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Chengde: My Kingdom for a Temple
Chengde is the old summer retreat for the Qing Emperors. Up in the hills 200km north-east of Beijing, it is noticeably cooler than the capital and was an excellent base for hunting forays. It was also an excellent location for international conferences amongst the finely-suited politicians of China’s past.
Royal Gardens The city was therefore built to impress; it was designed as an 18th century equivalent of a nuclear deterrent. The Mongolian chieftains, Tibetan commanders and Uighur warlords would be invited along, shown the collection of impressively-scaled temples and fine palaces, before being allowed to stroll around what is still the world’s largest enclosed imperial gardens. Here they would allow you to contemplate the power on show, and extrapolate for yourself the likely ability of the Qing to knock you, and your little upstart army, senseless.
“Ah well you see, Emperor, we’ve reconsidered our threat...”
These days the gardens remain a fine collection of pagodas, pavilions, towers and palace buildings set amongst lakes, meadows and rolling hills. It is a lovely place to enjoy a summer stroll, whether you are contemplating staging a coup or otherwise.
The Eight Outlying Temples
Surrounding the 6 square kilometres of enclosed park are the 8 outlying temples, built to awe the spiritual side of any visiting guests.
We made a beeline for Puning temple. The temple has one standout feature - the incredible Guanyin Buddhist statue, which is the tallest of its kind in the world. Five types of wood, 22m tall, 42 arms, 250 years old. The statue is certainly a beautiful piece of over-sized craftsmanship. Mind you, could’ve done with a dust.
However, masterpiece aside, Puning temple reveals itself as the ultimate in Buddhist theme parks. I’ve already mentioned in a
previous blog how many temples in China come across as entirely non-spiritual religious fun fairs. Puning temple is the epitome of that.
Firstly the entrance fee, at 80RMB, is not far off a day at Alton Towers. It’s a captive market and they are fully aware that any fair-minded tourist is not going to make his or her way to Chengde, arrive at the temple only to decide that actually it’s a little dear and promptly pop on the next 4-hour bus back to Beijing.
Once inside there is an assortment of Buddhist-themed activities. Have your photo
taken while you spin a prayer wheel. Play the classic games such as throw the coin in the hole - extra points if you hit the bell. Pay 10kuai for a spot of praying. Have your spiritual fortune read.
There is even the Buddhist equivalent of Pass the Pigs. First you have to select a stick (each with its own meaning) from a collection sticking out of a tub. Then a monk passes you two irregularly shaped wooden blocks. You clasp them in your paws, shake them around, make a wish and throw them down. Depending on their orientation, and the stick you chose, the monk will select the relevant pink slip from a selection in the adjacent cabinet. Upon the pink slip something is written, this is presumably a prayer, or a prophecy or a tip for the 3:45 at Thirsk.
As you leave the temple you are directed through kitsch alley, covered floor to roof in flags and colour. There is a woman spinning plates and a man in two-headed costume doing a (and it must be said, impressive) one-man impression of two blokes having a fight. And, naturally, you can buy cheap chopsticks, paper fans
that don’t shut properly, and tat enough to make Great Yarmouth look like the high streets of Milan.
Of course, I don’t mean to trivialise the faith, or its practices but I can’t but feel this isn’t how it should be: a long procession of tourists in matching hats, following their tour guide through a join-the-dots pageant. There’s no faith here, no heart, just tourist zombies, of which I inescapably became one. But in this there is an unintentional yet powerful sense of irony. Because the temple wasn’t actually ever really built for spiritual reasons. It was designed primarily as a nationalistic, diplomatic show of pride. It remains just that.
The next of the outlying temples we decided to visit was the Putuozongcheng temple - the scaled down version of Lhasa’s Portala Palace. It also had a strange atmosphere to it, but different to the Puning temple. It felt a little like a movie set. Everything was solid, but nothing was quite real. The windows aren’t actually windows, the stories are scaled down, there are buildings with no interiors. But the temple also kept an air of mystery, a sense that it was somewhere that had seen life
and love and maybe even a dash of spiritual activity, but now lay dormant except for the trickle of visitors inspecting the peeling plaster and the cobwebs.
The City Itself Chengde sits proudly on its World Heritage status; it has the impressive temples and the rolling hills and the imperial gardens. But this is no wuss of a city. It still means business. Go for a stroll of a Saturday night and you’ll still find a building site, overlooked by neon-lighted tower blocks, busy at work. Diggers chomping on concrete while pedestrians, fresh from the next door Baozi restaurant, bustle past on their way to investigate the traditional music and procession - that can just about be heard above the horns of passing trucks and taxis - occurring on the far side of the street.
A World Away The bus ride home felt more like a game of pin the tail on the donkey at little Jimmy’s birthday party than mere transportation. First we were put on one bus, before being taken of and put on another bus. This drove down the road for 10 minutes, before turning around and returning to the start point. We
were then taken off that bus, and put onto a third bus, which was then driven in a manner that would’ve made little Jimmy sick with dizziness. However I only really mention the bus because arriving back in Beijing at the end of it rather blew my mind.
During the bus ride home I was utterly engrossed in reading “The Life of Pi”, a thoroughly captivating read concerning a boy trying to survive as a castaway on the pacific ocean with nothing but a lifeboat and a 450-pound tiger to help him through. After two hours of being alone in the middle of the ocean, delirious with hunger and dehydration, praying for rescue whilst desperately clinging to life, I was suddenly prodded and told we’d arrived. Stepping out into the heat, the noise and the frantic activity of Beijing had never felt so foreign. So alien. So unnatural. So far from home. Where was my lifeboat now?
It’s amazing what a good book can do. And Beijing for that matter...
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