Buddhist temple

August 12, 2006

Hi!

How are you? I thought I would write briefly about what we did today.

This morning Tomas; our Chinese tutor, Robin (his English name), and a nice guy in our class, Kyle, and I went by taxi to a nearby Buddhist temple. The drive was curvy and very steep, but the driver did not seem to be bothered at all since he did not take the road too slowly...

On top of a very high hill, the Buddhist temple covered a large area. As soon as we got out of the car, we just loved it. All of the buildings were in the traditional Chinese style (but many were newly built or renovated, so concrete and wood), and as we walked around the area, we soon noticed how quiet and peaceful it was everywhere. Once in a while, friendly, curious monks, dressed in long orange robes, would stick their heads out of the buildings to look at us. (Our tutor said that Westerners are rare there). We went into several buildings, and saw several statues of Buddha. The grounds surrounding the temples were not as well-kempt as parks usually are in China, but they were a little more wild (which I like), and we also saw gardens, calm pools (full of turtles, and Robin said that turtles symbolize long life in China), and tons of pretty butterflies everywhere.

We also hiked up a very steep hill to a pagoda. When we were about 2/3 of the way up, I started, as usual, to feel like I could barely breathe anymore, due to the extreme heat, and I wondered if I would even make it. But we all managed to get up and the view up there was breathtaking!

After the pagoda hike, we ate a nice, very simple, vegetarian lunch together. I think we spent 5 kronor, or about 75 cents, per person, with several vegetable dishes, a soup, and rice. The vegetables were all grown there in the gardens we had seen.

We spoke with one monk (with our tutor's help) who told us that some parts of the temple, and some stone tablets with Chinese calligraphy that we had seen, were one thousand years old!

I will attach a few photos. Now we are going to go and make Chinese dumplings, which are delicious. They are made from a regular flour dough, with a mixture of vegetables inside, or a meat mixture, and then they are closed in a half-moon shape. These are then boiled, steamed, or fried, and they are eaten with a soy-vinegar sauce and some spicy flavoring. Delicious! This is what Tomas always wants to go out and eat nowadays.

Tomorrow morning we have church in the Chinese church again.

Hope all is well. Hope to hear from you soon!

love
Rachel and Tomas

Buddha

Butterfly on purple flower

Rachel and Tomas at temple

Temple building and pool

Pagoda