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Today's Picture: 032 (February 26, 2009)
Today's Picture(s) from Day Three of the Hong Kong leg are:
I really wanted to see the Monastery of Ten Thousand Buddhas, which I'd missed during my first visit to Hong Kong. My traveling companions were not as enthusiastic, but were equally adverse (for reasons as yet unknown) to splitting up. But I was not about to miss the monastery again, so we headed to Sha Tim, and found it pretty quickly. The structure on the right is an elevator. Nice touch for elderly worshippers, I thought.
Whoo, boy. Turns out we'd actually stumbled on a massive graveyard, and one of the aforementioned traveling companions does not do well in graveyards. (Personally, I find graveyards peaceful, not scary places. Many of the graves had photos of their occupants affixed to the doors, and I was comforted by how many pictures of elderly folks there were. But I digress).
We headed back down the mountain to avoid a major flipout, and I finally convinced mes compagnons that I could be trusted to find the monastery on my own while they went and did something else. (And sure enough, I found it as I was able to head off and exploresans peanut gallery chorus that we would never find anything.) Incidentally, one of my contacts somehow managed to get ripped in half while in my eye right before I headed up to the monastery, so I didn't really get a good look at any of the sights from here on down until I dl'ed the pictures onto my harddrive weeks later.
The path up the mountain to the monastery is lined with 500 gilt statues of arhats. Worshippers leave offerings of food (mostly peanuts, for some reason), which are quickly pounced upon by monkeys like the ones in this photo. I stowed everything shiny in my bag and kept close watch on my camera, and they left me alone.
The arhats give way to gilt statues of Kanzeon Bosatsu toward the upper levels of the monastery. Here are three of said statues, with a view of the temple pagoda in the background.
The monastery was apparently hit by a pretty bad landslide about ten years ago, and you can still see the ruins of the old buildings that weren't completely wiped out. This used to be the Kazeon hall. I took a peek through the ground floor windows and saw piles of old boddhisattva statues as well as some old black and white photos of Hong Kongese families...wealthy donors or shrine groundskeepers, maybe? The building itself is a pretty neat example of old colonial architecture.
The monastery was founded in 1949 by a wealthy trader's son. There's actually a statue of this guy in a boarded-up building on the temple's uppermost level; I had no idea who it was of when I first saw it and thought it was some weird Christian Buddhist fusion due to the long dark hair and beard.
Anyway, the founder left instructions for his body to be disinterred several months after his death, and sure enough it was found in a remarkable state of preservation (you hear stories like this in Tibetan Buddhism as well). At any rate, it was encased in gold and here is my photo of it, where it sits in front of the main temple images in the Ten Thousand Buddha hall. I would have loved to have known how it survived the landslide (which was by all accounts pretty catastrophic, but my lack of Cantonese ability prevented me from asking the temple attendants).
Here's a shot from the main terrace looking out over the cemetary with Sha Tim in the background.
And here's a shot of the main terrace, taken from the portico of the Ten Thousand Buddhas hall. Chinese temples take some getting used to both because they're much gaudier than Japanese temples, as well as much newer. This is because most of the Chinese temples I've visited are still places of everyday worship, whereas the vast majority of Japanese temples are closer to museums (if they're historically significant) or halls for holding funeral rites (if they aren't) than they are to religious centers.
This is a shot from Kowloon Walled City Park. The walled city used to be an important military post under the Qing dynasty but devolved into a slum when the British expelled the Qing government. It transformed into a park about 15 years ago and the landscaping incorporates many of the historical relics that were unearthed during its renovation. Anyway, it has a lovely, peaceful atmosphere and was almost entirely devoid of people when we visited it.
Here's a typical street scene from the Tsim Sha Tsui shopping district, taken from a double decker bus like the one in the righthand corner of the picture. I wish Japan would get double decker buses--they're great fun to ride.
And this is the beginning of the Symphony of Lights, which is one of the most delightfully lame things I have ever seen. Basically, the Symphony of Lights is a fifteen minute production in which neon lights on the highrises on Hong Kong island are programmed to flash and pulsate in time with cheesy public domain techno music blared from speakers on the peninsula side. (PS: God, humans are weird.)
You either love it or laugh at its overriding cheesiness; I am firmly in the latter camp. Also, it's weird to think that the hotel in which I stayed during my first time in Hong Kong was merrily pulsing away for a quarter of an hour every night while I chilled out watching NHK or historical kdrama.
That will be all.
