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Published: April 19th 2006
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Me and Buddha
(More photos will follow when I copy them off my phone) After a trip to the market in Causeway Bay to check that off-the-peg suits are expensive - they are - I get back to find the outside door of my apartment block is closed (as usual) and locked (as usual) but the keypad entry system is dark and doesn’t beep in the usual irritating manner when I bash some buttons to gain entry. Nonplussed, I start trying all of the four keys I was given when I moved in - none open the door, which is just below my first-floor window. It looks pretty unscaleable though, so I head around the corner to repeat the key performance in the door at the bottom of the fire escape. The door itself is locked but it’s ajar so it can’t close properly, the Chinese approach to theft prevention. Nevertheless, I’m inside and climb the stairs to my front door.
Inspired by a passage in the guide book, I catch the MTR (underground railway) to Tung Chung, about an hour away out by the new Chek Lap Kok airport on Lantau Island. I’m going to see a Buddhist monastery with a statue of Buddha. Buddha stands (well, sits) 79 feet above his plinth, looking down 200 feet or more to the monastery on the hillside below, the largest such statue in the world. The visit to the statue is nearly overshadowed though, by the bus ride to get there. I’m joined at my seat on the bus by one of the monastery’s residents in his habit, complete with 7-Eleven shopping bags.
The locally-bodied Isuzu is a large vehicle (seating two and three either side of the aisle) but the road through the narrow pass, over the island to the south coast and then into the mountains to the monastery complex, would genuinely challenge a LandRover. The mountain pass has hills of 1 in 6 and bends just wide enough to take the vehicle’s wheels (the overhangs of the body swinging dizzily over the valley below) so the driver works the brakes and gearbox hard to hold the vehicle back, overspeed warnings blaring from the dashboard as the rev counter buries itself into the redline. Meanwhile taxis treat the narrow ribbon of tarmac as a racetrack, appearing two abreast and skidding into line as we squeeze onto the shoulder. My monk doesn’t even look perturbed - perhaps this is part of the meditation?
The statue itself houses a museum in the base showing how the construction was completed in 1990 using 202 cast bronze pieces, including a single piece for the face cast in China and transported to the monastery along the same mountain roads using a flatbed articulated truck and two cranes to move the load on sharp bends. Ironically, the tourist draw of the creation now justifies a new, wider road which is now under construction. The completed monument has a swastika on his chest, a symbol with a different meaning to Westerners but originally a Hindu symbol of peace, I believe. It’s a sad reflection that the whole site is dotted with ‘donation please’ boxes and the gift shops have had to install CCTV but the temple itself is open, welcoming and magnificent. The silhouette of the statue on the hill above dominates the whole scene; it’s a little eerie, like being alone and suddenly realising you’re under open, silent surveillance.
In the evening I relinquish the desire to integrate with the local cultures and unashamedly select a lasagne from an Italian restaurant - part of me is looking forward to being back at home and having the familiarity of able to eat without wondering what weird and wonderful cut of an animal I’m eating at any given moment. As I sit outside on the piazza I’m watching children play in the grid of fountain jets in the middle of the square, toying with a random pattern of vertical bursts which occasionally soak an unlucky junior runner. Despite the recent cooler weather (22°C today) it’s nice to be able to sit outside in the evening in a T-shirt without feeling chilly.
Back at home, it seems the local solution to the locked front door is to hammer on it and press all the doorbells in the block until someone comes downstairs. Sadly, nobody does and the racket is right below my window. For an encore, once the aggrieved have found the side door, they tramp up the stairs to the first elevator access (outside my door) and bang doors, talking noisily while they wait. Grr.
Today’s song is “Knockin on heaven’s door” by Guns’n’Roses’, for the sacrifice of the monks who give up their lives and possessions for a pure life in the monastery - I couldn’t do it.
(Edited to add: I've just put all of today's photos in yesterday's entry - sorry!)
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