Sacred Buddhist Mountain #2

So, my last week in Beijing was a blur-- lots of late nights working on my class and perfecting my speech for the big presentation. So unfortunately I didn't have a chance to go out and take pictures of some of the things I wanted to put on here.... We return to the Capital on August 4th, and I'll be there for 4 days for what the teachers are calling "Debriefing," so hopefully I'll have more free time then to write about the changes I saw in Beijing from last year/this. Also comment on the Olympic Fervor that I could already feel in July-- I can't imagine what it'll feel like 4 days before the games begin!

We rode the train to Xinzhou, Shanxi Province on Friday night. We arrived early Friday morning and then took a 4 hour bus to 五台山 Mt. Taishan, one of the 4 most important mountains to believers of Chinese Buddhism. Last year I went to 峨眉山 Mt Emei (one of the other 3) with my friend Steven Pong, but unfortunately it was rainy and we didn't get to see the big Buddha at the top of the summit. Today the weather was gorgeous though, and we climbed one of the 5 peaks.

This is a view of the summit we climbed from across the valley.

There are 5 main peaks-- one in each direction and one in the center. The climb was pretty steep-- steps all the way. Still nothing compared to Mt Emei, but very intense. There were a couple interesting things I noticed on this journey up to the top, though. First, there were a lot of very devoted people who were knocking their heads to the ground every step or every three steps. I've tried full body prostrations before and believe me it's not easy on level ground. I couldn't even imagine prostrating every step up a mountain!! Some of the monks that were doing this had large bruises on their foreheads from where they hit the ground each step.

You can see the girl prostrating, and the monk further behind the standing man also prostrating.

As we started on the climb up the mountain, there were a lot of beggars. Probably about every 10 steps we would have to weave left or right to avoid them. The interesting thing was, there were two distinct categories. One category, and actually they shouldn't technically be called beggars, was Monks-- they often had a hat or a bowl turned up and greeted everyone with "Amitaba"--the name of the Buddha of Compassion-- instead of Hello. The second ground of beggars were physically deformed. They would often wag their severed limbs at everyone breathing heavily from the climb, or sometimes they would just lay down right in the middle of the steps and repeat "Amitaba" over and over.

Also as we got higher, we had to start avoiding piles of vomit where visitors couldn't handle the altitude + exercise. Not so pleasant.


However, the top of the summit was great! And the temple was very pretty:
My friend Huijun and I at the top.
My fellow students and a friendly Monk at one of the temples
One of various ornate obelisks near the temple.
An incense burner and various devotees.

A very funny thing happened while we were at the temple atop the mountain. Our teacher wanted to get a picture of all the ACC students in front of a gateway, and we were starting to get impatient with how long everyone was taking in front of us. So, in a very Chinese manner, we just stormed to the front and shoved our way in front of the guy who was about to have his picture taken. But when he saw that there were 16 Americans now behind him, he shouted "QUICK, TAKE A PICTURE!"

Perhaps it's the diversity of our group that amazes people-- we have 3 black students, as well as several mixed students, a student of Indian heritage... plus, of course the 6 white kids. So we're quite a sight to see, apparently. After this one gentlemen discovered that he could get a free picture with us, everyone started rushing toward us! For about 6 minutes we couldn't get the tourists to leave us alone! Our teacher kept saying, "HEY, we want to take a picture of just us now!" But they wouldn't listen... they kept running up to us and telling their travel buddy, "Qucik! Take the picture!!" It was pretty ridiculous, but really funny


A picture of the decent-- this route had no stairs, and in fact you could pay extra to ride a horse down if you so desired!


We are spending tomorrow in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi, and then we will fly to Haikou, the capital of Hainan Province and island early Tuesday morning. The first conference is on Wednesday, and I am one of the lucky 4 students who will be presenting on that day...! Please wish me luck-- I have 25 minutes to introduce Mentorship Programs in America, and then a 10 minute question/answer session. I'm still working on ironing out all the fine points of my speech... so hopefully I'll get to it before Wednesday!