I really wanted to see the Monastery of Ten Thousand Buddhas, which I'd missed during my first visit to Hong Kong. My traveling companions were not as enthusiastic, but were equally adverse (for reasons as yet unknown) to splitting up. But I was not about to miss the monastery again, so we headed to Sha Tim, and found it pretty quickly. The structure on the right is an elevator. Nice touch for elderly worshippers, I thought.
Whoo, boy. Turns out we'd actually stumbled on a massive graveyard, and one of the aforementioned traveling companions does not do well in graveyards. (Personally, I find graveyards peaceful, not scary places. Many of the graves had photos of their occupants affixed to the doors, and I was comforted by how many pictures of elderly folks there were. But I digress).
We headed back down the mountain to avoid a major flipout, and I finally convinced mes compagnons that I could be trusted to find the monastery on my own while they went and did something else. (And sure enough, I found it as I was able to head off and explore
The path up the mountain to the monastery is lined with 500 gilt statues of arhats. Worshippers leave offerings of food (mostly peanuts, for some reason), which are quickly pounced upon by monkeys like the ones in this photo. I stowed everything shiny in my bag and kept close watch on my camera, and they left me alone.
The arhats give way to gilt statues of Kanzeon Bosatsu toward the upper levels of the monastery. Here are three of said statues, with a view of the temple pagoda in the background.
The monastery was apparently hit by a pretty bad landslide about ten years ago, and you can still see the ruins of the old buildings that weren't completely wiped out. This used to be the Kazeon hall. I took a peek through the ground floor windows and saw piles of old boddhisattva statues as well as some old black and white photos of Hong Kongese families...wealthy donors or shrine groundskeepers, maybe? The building itself is a pretty neat example of old colonial architecture.
The monastery was founded in 1949 by a wealthy trader's son. There's actually a statue of this guy in a boarded-up building on the temple's uppermost level; I had no idea who it was of when I first saw it and thought it was some weird Christian Buddhist fusion due to the long dark hair and beard.
Anyway, the founder left instructions for his body to be disinterred several months after his death, and sure enough it was found in a remarkable state of preservation (you hear stories like this in Tibetan Buddhism as well). At any rate, it was encased in gold and here is my photo of it, where it sits in front of the main temple images in the Ten Thousand Buddha hall. I would have loved to have known how it survived the landslide (which was by all accounts pretty catastrophic, but my lack of Cantonese ability prevented me from asking the temple attendants).
Here's a shot from the main terrace looking out over the cemetary with Sha Tim in the background.
And here's a shot of the main terrace, taken from the portico of the Ten Thousand Buddhas hall. Chinese temples take some getting used to both because they're much gaudier than Japanese temples, as well as much newer. This is because most of the Chinese temples I've visited are still places of everyday worship, whereas the vast majority of Japanese temples are closer to museums (if they're historically significant) or halls for holding funeral rites (if they aren't) than they are to religious centers.
This is a shot from Kowloon Walled City Park. The walled city used to be an important military post under the Qing dynasty but devolved into a slum when the British expelled the Qing government. It transformed into a park about 15 years ago and the landscaping incorporates many of the historical relics that were unearthed during its renovation. Anyway, it has a lovely, peaceful atmosphere and was almost entirely devoid of people when we visited it.
Here's a typical street scene from the Tsim Sha Tsui shopping district, taken from a double decker bus like the one in the righthand corner of the picture. I wish Japan would get double decker buses--they're great fun to ride.
And this is the beginning of the Symphony of Lights, which is one of the most delightfully lame things I have ever seen. Basically, the Symphony of Lights is a fifteen minute production in which neon lights on the highrises on Hong Kong island are programmed to flash and pulsate in time with cheesy public domain techno music blared from speakers on the peninsula side. (PS: God, humans are weird.)
You either love it or laugh at its overriding cheesiness; I am firmly in the latter camp. Also, it's weird to think that the hotel in which I stayed during my first time in Hong Kong was merrily pulsing away for a quarter of an hour every night while I chilled out watching NHK or historical kdrama.
That will be all.
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not sure when i'll ever get to visit hk. need more vacation days...and a fatter wallet.
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And if I can play devil's advocate, I've found that international travel is remarkably cheap these days now that airlines are so worried about declining customers. The four international flights in this trip cost about $150 apiece, which was just slightly over what I was spending a week on gas money in the U.S. And, having flown them, I now have enough frequent flier miles to take two more international trips. So if you can skimp a bit domestically, overseas travel is very much possible.
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And as I haven't been to FL or NYC yet either, I sense a roadtrip when I'm back Stateside. XD
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And now I'm kinda sorry I did.
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Like they tried some actual beer and got drunk?
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Those were dark days....
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