After the visit to the Dafo at Leshan we drove by bus to Emei shan (Mount Emei) village where we planned to stay over night. Because it was too late to drive to far inside the mountains, we chose Baoguo Si (Baoguo monastery) as our accomodation.
In the morning the bell woke us at 4:35 am. Well, being a buddhist monk or nun must be hard! They get up that early every day! We wanted to see the sunrise over the mountain, but the aurora unfortunately appeared opposite the mountain and we couldn't see the sun rise at all. Too misty! But nevertheless it was worth getting up that early, enjoying the fresh air, hearing roosters and birds greeting the early morning and the monks processing for their morning prayer (reciting the "amitabha sutra" - "Ēmítuó jīng" and walking around in a spiritual procession. The sutra describes what one must do to be reborn in the so-called Western Pure Land).
Two hours on a narrow mountain road brought us to the place where we wanted to start our hike on Mount Emei. Well, Mount Emei is.... yes, again, ... UNESCO world heritage and one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains in China.
The hike itself was nice, but not what you'd usually expect from hiking. I'd rather call our activity "ultimate stair climbing" because the way up the hill was fully covered with concrete. Still we had fun watching wild apes sitting around in the trees and making friends with our Chinese fellow hikers. A group of Chinese engineering students asked us shyly whether we really were Russian - they had heard this rumour going around the other Chinese hikers :-). We also got to know two nice Chinese students of German language and decided to walk together for some time. We met again some of the Chinese we had seen at Leshan the day before and our photo is definitely on more than ten Chinese cameras now.
Up on the mountain peak a surprise awaited us. No rain or bad view as other travellers had warned us we would most probably encounter. Beaming sunlight and a wonderful landscape! A golden statue of elephants with a buddha on it - we had reached the golden peak! I have no words to describe the unique landscape with the buddha clouds (as a certain form of clouds is called there). 美妙! Just have a look at the photos to have an impression yourself!
The Sunday we spent back in Chengdu. Chengdu has a big Mao statue in the city centre and a lively tea house atmosphere. Mao was once highly esteemed by the Chinese, but with e.g. the cultural revolution where a lot of Chinese cultural heritage was destroyed and other less brilliant ideas he step by step destroyeed this admiration.If you want to know more about chairman Mao I can recommend the German webpage: http://www.planet-wissen.de/pw/Artikel,,,,,,,077B5724A05F132FE0440003BA5E08D7,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.html
We visited much more before our plane took us back to Beijing (e.g. Manjushri monastery, a very active religious place with a lake full of turtles and a nice vegetarian restaurant), but I shall finish here with my blog entry of this 4-day-trip....
Keine Kommentare:
Kommentar veröffentlichen