Lingyin Si
Last weekend, Matt and I went to Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou. Somehow this temple escaped the Cultural Revolution but the structures are not as old as you might expect: its been destroyed in rebuilt 16 times since 326 AD.
We started out on the Zhejiang Univerity campus where I got a photo of Matt, bigger than Mao.
We then hiked up the hill behind campus and through the Botanical Gardens. We were a bit tired by the time we got to the temple.
Lingyin Temple on the weekends is an ideal experience for the meta-tourist. Giant blobs of people in matching baseball hats follow tour guides wielding colorful flags and megaphones. For the ordinary tourist, it is overwhelming.
(that’s corn on the cob—one of the street food options. Other choices are tea eggs and tofu on a stick)
Lingyin Temple is big on all scales. The grounds are big. The buildings are giant cubes. The trees and big and wonderfully old. The crowds are big and, apparently warrant signs like this:
There were so many people burning incense that if one got too close to the cauldron, they run the risk of having their pants catch on fire.
The art work is nice but not exceptional. Everything is mostly big. But I did enjoy looking at the animals decorating the roofs:
and the large circular window carvings:
(this meeting includes animals in the audience. don’t know why)
When the monks chanted their five o’clock prayers, one had to fight their way to the front to have a peek.
This temple puzzles me as much as any other I’ve been to. There were more buddhas surfing on the heads of fish. And, in a fountain, there was a giant marble sphere.
And why does Buddha have blue hair?
I’m going to have to read up on Buddhism when I get back to Cambridge. I really want to know what all this stuff is about!
We stumbled across some guys carving a new sign for the temple. It looks like intricate work.
I think this beastie looks like a muppet.
They’re performing heavy renovations on some buildings in the temples. I took this photo through a hole in the wall.
Many of the monks wear these yellow robes. They match the color of the temple walls (camoflage?). Sometimes I see them around town, going shopping and such. I’m always curious to know what’s in their shopping bag—birthday presents for their mums, perhaps?
After visiting the temple, we wandered around the grounds outside. There are hundreds of statues carved into the rock in the cliff and in caves. This climber adds good scale to this Buddha.
Matt asked me to take this because he likes elephants (but not in a political way)
Queues don’t seem to exist in China. Instead, you cut to the front from the side or elbow your way ahead. After refusing to pay twice the usual fare for an illegal taxi, we hopped onto a bus and left. By "hopped on" I mean we hung out at the back of the mob and very slowly made our way onto the bus.
We started out on the Zhejiang Univerity campus where I got a photo of Matt, bigger than Mao.
We then hiked up the hill behind campus and through the Botanical Gardens. We were a bit tired by the time we got to the temple.
Lingyin Temple on the weekends is an ideal experience for the meta-tourist. Giant blobs of people in matching baseball hats follow tour guides wielding colorful flags and megaphones. For the ordinary tourist, it is overwhelming.
(that’s corn on the cob—one of the street food options. Other choices are tea eggs and tofu on a stick)
Lingyin Temple is big on all scales. The grounds are big. The buildings are giant cubes. The trees and big and wonderfully old. The crowds are big and, apparently warrant signs like this:
There were so many people burning incense that if one got too close to the cauldron, they run the risk of having their pants catch on fire.
The art work is nice but not exceptional. Everything is mostly big. But I did enjoy looking at the animals decorating the roofs:
and the large circular window carvings:
(this meeting includes animals in the audience. don’t know why)
When the monks chanted their five o’clock prayers, one had to fight their way to the front to have a peek.
This temple puzzles me as much as any other I’ve been to. There were more buddhas surfing on the heads of fish. And, in a fountain, there was a giant marble sphere.
And why does Buddha have blue hair?
I’m going to have to read up on Buddhism when I get back to Cambridge. I really want to know what all this stuff is about!
We stumbled across some guys carving a new sign for the temple. It looks like intricate work.
I think this beastie looks like a muppet.
They’re performing heavy renovations on some buildings in the temples. I took this photo through a hole in the wall.
Many of the monks wear these yellow robes. They match the color of the temple walls (camoflage?). Sometimes I see them around town, going shopping and such. I’m always curious to know what’s in their shopping bag—birthday presents for their mums, perhaps?
After visiting the temple, we wandered around the grounds outside. There are hundreds of statues carved into the rock in the cliff and in caves. This climber adds good scale to this Buddha.
Matt asked me to take this because he likes elephants (but not in a political way)
Queues don’t seem to exist in China. Instead, you cut to the front from the side or elbow your way ahead. After refusing to pay twice the usual fare for an illegal taxi, we hopped onto a bus and left. By "hopped on" I mean we hung out at the back of the mob and very slowly made our way onto the bus.
posted by Michelle at 3:16 a.m.
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