Tuesday, January 17, 2017

10,000 Bhudda's Monastery


view up 
view of the path upwards, lined with statues
The Monastery is up a very steep path with approximately 400 steps behind a very large, gleaming building. It was interesting...I turned the corner around the building and suddenly the rush of the busy street, right next to a transportation station and several malls, disappeared entirely. It became very quiet. The path officially starts when the statues start. I think there are more than 500. These are statues of Bhuddist arhats, or saints. Each one was different and there was an interesting variety of faces and positions and expressions. I rather enjoyed that. Some of them have signs that I presume tell you who they are, but that was all in Chinese, probably Cantonese, since that's what's commonly spoken here.
close up of a few of the statues

I was fascinated to notice the litter behind the fence; the path was perfectly clean
The monastery is on two levels. For the most part, you weren't supposed to photograph, so I didn't. However, the main temple houses approximately 12,800 bhuddas, each in a different position, in a room on all sides up to the 30' ceilings. Quite impressive. There are multiple other temple spaces and ancestor halls (I think this is where there are ashes of ancestors and you can come to worship). 


cleaning supplies


the skyline 
stairway to a fence



mama and baby

the monkeys eating some oranges they stole from the offerings table

not sure what this little gallery was but the statues were different and it was quite lovely

there are actually some women statues!!!!

damaged old building but beautiful

water garden with statues
a better picture of the overall water garden
turtles in the water garden
  



I finally made it to Hong Kong in Sunday the 15th January 2017 after 36 hours of travel and was wrecked. I spent my first day sleeping, getting a massage and wandering Jenn's neighborhood. 

A few thoughts about prepping for this trip: it was complicated. My goal was to take as little as possible, have extra room in my suitcase and use absolutely everything. HK is in its coldest month when it averages 50 while Australia and New Zealand are in their hottest time of year. I ended up with layers and a carry-on sized suitcase. We will see how it goes!

I'm just going to apologize up front for the weird layouts. I can't seem to force them into doing what I want.

The first thing I realized about Hong Kong is that it is so much more than a big city. There are multiple islands and also a piece of mainland. HK practices serious city planning so each area is built to be self-sufficient with markets, malls, theatres, temples, play areas, public transportation, sports grounds and parks. There's actually rural areas and quite a lot of parkland. 


 
Second day:
7 miles of walking!!!


 I took the bus and then the light rail to Sha Tin, another new territories area. Both were clean and easy, well-marked in English (always helpful when you can't read Chinese characters!). I went first to Che Kung Temple, a relatively old temple. This deity was apparently a general who fought bravely and fiercely for his people and has since made miracles happen. HK doesn't seem to be much for the old so a lot of old things are not much more than 100 years even if built on an earlier site. It was pretty busy with worshippers which was interesting since it didn't feel worshipful to me at all. I had to stop and think about different ways of expressing. What I saw was a lot of buying of incense, which was waved in the direction of whichever deity the person wanted to honor. Also a lot of food donations left out--everything from roast chickens and piglets to oranges and handmade pastries.  I only took a few pictures here because it felt somewhat invasive to take pictures of people going about their worship. Maybe the thing that felt most odd to me was the business-like aspect to it.   
partially used incense














a bit of the old carving at the top with flowers
After the temple I found my way to Tsang Tai Uk, a walled village. People actually live in the walls and also in the middle where there are courtyards. These were originally built by hakka people, who were mainland Chinese but driven out by wars. They built these fortified places because they were never sure of their welcome. Hakka means guest family. Now the village is surrounded by newer buildings and expressways but still interesting. 

view of one of the courtyards inside
 one of the entrance gates
still working well with goldfish in it

 

From there I went to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, unfortunately closed on Tuesdays, and then to the Newtown Mall. The mall was an experience. A huge, multi-story building, it is connected to at least three other malls, hotels and a transportation center with trains and multiple kinds of buses. Everything was gleaming white, glass and chrome. It was organized kinda like a market--this was interesting--with areas for specific things. Such as there was a watch section with like 7 different brands of watches. A baby section that I think was an entire floor. And so on. In one way I kinda liked that because you can comparison shop easily. And in another it was just odd. There were SO MANY people in there on a Tuesday. Lots of food too. The one saving grace is that there is pretty good signage to help you navigate the mall, because otherwise you could just get lost in a consumer paradise, or hell, as you prefer.

I finally made my way out of there and went to the 10,000 Bhudda's Monastery. That's the next post!