![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/files\/2012\/05\/DSC02486.jpg\")
<\/a>-The first temple (we visited it) began shortly after the introduction of Buddhism into China from India, around 70 A.D.\u00a0\u00a0Subsequent temples pushed the total up into the hundreds, though today there are only 47.\u00a0\u00a0To see them all, my guide suggested, would take half a month.<\/p>\n-\u201cbase camp\u201d is over a\u00a0\u00a0mile high, providing a cool environment in the summer.<\/p>\n
-a temple built in 1921 has the largest marble arch in China.\u00a0\u00a0(everything is largest something or another)<\/p>\n -with the eminent Buddhists of the Qing dynasty claiming to have been descended from the Buddha disciple Manjuri (based on the similarity in the pronunciation of the Manchus), they took a fondness to the site because the temples are dedicated to Manjuri (from what my guide said, each of the famous Buddhist mountains is dedicated to one of the major Bodhisattvas).\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And given the fondness of the Qing for the Tibetan Lama Buddhism, it The one we visited had been sequestered by Kangxi, who came five times, and because he turned it into a royal temple, it has a gold roof, and the largest wooden archway in Wutaishan.\u00a0\u00a0It also has 108 stairs, which is a solemn number in Buddhism, and a good number for me, because we were going down it.\u00a0\u00a0There were a number of steles with poetry or inscriptions by Kangxi and Qianlong, who seemed to have visited a lot of places in their 120 years of rule, and left lots of stone steles.<\/p>\n Our next stop on the ride to Datong was a wooden pagoda, but not just a wooden pagoda\u2014the tallest in China.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0It dates from the short-lived Liao dynasty (somewhere in the 1100s), and also contains relics (i.e., body pieces) from the Lord Buddha.\u00a0\u00a0The Buddha is Liao style\u2014with a green beard and moustache since the Liao, a people from north of the wall (i.e., barbarians) had mustaches, and, therefore, the Buddha would have to as well.\u00a0\u00a0Furthermore, the moustache beard was green because the Liao believed green was a sacred color. At least that’s what I was informed.\u00a0 I told you Buddhism allowed local adaptations!<\/p>\n 1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0An earthquake in the late Qing dynasty leveled the rest of the temple, but the tower survived because, being made of wood, it was flexible.\u00a0\u00a0As might be expected, a reconstruction of the temple is underway in the name of tourism.<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The Cultural Revolution.\u00a0\u00a0Parts of the Buddha were hacked, and some documents which had been hidden in it were destroyed, including much of the history of the temple.<\/p>\n As I said, a magnificent day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Words failed Li Bing when he saw the last temple I saw today.\u00a0\u00a0The famous Tang poet could only inscribe \u201cmagnificent\u201d on a rock, but added a dot after zhuang guan, an exclamation point in a language that has none. He might have been thinking about the kind of day I had, which began when we … Continue reading “Better than Magnificent”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-last-trip-in-china-2012"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/36"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9424,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions\/9424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.iwu.edu\/factrack\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>-one of the temples has a white dagoba, an Indian-shaped pagoda that looks something like a bowling pin.\u00a0\u00a0Reputedly, it is the largest in China.\u00a0\u00a0The signpost said that it was originally built with the help of the great Indian King, Asoka, but I don\u2019t think the timing works.\u00a0\u00a0It was enlarged later, and is reputed to hold relics of the Lord Buddha.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>is no surprise that the temples have a lama orientation, some markedly so.<\/p>\n<\/a>That the pagoda was in the small town it was because the emperor\u2019s mother came from there, and she was a devout Buddhist.\u00a0\u00a0That the pagoda exists is due to its ability to survive two catastrophes in China:<\/p>\nThe last stop was the one Li Bing, a thousand years ago, called \u201cmagnificent \u201c\u2014the hanging temple on Hengshan, another sacred mountain, this one to Daoism.\u00a0\u00a0Begun in the Song dynasty (or earlier), the temple looks like it ought to have a frame around it, and be sold as a 3 D insert; it literally clings to the side of a mountain.\u00a0 It was built by monks who perched down from the top, put in beams, carved the caves, etc.\u00a0\u00a0It is a Daoist temple\u2014but at least one room helps explain why it (and not much else on Hengshan) survived the Cultural (and other) Revolution.\u00a0\u00a0One multicultural (my word, not the guide\u2019s) room has: the Buddha in the center, one of the Daoist immortals on one side, and Confucius himself on the other.\u00a0 Rumor has it that one tablet was added during the Cultural Revolution\u2014\u201cLong Live Chairman Mao.\u201d And that may well be why the Hanging Temple (truly magnificent, and fortunately, we do have an exclamation point in English!) exists today. Period.<\/p>\n