Xiamen City, Orientation Week (2)

(continued from the preceding blog entry)

On a somewhat clear day, you can see the hills that dot the Xiamen skyline. All, it seems, have a monastery atop them:

Tianzhuyan Temple

I walked to this monastery a few miles from the hotel. At the entrance and attractive temples I found locals also out for a pleasant weekend stroll:

 Some also offer prayers at the various shrines, some benevolent looking and some quite fierce:

The bonsai dotting the courtyard walls were lovely, though surprisingly the crowds stuck to the temples and largely ignored the landscaping:

I was more interested in the "backcountry"-- trails leading from behind the temples and monks housing quarters to the hilltop. The monks went about their work and prayers, doing their best to ignore the Laowai intruder:

Many happy well-fed cats (that's probably redundant?) hung out near the monks' quarters, including CatBuddha:

And CatPeekaboo:

An entrance to the many paths of the Buddha began as a smooth, wide, well-developed walkway:

And soon narrowed to several forking paths:

Some leading through low, dark spaces:

And grottos full of little shrine figures:

Everywhere there were reminders of harmony with nature and the propensity for time to wear away all things:

This looked very much like a body bag, cached away off an obscure side trail in among some rocks. I did not investigate further:

Gulang Yu

Gulang Yu is "Walking Island," a smaller nearby island where cars were traditionally banned. Even today, only small electric tourist wagons operate. White dolphins are the totem animal, deriving from a legend that they once saved a child from drowning. The dolphins are now practically extinct though there are efforts to save them:

Gulang Yu was long controlled by colonial powers including Japan, England, and Germany. [Given the history of colonial efforts to subjugate China over the past 200 years, China's defensive posture in foreign policy is understandable!] This foreign occupation led to a strange mix of architecture, from very European (classical):

To European-Asian hybrid forms:

I'll suspend judgment about the Japanese compound and say that they did create a lovely Zen garden and walkway. Embedded in the walkway are contemplative geometric forms:

As a centerpiece, the garden has a naturally-sculpted limestone "dragon:"

Despite the ever-present new construction and sense of change, much of Chinese tradition remains, as I was reminded by this fishing boat we passed on our short trip back to the main island: