Around Xi'an

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Our visit to the Muslim quarter was part bazaar and part religious excursion. The market area leading up to the had much of the typical tourist ware and knock-off designs--watches, purses, North Face, Mont Blanc, etc. The grounds of the mosque looked much like other temples and monasteries we had visited except the gateway arches were in Arabic instead of Chinese. We found the Large Wild Goose Pagoda also situated on manicured grounds, but almost everything is new, refurbished, or redone. The monks are delighted with the attention and the newly restored grounds. Although the restoration is done with traditional tools and methods, it seems that much of the old and very old in China is being lost in a rush to modernization. Tear down the old and build something new in its place that looks just like the old one.
One of the most popular legends about the naming of the Large Wild Pagoda states that a group of Buddhist monks was traveling from India to China to build a monastery. They were wandering and starving when a flock of geese flew overhead, and the lead goose fell to the ground and died. As the monks were vegetarians, they chose to bury the goose and build the temple on the gravesite of the goose. They believed the lead goose was an incarnation of the Buddha who led them to the site to build the temple.

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