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The Peak That Flew From Afar
The bus stops abruptly and the doors open with a metalic snap. All
the passengers try to leave the bus at once, pushing, shoving to
get out and in to the pouring rain. I get dragged along, my only
effort is to stay on my feet.
There's a small ticket office next to the entrance, the price for
foreigners is a moderate one yuan.
After entering the temple grounds I face a long row of booths that
sell everything from multicolored plastic toys to intricate Jade
carvings, from freshly made noodles to Coca Cola. One booth has
Sony Walkmans and Kodak Films, the next one offers one-minute shoe
repair.
The lane is crowded with Chinese tourists clad in their colorful
raincoats, all of them cheerful despite the heavy downpour that
went into high gear a minute ago.
All along the lane narrow paths lead off into the forest to the
left, across a small creek and then up and along the steep hill. To
the right the entrance to the Lingyin Temple itself comes up.
I walk into the heavily scented temple and out of the rain.
The first temple hall is filled with two sorts of people, one
being the worshippers who burn huge amounts of incense, insert
small banknotes into a transparent plastic box and then kneel
down in front of the Buddha for prayer. They are usually either
very old or in their teens or early twenties.
The other kind of visitors are the children of the Cultural
Revolution, either in age or in spirit, who basically enjoy a day
off, wherever that is. They are easy to recognize in the crowd by
their manners, talking loud, taking pictures where it is forbidden,
oddly resembling the package tour groups seen in European Cathedrals.
The second temple hall is huge, with a 60 feet high sitting statue
of Siddharta Gautama, made out of camphorwood, as my guide book
tells me. The hall is spacious, with large, red columns supporting
the wooden roof more than 90 feet above. I wonder if the smooth
columns are made out of single trees.
I stroll throuh the hall, walking around the statue and the wide
screening wall behind it. I turn around and for a few seconds just
can't comprehend what I see there.
The backside of the screen is a floor-to-ceiling sculpture of
hundreds of figures. There are musicians on an outcrop far up near
the roof, playing all different kinds of instruments, in a niche I
see meditating monks, next to them a sculpted waterfall comes out
of the wall. To the far left there is a caravan of animals, some
elephants, camels, horses, that seemingly is edging along a
precipitous mountain pass.
Down near the foot of the wall the waterfall floods the landscape,
there is a small hut with a man rescuing a child on his shoulders,
next to them is a boat in rough sea with the fishermen praying.
Behind them a ghost breaks the surface, with his two-pointed
harpoon not unlike Neptune.
Up front on a huge wave there are Buddhist monks... surfing! They
stand on the backs of dolphins and ride the wave. There is also a
huge whale that could be almost life sized, about 15 feet long.
I stand there spellbound for more than half an hour, discovering
new details, new groups of figures up at the wall.
Finally I leave the wall, forcing my eyes back down to take in the
real world.
I walk back out to the lane with its earshattering music and the
shouting crowds of one-day tourists in a shopping craze. The rain
has traded place with a light drizzle, steam rises out of the
heavily wooded hill across the small creek.
I cross the creek on a narrow bridge made out of a single rock
that got slippery from the rain. Small paths with stone steps
crisscross the lower part of the hill, passing hundreds of
sculptures that got chiselled out of the rock almost a thousand
years ago.
The hill is named the 'Peak That Flew From Afar', because there
is - or was - supposedly a very similiar hill in India. Chinese
tourists crawl all over the lower paths to get their picture taken
in front of the sculptures or a specific piece of calligraphy
overgrown with the moss of a millenium.
I head up through the forest. Big, cold drops fall from the trees,
some of them managing to hit my neck and then working their way
down my back.
The sounds of the drops take over, slowly blotting out the din of
the lane below. The forest is misty, a composition of grey and
green that could be right out of a chinese painting.
I reach the rounded top of the hill, a small stony clearing. The
high trees and the fog make it impossible to see the West Lake or
Hangzhou. I sit down on a convenient boulder, enjoying the silence
all around me.
I realize that for the first time in weeks I am alone.
This travelogue is (c) by Thomas Sturm.
The author allows non-commercial publication of this text in electronic form,
as long as this paragraph is added to the end of the text.
For publication in any other form, please
write to: t_sturm@pacbell.net
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