Curious Happenings on Daxiang Mountain
Sunday August 15, 2010
There’s something undeniably exhilarating about hurtling down a mountain road in a minibus driven at speed, the driver’s hand upon the horn, loud music blaring, and spectacular landscapes unfolding before you. As I headed to Gangu (甘谷) this morning, through the terraced hills and orchards of a landscape that already feels a part of the old Silk Route, I was filled with the excitement that can only come from knowing that a deadly precipice is mere feet away.
I decided this morning to head to Daxiang Shan （大象山) or Elephant Mountain, a couple of hours to the West of Tianshui, to visit the Tang dynasty rock-cut Buddha, who has blue eyebrows and moustache. It seemed worth the journey just for the moustache, I thought. I caught the bus from Qincheng mid-morning, and arrived in Gangu in time for lunch, eating in a cheap fried noodle place where I was interrogated in the usual fashion – where was I from, how long had I been in China, and so on. After lunch, I headed up to the ragged and unlovely looking mountain just out of town, a series of temples and building clinging to a curiously shabby looking cliff. It turned out, however, to be one of the more intriguing days I have spent in China, and this largely thanks to the mother and daughter – both local to the mountain – who I met just before I started to climb the steps. Here’s a photograph of my two excellent companions for the day:
We met when the daughter marched up and said, in English, “Let’s make friends.” “Good idea,” I replied, and we shook hands. Then we got into conversation in Chinese as we climbed the steps. I turned out that they lived on the mountain, and they were both immensely welcoming. Half way up, they suggested I stop off for a cup of tea and a rest, so we turned off the path into a courtyard where there was a figure of the God of Wealth, attended to by a diminutive monk, and several people were working on carpentry, renovating the courtyard. After making offerings of incense to the God of Wealth, I sat down for tea. Somebody found a lump of sugar the size of a fist, and – believing that Westerners all like their tea sweet – tried to crumble it into my glass. I managed to limit the amount that found its way into my drink, but not to entirely resist. I must have spent a good hour chatting in the courtyard. The little girl – who quickly appointed herself as my guide and general purpose mentor – demonstrated some fine dance moves for me:
Dancing is not my strong suit, but knowing that nothing breaks the ice more than looking ridiculous, I asked her to teach me. She tried her best, but this met with general bewilderment and perhaps a hint of disapproval. Was this a girl’s dance? I asked. It was, she said. OK, so could you teach me a man’s dance? She did this gladly, showing me a manly kind of riding-a-horse-across-the-grasslands dance. When I emulated this, my dancing was met with general approval, and even a small ripple of applause.
The conversation turned, as it often does in China, to money. In Britain, people will go out of their way not to ask others what they earn, and questions about personal finances are considered about as personal as it gets. Which is weird, when you think about it. And probably unhealthy, too. In China, people happily talk about money. So we had the usual conversation about exchange rates and English pounds and Renminbi. It was at this point that somebody asked if I had any English pounds with me. They were curious what they looked like. I said I didn’t, but I did have Hong Kong dollars. This seemed to be a good second-best, so I took out a few of the dollar bills I had remaining from Hong Kong and they were passed around. What is the exchange rate for these? they asked. More or less one to one, I said. OK, let’s exchange, said one woman. But you can’t use them here, I said. We know, but they are interesting. OK, well why not just take one? I can’t use them either, so I can give you one. No, we can’t take one. We will exchange for Renminbi. And suddenly, up there on that dusty hill in Gansu province, in a building site in a Buddhist temple, there was a curious rush on Hong Kong dollars, with folks wanting to clear me out in exchange for mainland currency, exchanging one-for-one. It was not a financial transaction. This was not a matter of currency; instead these were artefacts. One man wanted a 100, a 50, a 20 and a 10 dollar bill, so he had one of each. He liked the 10 (as I like the ten) because it has a see-through window, which is quite snazzy. But he wanted to recompense me. I tried to say that it really wasn’t a good deal, that I’d rather just give the things away, but my hosts were insistent. If they were worth something, they should pay what they were worth.
By this time all of my very few remaining Hong Kong dollars were doing the rounds of the whole group, and folks were digging into their pockets to give me Chinese currency in return, despite my protests. At the end of the ten minutes or so, I was very slightly poorer in Hong Kong bills and very slightly richer in mainland Chinese bills.
