anjue monastery

we pass the knapsack cafe (formerly sally's hostel), so we know we're close. i hear the grinding of dowels in sockets, and i turn to see a building housing two giant prayer wheels. four women keep them in motion by continuously walking in ellipses around the two wheels. i walk a few more feet, look to my right, and there is anjue monastery.

when you step through the gate, two lines of prayer wheels are on either side of you. i sat in the entry way, looking at the courtyard before me. i was scared to enter, afraid my presence would disrup the peace that was present in the place. i stood quietly, looking across the courtyard at the main prayer building. everything on the building was painted in bright oranges, blues, reds and yellows. and gold. most of it was in gold. at the top of the temple was a pagoda. in front of that there were four bell shaped objects in a line. two black ones were on the outside, and the inside ones were gold. between the golden bells there were two gold dog type animals facing eachother. between those there was a wheel. over the courtyard hung tons of prayer flags.

the courtyard is grass cut into quadrants by 2 paths. while patrick explored, i just sat and watched. the monks' quarters were on three sides, while the main temple was across from the gate. a rooster picked his way across the courtyard, looking for scratch. occassionally, it would be startled by three pigeons who seemed to be playing.

patrick soon finished exploring, so i returned from my reverie to explore myself. after climbing the stairs, i was in an entry to the main prayer room. the coluns were delicately carved here, and painted brightly with dragons and other creatures. on the walls were painted four murals of buddhas all four of which i did not recognize. i have found out later that one was malahaka. instead of candles lining these walls, they had flickering electric lights to protect the murals from smoke damage.

across from one of these buddhas was one of the only things i recognized--a wheel depicting the six realms with the 12 nidanas encircling it. this was all held by mahalaka, who is a scary looking guy, bathed in fire, clothed in tiger, and with a third eye in the middle of his forehead. the six realms were amazingly detailed, depicting the realms of hell, hungry ghosts, animal, human, jealous god, and gods. the jealous god realm and the god realm were combined, because who else is a god going to be jealous of?

one thing that interested me was the size of the realms. while the hell, animal, and human realms were all the same size, and the jealous god/god realm was twice as big, i couldn't understand why the hungry ghost realm was so large. if anyone can answer my question, i'd appreciate it.

but the mural was breathtaking in its detail, complexity, and vibrancy.

finally i shed my shoes and entered the main sanctuary. directly facing the door was a giant statue of shakyamuni buddha, flanked by two buddhas on either side. there were cusions and rugs everwhere, and an altar where past offers of burnt incense, rice wine, and a strange potato statue sat. on the walls there were more gorgeous murals of buddhas. on the right hand side of the room there was scaffolding put up, and two people working. one, a monk was drawing the outline of another incredibly detailed mural with a pencil, and another, a layman, was painting in the outlines. it was great to witness the creation of one these beautiful works.

at that point, i heard the rooster crowing, and i decided it was time to go. i met patrick, and after we left the monastery, we realized that it was situated right next to an army barracks. buddhism and the army. warriors. for peace and war, right together. great.

poama shan

on day 2 in dardo (the tibetan name of kangding), we decided to take it easy and climb poama shan, the mountain that rises above the city. we walked down the sichuan-tibetan highway until we reached a group of women who were selling juniper and incense, two key ingredients to buddhist prayer. patrick's book said the path to the mountain was through a lamasery, and it seemed we were on the right track. i bought some incense, and we walked up the stairs.

we entered a door, and were greeted on one side by about 8 prayer wheels. these are large golden cylinders filled with tibetan chants written on rolls of paper. as one spins them, it is supposed to transmit the dharma as if you were reading it. the woman ahead of us spun each of them gently, and i followed suit. we came upon a courtyard where a bunch of women were watching one of their own stoke a fire. they had large sticks of incense, about as thick as your finger, and they were lighting them on a what i'm guessing was a juniper fire. i excused myself, and asked them for help. they let me in to light my incense, then an old woman took a small branch of juniper in a cup of water, and sprinkled the water on my smoking incense. then they told me to put it above the courtyard, in a bowl where the remains of many sticks of incense could be seen. i added mine, and we continued our climb.

