After several years' hard working, the team of the Atlas of Chinese religion project has accumulated a large number of data about religious sites in China, especially about the Buddhist sites. While team members work on these data, a new paradigm for studying Chinese Buddhism emerges. Unlike the traditional sectarian model which tends to label Buddhist figures and sites according to their ambiguous sectarian identity, the new paradigm calls for a shift from a sectarian notion to an emphasis on monasteries as local institutions. These monasteries operate on the local level and assimilate all heritages in the Buddhist tradition. We believe that this new paradigm can accommodate new findings in our project and explains well the various issues in the study of Chinese Buddhism.