Chengde & Lama Temples

After a few days in Beijing we thought it would be nice to visit another part of China. Unfortunatley all tickets to X'ian were sold out, due to a Qingming, a public holiday of sweeping family tombs. We bought tickets to Chengde, a small town north of Beijing to see a temple built in 1755 and has the largest wooden Buddha scultpure in the world. So on the train we went...

The largest wooden Buddha in the world!

Beijing railway station is really beautiful - a great amalgamation of typical British-style railway station with traditional Chinese architecture. We saw a train for Pyongyang - pretty interesting. Our train was crowded and we were surprised there were no chickens on board, it was full of sacks, bags and presents with people compressed into every available space! We were the only foreingers and everyone was interested in us, but no-one knew what or where South Africa was, despite illustrations of soccer, world maps and even our flag.

We arrived, found a hotel and walked around to get some grub. For dinner we tried to find a restaurant with pictures - no such luck, just plain white pages with chinese writing and some prices. We eventually found a dingy little cafe with a few people smoking inside. We decided, why not? and walked in. Zero English, and we felt the need to speak Korean. I pointed to some other guys table and asked for venison dumpling (a freind wrote it down in Chinese - they are apparently famous here). No dumplings, but we got a meal, and it had zero resemblance of what I pointed to...

It was fantastic!! We got a hot pot of meat in a delicious broth with tomatoes. No idea what animal it was, but we assumed it was venison....Was a little weary at first, but it was great. I drew a bowl of rice and a spoon and got that too. Great success!

Nom, nom, nom let's hope it's nothing dodgy!

The next day we went to 'The Temple of Universal Peace' or 'Puning Temple'. It was really interesting as it's a replica of the Samyai Monestary in Tibet. The style was very different, and to top things off, tons of people were praying and burning insence for Qingming. People would literally buy two handfulls of insence and burn it. The whole temple area was filled with smoke, and was quite beautiful actually.

The crowds lighting their insence infront of the alter inside this Tibetan style temple.

Ladies praying infront of the temple, burning insence and bowing.

The temples were very impressive, with fine details in the paintings. Huge brass bells surrounded the temple, and people would slowly spin them as they walked past chanting. The whole area was alive with people on their spiritual quest. Along the last temple was a chain filled with locks. Apparently lovers lock their names engraved on the lock - so their love will be eternal. Cute.

Locks locking lovers' love.

The temple was bustling and a whole group of Lamas/Monks came out and chanted while walking in a ceremonious patterns. They had little bells and symbols which made the atmosphere even more calm and enchanting. I was stupid and thought there would be lamas, as in the animal. Can you imagine lamas chilling there, how cool would that be?! Rob just laughed at me.

Monks chanting infront of the main temple.

After the temple we saw tons of people playing outside. It was a gorgeous day and we had a beer in the park. We checked our train tickets and saw they were book for Thursday - we aren't even going to be in China on Thursday! So in a panic we amazingly managed to change the tickets. Rob cleverly printed some useful words - one of them was 'wrong' and with body language we change the seat. The trip back wasn't bad at all - watched Bill Hicks and were stuffed from the huge meal we accidentally ordered (we wanted 2 beers and 1 plate of food. They got it mixed up). A little kid popped a squat in the middle of the aisle and peeed three times. The loo was a stone's throw away...guess potty training isn't popular in China! Oh well...interesting experience, a little rushed, but nice to see another part of China, especially one that resembles the Lama Temples in Tibet.