by the time i was done with the incense, a group of six chinese students had begun to climb the mountain as well. they passed through the lamasery without ceremony, and climbed ahead of us. they shouted hello and were quite friendly. at one point, a boy asked if he could have his picture taken with patrick. patrick gracefully granted a photo-op, which i then exploited. i made him put up the asian v, which is ever present in any posed picture in china. oh, it was wonderful. note the expression of glee on patrick's face.

the climb was gorgeous, with prayer flags draped across the trail every which way. we hiked higher and higher up steep stone steps, occasionally taking a photo for an excuse to rest. soon we were able to see the entire town, and the y shaped valley it inhabits. off to the south we could see anang temple, a buddhist monastery we would visit later that day. as we climbed we could still hear the incessant honking of the drivers in the city. i was convinced that we would never be able to climb high enough to escape it.

soon we left the beautiful views of the valley as the trail moved into the woods. after a while, i was surprised to find myself free of the honking. it was glorious. the path became less step, and we passed stone piles that seemed to be altars, or perhaps graves. either way, it was a solemn area, and fortunately, patrick and i had walked slowly enough to be alone and quiet at that point.

as we neared the top however, the quiet was ended by speakers pumping tibetan music. we reached the top to find a small camp set up. people offered food, rides on horses, and of course, the requisite dress up like a tibetan and have your picture taken. i declined all three options, and went instead to a small square, with a buddhist shrine in the center of it. there were more tibetan dress and shoot places, but i ignored them. here was a beautiful monument to enlightenment. of course, directly behind it was power lines, but who cares? i mean, who doesn't like meditating under power lines?

after walking around a bit, i heard a hello, and soon my karma for making patrick take that picture had returned. a group of students were excited to see me. after a short conversation in broken chinese and english i walked away. they quickly called me back, and asked if i would take a picture with them. i first took a picture with two girls, then the other girl wanted one, and then the guy wanted one, and then the first girls wanted another. i felt like a reality tv star. i had done nothing of import, but these people wanted to be seen with me. ahhhh...fame...that fickle beast.

we hiked down the short, albeit a bit more treacherous, way and we finally reached the bottom. while there was more peace and quiet on poama shan than at mu ge cuo, the chinese tourist need for entertainment had lessened the experience just slightly.

mu ge cuo

after having a nice breakfast of bao-zi and duojia (soy milk) i met patrick at a hostel so he could have some "coffee" (nescafe). while we chatted and he sipped, a chinese woman about my age asked if we had any plans. when i am a tourist, i become very suspicious and defensive. i treat everyone like they are trying to rip me off, and i'm always looking for an angle. here the angle was they had four people, and they needed six for a minibus up to mu ge cuo. it turned out she was just a nice person like us, and we were (like we were quite often this trip) at the right place at the right time.

we took the minibus (and yes, the honking and the passing continued) 35k out of town. as we drove northwest, the foliage became more striking, and the altitude became higher. the six of us were 3 seperate parties. two girls were masters students from southern sichuan, and the other two were a couple from shanghai. the woman from shanghai was fairly haughty. i told her that one of my goals was to learn chinese. she replied, "i don't want to worry you, but..." she had a friend from hungary who came to shanghai for a year and then went back and studied on his own for a few years and became a chinese translator.--so far, it sounded good.--after fifteen years however, he still makes mistakes. she made it sound like he was barely fluent. great. another example of the brutal honesty you can be exposed to when meeting new chinese people. she was no longer my favorite.

we arrived, and it looked like the parking for a fair. a field was stuffed with cars, and minibuses and cabs drove up in a steady stream and deposited chinese tourists inside the park. mu ge cuo consists of six lakes with a 9 km road connecting them all. you can walk the road, but with the 4 hours our minibus driver gave us, we decided we better ride. that being said, we spent about an hour in line all told for the bus. i'd say there were about 300 people in line for the bus when we first got there. fortunately, the buses came often so we didn't have to wait long.

