 In countries that follow Mahayana Buddhism, the practice of a daily alms round has mostly died out.In China, Korea and Japan, local cultures resisted the idea of giving food to 'begging' clerics, and there was no tradition of gaining 'merit' by donating to practitioners.After periods of persecution, monasteries were situated in remote mountain areas in which the distance between the monastery and the nearest towns would make a daily alms round impossible.