyin Dong, the island's oddest shrine perched on the easternmost peninsula. Steep steps led down to a temple lying across a deep ravine. Below, the sea sucked and surged into a cave and villagers stared intently at its recesses as though Guanyin herself were floating in the gloom.

Yet even now, one of the busiest times, we could escape the crowds entirely by walking hillside paths. Most were marked on Mandarin maps sold by hawkers but we relied as much on being able to see our objective or, infrequently, asking directions. Brilliant butterflies flapped lazily in the shade of jungly hills and insects clamoured from trees. Occasionally I spotted dazzling dragonflies or beetles with polished, metallic-looking backs.

One of the most satisfying trails winds up to Foding Shan, the island's highest point. Huji Si, another monastic complex, stands nearby and in its precincts we saw the agonising progress of elderly pilgrims prostrating their way into the compound. Thousands of overnight candles had waxed the flag-stones and mounds of ashen debris lay smouldering in corners. Worshippers kneeled on round cushions, then queued to have yellow cotton bags chopped like passports, each monastery's red stamp is unique. Monks scribbled personal details in bound volumes or unfurled wispy scrolls. These too were chopped in return for donations, more pounds than pence...

After years of embracing austerity, such scenes are astonishing. Yet Deng Xiaoping himself famously spoke of "socialism with Chinese characteristics". As the Chinese runt grows into an agile tiger, there might also be 'Buddhism with pragmatic principles'. Putuo's rehabilitation shows there is money to be made from this happy hub of commerce and culture. Having been designated a marine park, the maxim seems to be 'let the workers pay and pray'.

Nor is there any stopping play; the island has probably evolved more in the last decade than at any other time. A Shanghai guidebook of the '30s notes "Pootoo" as a meatless, hotelless excursion where visitors lodged in monasteries. Eggs and chickens were only obtainable in the Chinese hospital which "operates in the belief that all foreigners and non-Buddhists are ill and need such nourishment". Today's visitor is almost spoilt for choice.

For one last meal we passed up the usual greasy chopstick and went air-conditioned swank. An ebullient restaurateur had just coaxed us in when the howling began. With mounting dismay we were led to a private room complete with television screen and... karaoke system. I peeked next door where a table of six downed rice wine and wailed at the ceiling. Chicken bones littered the carpet and its walls heaved as speckled reflections from a mirror ball wheeled round and round and round.