Every day thousands of Chinese tourists make their way to the Lingyin Buddhist Temple in the mountains outside Hangzhou. When they reach the Great Hall of Clouds and Forests, home to a giant statue of Buddha, they light bundles of incense and bow their heads, proffering flaming sticks to the heavens. But many, especially the young and well dressed, seem unsure about how such rituals should be conducted. They look around, copying what others are doing.

One shouldn’t read too much into the modest religious experiments of tourists out on a Sunday stroll. Yet the fumbling for the spiritual of the visitors to Lingyin is symbolic of a nation that craves something beyond the material development that has been served up as the raison d’être of China’s modern existence.

The debate about morality bubbles constantly beneath China’s increasingly sleek, modern surface. It came into view again last month when millions of Chinese watched in horror the video of passers-by ignoring the plight of a young girl who had been run over by a delivery van. The footage of two-year-old Yueyue showed no fewer than 18 people walk or drive past even after the girl, by this time bleeding profusely, had been hit by a second vehicle in what proved a fatal blow.