Mark Visits a Temple…

Hi there folks.  Mark here again.  I don't do much of the blogging around here because all I do is work, work work.  Ok that's perhaps an exaggeration.  But I do work a lot.  Or at least it feels like a lot.  Ok I'm sure I work at least the average amount.  I work enough that I never feel like there is enough time to do all the other things I want to do.  But I'm already getting off the point here.

I took a really cool busines trip earlier this week.  I flew into Hangzhou (杭州）in southern China and then took a 2-hour car ride out to the "small" village of Tiantai (天台).  "Small" goes in quotes because its population was "only" 540,000.  That's right…just over half a million.  One of my Chinese coworkers told me ahead of time "Tiantai not city…is country".  Ok…whatever…this country village has the same population the STATE I lived in before moving down to the midwest…

I must say though that this place definitely had a much more rural feel than the monstrous 10-million-plus cities that have been our only China exposure so far.  And you know what?  It was niiiice…

This place is just beautiful.  Mountains, trees, rivers, lakes, clear air…it felt just incredible after two months in the conspicuously sootier concrete jungles we have been inhabiting of late.

Oh and there's one more thing.  I…finally…got to visit a real, ancient Buddhist temple.  This is something that I particularly loved when I was a 15-yr-old kid & my grandparents sent me off to spend a summer in Japan.  Somehow I expected that I would see things like that every day if I lived in China.  Not so…it's taken me two months to get to one of these places.  

Tiantai Temple is well over 1000 years old.  Do you have anything that is over 1000 years old?  No you don't.  This place was just as peaceful and mysterious and beautiful as it should be and I love the fact that I got to sneak in a visit on a business trip.

Now…should I quit blabbering and just show you the photos???  Yes I should…

The Car Ride…

I'll start with a really bad photo taken from the car window just to show that right away the scenery here is way different than that in the Tianjin area where we live…Ahhh…nice to see mountains again!!!

 Tiantai Hotel…

Nothing really remarkable about this hotel entrance, other than it sort of sets the mood for the place. It also gives me a chance to mention a funny quirk of life in Southern China. It's farther south…so it's warmer there…so there is NO HEAT in any of the buildings!!! It was 40-ish degrees (F) in the mornings and evenings here, which meant that the hotel rooms never warmed up. So that was weird…but moving on…

Here's a quick view of the grounds outside the hotel just to show how lush and green it is here…

 So we arrived in Tiantai on Monday afternoon & went straight to dinner with the supplier.  We got to the hotel after dark & so didn't have a chance to really see the area.  But Tuesday morning we decided to get up with the sun (meetings didn't start until 8:30!) and have a look at the Tiantai Temple.  It was SO worth it!!!

The temple was really only a 3-minute walk from the hotel…I had no idea we were so close! This is a view of the temple as we approach from the road. First time I've seen clear water running in a while!!!

 Here are few different views from inside the temple grounds…I will let the photos speak for themselves…

Yes, the cherry trees are in bloom here in South China…as well they should be! (at least I THINK that's a cherry tree…didn't actually manage to find out. But I'm OK with the assumption…are you?  OK good.)

I was told that this tree (not sure what kind it is) is over 1300 years old!

Check out the pagoda-looking thing in the distance…it becomes important a few photos later…

After spending a very peaceful and interesting hour first thing in the morning walking around this temple, we went back to the hotel for breakfast and then left for the office where we would have the day's meetings.  It's worth noting that on the drive out, we went past the temple again, and saw five or six tour buses full of tourists pouring into the temple all at once.  I am so very happy with our decision to get up early and see the place before it turned into a zoo!!!

After the day's meetings, I wanted to venture out and try to find some of that insence that seems to be typical of Buddhist temples everywhere.  It's a pleasant smell that always takes me back to that summer in Japan…

So we set out down the road past the temple to the street where there was a small market…I didn't end up taking photos of that market, but here is a little of what the walk looked like…

I'm not sure what is growing in the field there, but you can see that this is a much more rural & agricultural area than that in which we currently live…

Ok…my main plan for Tuesday was to head back to Hangzhou and fly home.  But before doing that, I got up early one more time and headed for that pagoda I showed you in an earlier photo.  It is a pretty dominant part of the skyline around here, so it had to be checked out.

Here's the approach to the huge ancient structure. I don't know exactly how tall it is, but it is tall. Just picture stacking bricks like that 1300 years ago! I thought I heard someone explaining that important texts were kept in this structure, and there was a time when you could walk in and go to the top. These days though the entrance is permanently sealed off with concrete due to the thing being "in bad repair". The thing I didn't get a photo of here was the pair of older guys having a fierce badminton game right at the base of this thing while listening to an inexplicably strange radio program (at least to Western ears). 

Here's a plaque at the base of the tower…I'll let those of you with superior Chinese reading skills work out for yourselves what it says. I could obviously translate it for you, but then how would you learn???

Here's a cool shot looking up from the base of the tower.  It wasn't completely obvious to me whether those gaps in the brick were intentional design features that have weathered significantly or just plain old "falling apart"…

Maybe the best part of this whole thing to me was the walking/hiking trails aroud the area.  I didn't have a ton of time as I had a plane to catch, but I did have time to take a (very steep!) trail up a mountain overlooking the temple area and some of the city of Tiantai.  I didn't take a lot of photos of the actual hike because I was very, very busy trying to locate enough oxygen for my seriously out-of-shape desk jockey lungs.  But I did take some shots from the top.  Getting there was just the perfect high point for a perfect morning in a beautiful place…

I was told that the settlement you can just make out in the foreground is an apple orchard. Considering the very steep ~200 meter climb it took to get here (of course there is nothing like a road) I have to conclude that the people who live here and tend this orchard are a particularly strong sort of people…

Just a view of the trails…

And a really great view from the top looking out over the valley…and the huge ancient pagoda that looked so big from the bottom!

Finally, a shot of a famous world traveler just to prove he was really there…greetings to all from the mountains of South China!!!