and Beano) were going to be close by and were going to include a couple of days in Xiamen to visit us - and even better, we were going to join them on their visit to Beiing!
A colleague of Brett's was going to be out of town so he lent us his apartment in the tower next to ours - perfect! Goran and Kat arrived from the train station, which gave them a taste of chinese driving. More of that was to come!
Alex attended school during the day when Brett arranged for some students to take us to the temple at the south gate "Nan pu tuo".
We wanted them to translate for us whilst giving us a bit of information about what were seeing. We first lit some incense and put it in the incense burner at the front of the temple.
This is a working budhist temple. It was very interesting watching how people pray - the incense stick held between the hands whilst you bow three times.The temple is made up of many different buildings and covers a wide area of the hill behind the Xiada (university). Many of the buildings contained statues of verious buddhas, usually of gold, and were gated off so that the people prayed outside either standing up or kneeling on the red cushions.
In the background of this next photo is a stone tower that has "windows" where you throw money up to see if you can get the money into the holes - this is considered lucky. Sebastien is wearing his beanie and thick chinese trousers as it is quite cold - he is almost too big for the carrier!
There were many golden buddhas with lots of information - I was staying out of Sebastien's sight as he was trying to get away from Brett (he was in the carrier) and get to me, so I missed out on hearing much of what the student said. However people brought fresh flowers and fresh fruit as sacrifices to buddha - you might see them lying in front of the statues in the photos.
But the incense was everywhere. There are shops outside the temple selling all manner of buddist items (hell money, incense, paper cars/houses to burn for your ancestors etc) as well as a little kiosk within the temple where you could donate money for an incense stick.Being a bit of an architectural freak, I was very taken by the detail of the temple buildings.
I'm not sure where the devotees come from in this next photo, whether employees of the temple or devotees volunteering - but there they were scrubbing the steps of the temple and cleaning the glass shielding some of the buddhas.
There were many places to pray, not just at the buddha statues. The grounds are extensive with water features and quiet corners for contemplation - ok, not so quiet as there were many, many tourists from throughout China. 
As is usual, we were a part of the tourism attraction - many mainland chinese travel to Xiamen on a holiday and to venerate ancestors at temples, and many of them have not had an opportunity to see a laowai (foreigner) let alone a curly blond haired blue-eyed baby laowai - being carried by a man! Many times I was told by chinese women that Brett was a wonderful husband for carrying Sebastien - don't tell him that they said that.
The rock of the mountain has been used to advantage with many carvings in it - usually script. It is supposed to be good luck to toss a coin onto the red carving and have it land on the writing. We saw a few people try it and it seemed quite difficult.
We have often seen monks in Xiamen, wearing different coloured clothing. There is apparently some sort of ranking to do with the colours but I have not yet dug up the information about it. Some countries allow buddhists to live a monastic life for a few days, weeks or months rather than taking the vows for a life-long commitment. Buddhist men aspire to living the life of a monk at least once in their lives. Often they become a monk in the days or weeks leading up to their marriage or for an amount of time after a parent dies. Here are two monks, wearing clothing of different colours.
Part of buddhism bans the taking of life - of any sentient being which in its broadest sense includes animals as well as insects and invertebrates. As a result, you will find people selling small fish and turtles outside temples so that people can buy them and "set them free" in the temple lakes and ponds. We lost count of how many turtles were in this pond, but there were also some huge fish that I couldn't get a photo of - they moved so fast!
The hell money and other paper items that you buy outside the temple can be burned in the temple incinerator to help your ancestors improve their lives in the afterworld. Many families also have a home incinerator (like a rubbish bin with fancy cut outs) that they use at home to burn hell money on other religious days when they aren't able to get to the temple.
We finished at the temple for the day in time to head home and prepare for New Years Eve. We were leaving the kids at home to go out for dinner with Kat and Goran. We went to a Texan place "J J Bar and Grill" where Brett and Goran eyed off the mechanical bull...maybe next time :)Tomorrow we would finally make it across the water to the Gulan Yu (island) that has been our view for four months.
No comments:
Post a Comment