Hao, the Michigan alum recommended that I visit the Lama Temple. After the Great Wall trek to Simatai, I was greatly satisfied. I had done whatever I wanted to in Beijing. I mean here was the greatest wall and longest and highest wall in the world...so narrow that I could drop off on either side into the valleys...so beautiful that I could've just stopped and stayed there...I didn't feel the need to see anything more.
But I went to the Yonghe temple or the Lama temple. I took a cab and had a nice "Lost in Translation" moment. I was very impressed with the temple. It's bang in the middle of busy city roads and yet so peaceful and quiet inside. There were two bronze lions, several versions of Buddha....very much like Buddha's Indian counterparts....the mudras, the postures...very similar. Devotees purchased incense sticks outside the temple and burned them in front. People were not required to remove shoes to go inside.
What took the cake was the Maitreya Buddha - an 18m tall statue that was carved out of a single piece of sandalwood. The statue takes its place in the Guiness Book of records for being the tallest statue made out of a single piece of wood. While Buddha is mostly depicted for His equanimity, his meditative postures and his laughter...this Buddha seemed super human or rather a super God...someone who ought to be feared. You can't help but gape at the statue in awe at its magnificence. I was thinking of Michelangelo's sculptures and this one...who is to say which is greater. I loved it.
**
The wedding was lovely. The bride and groom looked so lovely in their traditional and modern attires. We went in rickshaw to the lake. The groomsmen and the couple went on a boat to the wedding place. They took the lake that was near Bar street (where I ate bean curd stir fry the other night). Max and I continued in the rickshaw to the wedding place.
The wedding area glowed in red - bright, beautiful red. From the boat, George came on a horse and his bride in a red palanquin. He rode around the area with trumpeters making their sounds. The local tourists in the area went crazy. When he got back to the wedding site, the marriage party was the stop him and ask him for money. He had a bag of coins from the Mardigras and he threw it all around him -- tourists went crazier. It was fun.
Then BeiBei got out of her palanquin - veil and all. The groom removed the veil with the veil-stick. And then there was this MC who directed them in Chinese what to do, what to say. He teased them, made them bow to each others' parents, to each other. Then they had tea. Then they ate dumplings, which are supposed to taste "raw" -- so the crowd would ask, "Is it raw?" and they would respond, "Yes, raw" -- which also has a double meaning that they would deliver babies. Then they jumped on the fire (fake one) and George had to fire arrows to the earth, to the sky and at his bride.
Very nice!
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