Such financial speculation over with, we sat down to drink more tea and eat large quantities of melon; and after another blessing from the monk, we continued on our way up the hill. Next we visited the temple higher up, where my two new friends, mother and daughter, took me to see the resident monks. They needed poking as they were asleep, but bore this with remarkable good nature. Once I was sat down and provided with more tea, we launched into a long discussion about Buddhism. Or, better put, a lecture. The most voluble of the monks insisted that Buddhist was the finest religion there was. Everything else, he confided, was next to useless. And when he got me to make offerings of incense to the small Buddha figure, he thought that there was something decidedly Christian about the way I did so – which was probably right, given that Anglicanism is virtually in my DNA, being the first non-believer to follow from a long line of Anglican priests – so I was instructed in how to bow to images so that I looked like a Buddhist and not a Christian. Finally, after about another hour of discussion, they gave me a small pile of books in Chinese about Buddhism, exhorted me to study them well, and to tell people in the West that Buddhism was the thing to practice. I said I’d do my best.
By now, I was keen to climb the hill and see the large blue-moustached fellow at the top. My young self-appointed guide, however, was quite taken by the sight of me bowing before Buddha images, so at every stopping-point, she got me to repeat the movement. It would happen like this. We’d go into a shrine. She’d say, “Let’s worship!” and grin. Then we’d stand side by side and bow three times, our heads touching the cushions, then bow three times from standing. Then she’d grin at me again. “OK, let’s go,” she’d say.
Eventually we reached the top of the hill, and the rock-cut Buddha was really rather astonishing. Here’s a picture:
Here’s the close-up of the moustache – the paint, incredibly, is said to be original Tang Dynasty paintwork:
Here’s the magnificent foot:
And here’s the view from the base of the Buddha statue.
The top of the hill is filled with caves, tunnels and niches, many of them that look decidedly closed off to visiting tourists. But my guide, with the fearlessness of a seven-year-old, and with her knowledge of the place that came from it being more or less her own back yard, took me on a tour of various tunnels that led up to rock-cut shrines, and other nooks and crevices whilst her mother sat outside in the shade, fanning herself and chatting. We emerged into one dark shrine where there was an elderly keeper who seemed astonished to see me there. “Are you Chinese?” he kept asking. No, I said, I am English. “Are you Chinese?” he would say again. At the back of this shrine there was a curtain, and my guide pulled open the curtains and then pushed open the large doors to yet another shrine inside. There in the gloom were several figures holding books, and we went round translating the characters as best we could, although being traditional rather than simplified, here at least we were both struggling.
Eventually the three of us we made our way down, but not before stopping off in the temple half way. Here we visited a cave shrine, containing a number of Buddha figures, and within the cave another friendly local led us to another cave with statues depicting Buddhist visions of hell. Gruesome stuff (I’ve written about Buddhist visions of hell, and my unease with them, over on thinkBuddha some time back). There was another cave, right at the back, but this was locked, so we came back into the sunshine, where the abbot had come to see what all the fuss was about, and to check out this foreigner who more or less (more today than yesterday, to be sure; less than would be ideal) could speak a bit of Chinese. The man who had shown us the caves started describing how I had been bowing before the Buddha images, and the abbot decided that if this was the case, I should certainly be permitted into the innermost cave. Somebody was sent to fetch the key.
The innermost cave – a cave within a cave within a cave – was extraordinary. I was asked not to photograph it, so I didn’t; but it was a cave shaped roughly like a doughnut, with the walls entirely encrusted from floor to painted ceiling with brightly painted sculptures of the eight hundred luohan (八百罗汉) or arhats – enlightened Buddhist disciples. The sculptures were modern, and each was different from all the others. It was an extraordinary piece of work. A monk showed us to the far side of the cave, and there was a gloriously garish neon shrine to the Bodhisattva Guanyin (观音菩萨/觀音菩薩). My small guide and I then did our double-act of worshipping at the shrine, at which point the monk then declared that, once again, I was not doing it right. There followed another twenty minute lesson in proper bowing – different from the previous lesson, in fact – and if I have retained anything it is that one’s feet must be aligned like the lines in the number 8 (八) – an auspicious number in China. When he was satisfied, he let us leave, and as we left the door was locked firmly behind after us.
By now it was getting late, and so with some reluctance, I said that I needed to head to catch the bus back to Tianshui. We walked down the hill and hopped into a waiting motor-tricycle into town, where I said goodbye to these wonderfully hospitable and generous people and boarded the raucous and crowded minibus back to Tianshui.
Skincare, Maiji Shan - and a few snapshots. Treasure Chicken
#1 · kathz
Sunday August 15, 2010
Sounds like a terrific day – and I’m impressed by the speed with which the god of wealth rewarded you for your offering of incense.
Perhaps you would like to instruct us all in bowing and manly dancing when next in the Swan and Rushes – we could even institute a ritual of bowing before the statue of the last vice-chancellor bar one.
#2 · Will
Monday August 16, 2010
I’d be delighted to offer a demonstration.
He’s certainly a good lad, that god of wealth.
And do you mean to say that you don’t already bow to the statue of the last V-C but one?
#3 · Elee Kirk
Monday August 16, 2010
I think before anyone starts bowing to the last VC but one you should really make sure that he has a blue moustache.