More Chengde

Today we continued our exploration of Chengde’s renowned summer palace. After a quick Chinese buffet breakfast at the hotel, we took a ten minute drive to reach the massive complex. Our first stop was the Puning temple, or, “Big Buddha Temple.” The temple contains the world’s largest wooden Buddha. The temple was built in 1755, and covers almost 3,000 km. The temple is significant for several reasons. It not only joins Han Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, but also hosts a plethora of religious ceremonies involving both lamas and monks. All of the roofs of the buildings are yellow; our tour guide explained that yellow was (and still is) considered a royal color that was only worn by emperors. The highlight of the trip was viewing the giant Buddha. The statue was an amazing sight, boasting 42 arms and 25 eyes. Each of the eyes represents a different Buddhist practice. It is referred to as the “1,000 arms and 1,000 legs Buddha.” After learning some basic facts about the life of Buddha, and observing a group of monks performing a religious ceremony in one of the temple’s many wings, we departed. Our next stop was a traditional paper cutting gallery. We were introduced to Shi Junfeng, a renowned paper-cutting artist in China. She demonstrated the technique of paper cutting by creating three intricate paper butterflies in only five minutes! After this brief but impressive introduction, we browsed her gallery, which contained various pieces of artwork depicting nature as well as traditional Chinese architecture and ways of life. Almost all of us purchased some of her works, which were remarkably well priced. Of course Li Laoshi helped us bargain a little… After our shopping spree, we departed for lunch. We ate at the same restaurant where we had lunch the previous day, but thankfully they didn’t load our table with 16 dishes again! Once we had consumed our manageable (and good!) lunch, we headed for the Lesser Potala Palace- another part of the summer palace complex. We climbed a little more than several staircases to reach the top of the temple. The view was definitely worth it, though. The temple is very significant, as the Dali Lama used to live there. The windows, called “blind windows,” are completely covered; this is because monks did not want be distracted by the outside world. After trekking back down to the parking lot, we drove to a mall to do some shopping. Unfortunately, the mall didn’t have the cheap DVDs that many of us have been searching for, so we made our way back to the hotel. We drove the bus to dinner, where we had an interesting debate concerning whether or not drivers in China were really good or really bad. I still maintain that they are crazy, as I have been in a taxi on more than one occasion where the driver played chicken with bikers, vehicles, and pedestrians! We ultimately agreed that the situation on the roads was “organized chaos.” After dinner, we enjoyed some free time back at the hotel. Tomorrow we scale the great wall!
-Julie