the leaves were changing slightly, giving the forest an overall green feeling with highlights of warmer colors.. this is where my homesickness got rough. the red and orange made want to see new hampshire foliage in a bad way.

after disembarking halfway through the park, we got in line for a minibus to take us to mu ge cuo, which is the largest lake in the park. after a ten minute ride around hairpin turns we arrived. a quiet foggy lake encircled with a board walk was what greeted us. we began to circumambulate the lake when it began to rain. we drew near a skewer stand that was putting up an umbrella and we ducked in there. by the time patrick had ordered us a few delicious meat skewers, the rain had died down, and we continued to walk.

each pagoda we passed had at least one skewer person in them, surrounded by chinese trying to warm their hands. we kept walking, and slowly the density of people lessened until it was about 2 per 100 feet. it was nice. we finally arrived at the end of the board walk where three laborers sanded, varnished, and fixed the final pagoda. then it began to rain.

we began to walk back. we met two of the other people we came on the minibus with going the other way. they were both dressed in warm, yet not waterproof coats. we said hello and kept walking. patrick began to draw away from me as i stopped to snap photos like a good tourist. by the time i was halfway to the bus pickup point it began to pour in earnest. i ducked into a pagoda, and was welcomed around a skewer fire by a bunch of vendors and tourists. the vendors had been in the open and had come in when it started to really dump. we had a nice conversation, and i had some skewers while i warmed my hands by the barbeque. at the end of the storm it began to hail, and finally after that, it let up.

by that time i was wet and cold. the lines for the bus down were non-existent as most of the tourists had already left. we went down to the halfway point and walked around there for a bit before heading back down to the parking field.

the field looked like a woodstock had been there. muddy tire tracks, litter everywhere, chinese tourists walking around looking dazed. we met the two of our minibus party we had met before, and they seemed to be in good spirits, all be it a little wet. at about 4:15, fifteen minutes before we had agreed to meet the minibus, they began to worry. where was the minibus? why wasn't he here? they couldn't seem to care less about the shanghai people, but it seemed it was very concerning to them that the bus wasn't fifteen minutes early.

at 4:29 by my watch, the bus driver showed up, and a few minutes after the shanghai people did too. we drove back to the hostel where i crashed. my new mantra is you can never have too many chinese tourists.

the bus to kangding

the bus ride to kangding is beautiful. you wind your way through mountain passes, accompanied by a rushing river the whole way. it is harvest time, so there is grain be dried everywhere you look, and farmers are burning cornhusks the middle of fields that are being put to rest for the winter. the bus keeps going up, and it becomes colder. this has been the first fall weather i've felt in about six years. it made me quite homesick.

written on the bus, stopped: "i sit on a crowded bus in a long line of cars winding through the mountains. the road drops off to my right to a gorgeous river surrounded by bamboo and trees. occasionally houses will cruise by my window. 5 foot wide satellite dishes are ubiquitous, brightening (or dulling) the lives of these country folk. a main business on this snake of a road is cleaning trucks. as they rip out the hearts of these beautiful mountains and carry it down, these trucks get dirty. so they wash them. at all times, they have hoses pumping out water. if not onto a truck being cleaned, then onto the ground. i guess it drains into the river anyways. great. "back on the bus, we've stopped at a mid-mountain, back-country traffic jam. patrick and i sit in the back of the bus, directly above the engine. neither of us have a window seat, and i am sweating like my namesake. the two way road has been blocked by our bus and a dump truck stacked with filled burlap sacks. bikes ride and motorcycles honk and yell as they cruise by on our right, justifiably upset that these two behemothes are blocking the legal? right of way. eventually, the bus and the dump truck pull over, and we exit the bus and wait."

