Dàojiē 道階 (1866-1934)
Also known as "The Ascetic of the Eight Abstensions" (Bābù tóutuó 八不頭陀)
From Hengshan Township 衡山縣 in Hunan. As a youth he studied at a private academy and liked stories about divine transcendents 神仙. At age 14 he became a vegetarian. He took tonsure at age 19 under Zhēnjì 真際 at Zhìshèng 智勝 Temple in Hengyang 衡陽. He was fully ordained the following year at Bàoēn 報恩 Temple in Lěihéng 耒衡. After ordination, he went into seclusion at Èrduān 二端 Temple on Mt. Shǎn 陝 for three years to practice Chán. During this time he made the acquiantance of Jìchán 寄禪. In the following years, Dàojiē lectured on a variety of scriptures at a number of different temples. In 1901, he accepted an invitation from Jìchán to lecture at Tiāntóng 天童 Temple in Ningbo where Jìchán had recently become abbot. There, Dàojiē lectured on the Chéng wéishì lùn 成唯識論, Fǎhuá jīng 法華經, and Léngyán jīng 楞嚴經.
In 1907, Dàojiē became on of the first Chinese monks of the modern period to travel to Buddhist sites in South and Southeast Asia. He went to Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, Thailand, Sri Lanka and India. In these places he gathered jade Buddha statues, relics, a Buddha tooth, and palm leaf manuscripts. When the Republic started, Jichan asked him to participate in various orgs and he did. In 1915 he went back from Beijing to Hunan, but then came back to be abbot of a couple of temples in Beijing. In 1925 he was on the delegation that attended the East Asian Buddhist Conference 東亞佛教大會 in Japan, along with Wáng Yìtíng 王一停 and TX. He was Vice-chief of the delegation. In 1926 he went traveling the world again. In 1928 he went to Myanmar, and in 1932 he went to Indonesia.
References:
Yú Língbō 于凌波, ed. Xiàndài fójiào rénwù cídiǎn 現代佛教人物辭典 (A Dictionary of Modern Buddhist Persons), 2 vols. (Taipei: Foguang, 2004), 2.1386b-1388a.