Master Hongyi, common name Li Shutong, was born in Tianjin Gate on September 20th in the 6th year of Guangxu (1880) and died in Quanzhou in 1942. He is the forerunner of China's New Culture Movement, an outstanding artist, educator, thinker and innovator, an outstanding representative of the combination of China's traditional culture and Buddhist culture, the most outstanding monk in the modern Buddhist history of China, and a well-known figure enjoying a high reputation internationally. Creative development has been made in music, fine arts, poetry, seal cutting, epigraphy, calligraphy, education, philosophy, law, Chinese characters, sociology, advertising, publishing, environmental and animal protection, human fasting experiments and so on.
Li Shutong is a legend. He converted to Buddhism from a famous cultural family, lived in seclusion in romantic Hangzhou, and devoted himself to practice. From then on, everything seemed to be broken. Li Shutong died and Master Hongyi was born. This is a realm that ordinary people cannot understand. Li Shutong tidied up and revised his experience of learning Buddhism, and revealed the true meaning of Buddhism to ordinary people with laymen who were great talents, great scholars and great artists.