In Summer 2004 I made a journey to China, with two of my Buddhist teachers, Viveka and Shantinayaka, and our sangha friends Lisa and Lin. We began our trip in Beijing, then headed way out west to the area bordering Inner Mongolia and Tibet. This area on the Silk Road has a long history of fusion of the cultures of China, Tibet, and Mongolia, and you can see it in the architecture, art and design. I have always been fascinated with The Silk Road, with vagabond tent structures, with the glow of butter lamps, with Tibetan stupas, with The Great Wall, with ancient cave paintings, with nature poetry, with steaming bowls of noodles, and with Beijing backstreets, so I was in my element.
We began our excursion in Beijing, a city undergoing massive construction projects in preparation for the Olympics. Lots of traditional neighborhoods were being razed to put up huge glass hotels and condos. But we were lucky enough to find a new guesthouse in a hutong, an old backstreet neighborhood. Our narrow street was full of little shops selling fruit and pastries by day, and by night the whole block smelled like Chinese 5-spice from the small roadside restaurants. Families strolled the cool evening streets, friends met for drinks, kids ran underfoot, bicyclists pedaled past. There are some beautiful public gardens in Beijing, and people form clubs that meet every morning, to do tai chi, ballroom dancing, or play hacky sack. Lots of folks just park to play mah jong and other board games.
The Great Wall is a few hour's away, so Shantinayaka and I went to explore it one day. It is sweltering hot, with no shade, crumbling steps that go up and down endlessly for miles. It is cool inside the tower structures, but they seem to be used as public toilets, and so it is unbearable to stay in their dark shade for long. It was a long trek!
From Beijing we journeyed on to Gansu Province, and visited the Buddhist grottoes of Bingling Si. They are isolated by a reservoir, so you need to reach the caves by boat. The cavefront is an enormous Shakyamuni Buddha carved into the cliffside, with elaborate Buddhas and Bodhisattvas carved and painted within the caves.
I am fascinated with how Buddhist art evolved from early representation in India of only The Buddha's footprint , into three-dimensional human representations influenced along the Silk Road by Ancient Greek sculptors under the reign of Alexander the Great, by the craftsmanship of Hindu carvers, and by classical Chinese painters.
We continued traveling westward to Lanzhou, an area where there are a lot of Chinese Moslems. The people here tend to eat more noodles than rice. I was in Noodle Heaven!
Xiahe is a Tibetan monastery town, where we stayed for a while with other Buddhist pilgrims. This area was peaceful when we visited, and Buddhism seemed to be practiced openly. Sadly, in the last week (as of March 16, 2008) this area has been the scene of violent clashes between the Tibetan Buddhists community, supporting the monks protesting in Lhasa, and the Chinese military.
I loved the rich colors and the intricate designs in the Buddhist temples and monasteries.
While in Lanzhou we wanted to visit some more Buddhist caves, a few hours drive away. The local drivers were reluctant, as the weather was becoming rainy, but we finally managed to hire a van and a driver and spent the day visiting these gorgeus caves, which had not only Buddhist carvings but also tremendous stalagmites and stalactites. To get into one chamber we had to slide down a muddy wall on our bottoms!
At the end of the day it started raining, and driving away from the caves our van got stuck in the mud. As a team, we tugged our vehicle through the soggy ground, pulling on the seat belts! This happened several times, and we finally got out onto the road, only to have the van die completely, leaving us stranded on the road late into the afternoon/early evening, until someone helped us and drove us back. As we awaited our rescue, we watched the local people riding home through the fields at the end of their day, on horseback and on motorcycle. I bought fresh honey from a family of beekeepers camped across the road. All over China beekeepers follow the flowers, moving their wooden boxes of bees, along with their fierce guard dogs.
One day our driver took us up to a little-known mountain covered with Buddhist stupas. We would have never found it by ourselves, but he knew the local roads and foot trails. We were above 10,000 feet in elevation there.
After that, one of our drivers told us about a week-long traditional festival, where Mongolians and Tibetans come from all over and compete in gymnastics and horse riding competition. Viveka and I were eager to check it out, so we headed for the hills. It was the last day of the festival, though, so we didn't see much. People were packing up and eager to get home. But we did meet the horse riding champion, with his winning red ribbon. And we were invited into a traditional Tibetan yurt and served yak yogurt, which was fresh and delicious. And some Mongolians invited us into their beautiful tents, which were still laid out for a feast. Even though it was 11 in the morning there was some heavy drinking going on, and we had to graciously untangle ourselves from one spread, where we were being toasted and serenaded and invited to drink some very lethal homebrew.
As we drove to and from his festival we saw many tents and yurts all over the grasslands. Families come together this way in the summers for a week-long "picnic", a big reunion out in the hills where the air is fresh and cool.
From Gansu we continued on to Qinghai, Bird Lake. It was an unusual place. A magnificent spot that the Chinese officials have designated a tourist destination. There are hotels and restaurants and enormous parking areas for buses. But no tourists. Just lots of staff, sitting on the curb, awaiting the mobs. We met an energetic young monk there who was teaching himself English with a book, and was eager to chat with us. He brought us up to his monastery on the hill, overlooking the lake and all the new development. They made us very welcome. Monks appeared out of nowhere carrying sofas for us to sit on. The young monks scurried around chopping vegetables, pouring our tea.
We finished our journey flying back to Beijing, then took a day's bus journey to Wu Tai Shan, Five-Terrace Mountain, for our own Buddhist retreat.
These are the mountains of Manjushri, the Bodhisattva of Wisdom. In the valley there is a monastic village, which draws lots of Chinese tourists and Buddhist pilgrims. Up the mountain a ways was the compound we rented for our retreat together. It was a very basic, traditional stone structure, built around a courtyard. We shopped in the village and cooked for ourselves. There was a crystal clear stream where we drew our water for cooking, drinking, and bathing. We took long hikes up into the mountains. We set up a simple shrine room and meditated and did pujas. We even made our own butter lamps for the altar. Some young Tibetan nuns lived nearby, and they came over one day to show us how to cook noodle soup. Hen hao chi! (delicious!)
These are the mountains behind our compound. The man with the basket is drying the mushrooms he gathered. Mountain hermits do still live in these mountains, and on our walk one day we met an old monk who took us into the cave where he meditates. These mountains have some practice energy. I felt like I was drawn into a mythical realm.
"when hermits hide from society
most retire to the hills
where green vines veil the slopes
and jade streams echo unbroken
where happiness reigns
and contentment lasts
where pure white lotus minds
aren't stained by the muddy world."
- the collected songs of cold mountain