it turns out that two dump trucks had collided. a truck had tried to pass another vehicle around a blind turn, and had run into a truck coming the opposite way. passing around a blind turn? you ask, shocked. ahhhh. china. i believe the single traffic law in china is: "you can do anything, as long as you honk as you do it." of course, i'm paraphrasing a little.

our bus tried to make the best time possible, passing multiple vehicles on a two lane road. if you want to pass a slower car in china, this is the procedure. 1. acknowledge that there is a car ahead of you by honking. 2. honk to communicate your intention to pass. 3. pass while honking, to be sure the car knows you are there. 4. honk to signal you are going to be coming back into the lane. repeat. variations: passing with oncoming traffic ahead--honk more, and louder. passing around a blind corner: lay down on your horn and pray. sometimes, clearly, the latter does not work well.

needless to say it was a great ride, and except for the delay for the accident we did make great time, arriving in kangding after dark, and just as it began to rain. at least this rain didn't burn.

mooncakes and autumn festival

today was national day. think labor day. think beginning of autumn festival. think mooncakes. people give these delicous cakes to each other during the autumn festival. they are priced from fairly expensive (10 yuan for one) to exorbitantly expensive (100 yuan for one). i feel like they're a bit like status symbols. i have so much money, so i'm going to give you an expensive mooncake. or a box of expensive mooncakes. it's very interesting.

for autumn festival, the school gave every teacher a box. the amount of packaging is wonderful. i got a shopping bag designed to fit a box of mooncakes. inside that bag was a box of mooncakes. inside that box was a golden fleece lining and eight boxes, each containing a different mooncake. upon opening a small box, the cake is in a small plastic cupcake tin, sealed inside a plastic bag. besides just a mooncake in the plastic, you get a packet of chemicals to keep it fresh! oh the wonder!

each cake is it's own man. at first i thought they were all going to be like the first i ate, which would make them roughly equivilent to christmas fruitcakes. but they have ones with dried meat, sweet-bean paste, hardboiled egg yolk? it is a virtual smorgasbord of mooncakery. amazing. i just wish autumn festival happened more than once a year. sigh.

censorship

one of my questions about traveling to china was the amount of censorship. was i going to be able to stay up with international news? i had heard the bbc news website was blocked and i was worried about my favorite news source, the new york times. go ahead, call me a bleeding heart liberal. when i arrived, my worries were soothed quickly. nytimes.com was up and running, without any modifications at all. i could even access articles on china, which is more you can say for the bbc website. i am well connected, and very happy to be away from the american news machine.

this morning my dad sent me this image. (again, if you click on it, it's a little bit clearer.) it is a comparison of this week's newsweek covers between europe, asia, latin america, and the us. the first three headlines are "losing afghanistan", the last one is "my life in pictures" a story about annie liebowitz. very interesting. now, i'm no conspiracy theorist who is arguing that the government made newsweek change the cover in defiance of the first amendment. i'm a corporate news theorist. i believe in their quest to sensastionalize the news and make it play the way they want it, they are selling the average american (or whoever reads the news...) up the river. it makes me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

now read this quick...i'm not sure how long the american censors will let it in to the united states. you know how they feel about bad news.

somebody doesn't like mao?

in my classes this week, we've been doing a bit of getting to know you stuff. more in fun as opposed to breaking the ice. we all know each other by now. so in this excercise you write 3 or 5 things down about yourself on a piece of paper, then you ball it up and throw it across the room. now i'm courting disaster here, but it's fun! you should see their faces when i ball up my piece of paper and throw it across the room. they are shocked. but they quite soon get into the swing of things.

after 30 seconds of a hailstorm of paper, i tell everyone to stop, and pick a ball up. then you read it to the class. you guess who the person is, than that person has to read.

number 3 of one kid's list was, i don't like mao. man, talk about courage--or stupidity. balls of paper were immediately thrown at him, and one kid glared at him very threateningly. i know i can't talk about politics, but i wanted to know why he didn't like mao. and for that matter, why they liked mao so much. either way, i'm just going to have to sit on my curiousity. maybe i can talk to him later.