After visiting the Wang Family Compound, we reconnected with our driver and head back to Pingyao for our last night in the ancient city and our stay at the TianYuanKui Guesthouse. On the way back, we made a quick stop at the Shuanglin Temple....very famous. Here's some info from the internet:
"Located in the Qiaotou Village about six kilometers (four miles) to Pingyao, the Shuanglin Temple is reputed to be the 'ancient painted sculptures museum'. The temple houses more than 2,000 colorful sculptures reflecting the exquisite skills of the artisans of the Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties. The Shuanglin Temple was included in the World Heritage List by UNESCO as an important cultural site of Ping Yao City in 1997.
Originally, the Shuanglin Temple was called the Zhongdu Temple but it was renamed Shuanglin during the Song Dynasty (960-1127). In Chinese, Shuang means two or double, and Lin, forest. The temple got its name from a Buddhist story. According to the Buddhist sutra, Sakyamuni who was the founder of Buddhism, entered nirvana under two trees; Hence, its name Shuanglin.
Reconstructed in 571, the Shuanglin Temple has a history of about 1,400 years. The temple consists of ten large and small halls, and the sutra chanting hall and the monks' rooms. The ten halls include the Heavenly Kings' Hall, the Arhats' Hall, the Mahavira Hall (Da Xiong Bao Dian), and the One-Thousand Buddha Hall, the Sakyamuni Hall, the Bodhisattva Hall, the Ti-tsang Bodhisattva Hall, the Guan Yu's Hall and two other halls. Guan Yu was a famous general of Shu during the Period of Three Kingdoms. Later, he would be worshipped as a god."
A history of about 1,400 years? Wow! America's history? Well, it's just a baby!
Some of the famous clay statues.
Incredible. The time it took to do this.....
It's hard....but if you stop to think about just how very old these things are....well, it's just hard sometimes for me to imagine that I have viewed and touched so many things that folks saw and touched hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Sometimes I have to remind myself to stand still, be quiet...and imagine. Breathe in the history.
Some Chinese folks lighting the really BIG incense sticks from the special flames.
More roof adornments...at the Shaunglin Temple. They really are so beautiful and so intact! You know...China is learning more and more about the best way to protect their cultural relics. Things are getting stricter and stricter (as they should) in order to protect cultural history here. For now, however, you can still walk in places and touch things that in the U.S. would be heavily partitioned off and available only for limited views. So come to China NOW, folks. Seriously.
ha ha ha Seven looks like she's sad at having to leave the Temple but she's really just adjusting her sunglasses. We're on top of the very old wall surrounding this famous Temple and we're about to reconnect with our driver and return to our Guesthouse in Pingyao....but not before....
.....taking a photo of the lady (uh...some sort of Buddha god, I guess) with the many, many arms! :) Mothers everywhere can only wish for this many hands! ha ha
We return to our Guesthouse and headed back to the Yun Jin Cheng restaurant for dinner because, you know, why mess with good food! The small bowl is full of hand-shaved noodles (a Shanxi province specialty and so good) topped by a delicious spicy meat sauce! I'm telling you, folks, it was DEE-licious!
Fried chicken bits (see the chopsticks) and to the far right, green beans, and the I barely remembered to take a photo of the great root dish with the smiley face (made out of raisins) before we ate too much! ha The inside was a kind of bean paste....very tasty and sweet.
After dinner we returned to the Guesthouse and sat at a table in the lobby/restaurant and played cards. Imagine my surprise when two Chinese guys approached us with a movie camera and microphone and requested an interview with CCTV (the national tv network here). After a few "takes" they were finally satisfied with my rhetoric (which they coached me on saying) about how happy I was to be celebrating Chinese New Year holidays in the ancient city of Pingyao and how beautiful all the cultural sights were. :) They then filmed Seven translating my words.....which was a lot longer than what I said took. ha I never got to see it on the news as we left the next night to fly back to Beijing (when it was broadcast). Probably a good thing. ha
We enjoyed many rousing rounds of "Who's the Best," which is a Chinese card game that I am totally wild about now! ha And in China...you don't just lay your cards down...you SLAM them down as you play! ha Let me tell ya....everyone knew there was a foreigner in that lobby that night as each time me and my partner (Seven) won I would yell out what LOSERS Joe and Jeanette were! ha ha I also performed small "victory" dances in my seat! ha ha There is absolutely no greater joy than being able to lose all inhibitions when you are living in/visiting a place where you know you know no one and have nothing to lose! ha Not that I have any trouble acting totally crazy and embarassing myself! ha
This is a bit of Seven and Joe's room at the TianYuanKui Guesthouse.
More of Seven and Joe's room (I have pics of my room but they're on film and I need to get it transferred to CD so I can upload them later) and you can see the beautiful papercuts on their windows as well as their jeans hanging on the pegs! ha In China, in the winter, folks don't just wear jeans....they wear thin long johns underneath and THEN a thicker pair of wool long johns and THEN their jeans! ha Folks here always GASP when I show them that I am merely wearing one pair of jeans (by showing them my bare ankle/shins) without 2 layers underneath! ha So at night, especially when traveling, they merely take off their jeans and then they're ready for bed....in their double long-john layers. I, on the other hand, change into my "cotton sleep pants" and tye-dyed T-shirt! ha
So, if you've been a bit bored with all these Pingyao pics then you should know that there's one more Pingyao entry to come! ha On the next morning, when we left by hired driver, we visited the Qiao Family Compound on our way to Taiyuan in Shanxi Province to fly home! So more to come....... LL, T.
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