December 10, 2005

This afternoon my University colleagues, Xu Wiezen, Jay Zhang and Dr Zho, took us for a walk in the hills around Baochu Pagoda. This pagoda was first built in the 1400’s but has been rebuilt several times. There are, however, some remnants of the earlier work. Several grottos are found in a cliffside but the Buddha images were mostly removed by the youth who were mobilized during the sixties to try to eradicate everything that was old to make way for a new society. The pagoda is on a hill top that overlooks West Lake to the East and the city to the west. It is a brick structure about 150 feet high and 20-25 feet through at the base. Its slim lines suggests to some a graceful young woman.

Steps have been carved in the volcanic rock in the area to provide paths over and between the rocks. Flat surfaces were prepared on some rock faces and the inscriptions date back to the Song Dynasty 1000 thousand years ago. It was a cloudy hazy day and the paved trail along the top of the ridge wound through a beautiful woodland. There were extensive plantings of cultivated flowers along the trail ­ iris and similar plants ­ but they are not blooming now. Beyond the cultivated plants were woodland plants that will no doubt be a riot of color in the Spring.

We were walking slowly along when we began hearing birds singing. Rounding a bend we found a couple of men with their caged birds. We really enjoyed hearing them sing. A little farther along we came to a Taoist Temple. Except that the gods were not Buddha the appointments ­ candelabra and censors ­ were similar. There were at least 3 rooms where images were set up for worship. Taoism (pronounced Daoism) is essentially a pantheistic religion originating about 500 B.C. It is the source of the Ying/Yang belief. This says things like there can be no love without hate and no female without male. This temple was a fairly large complex painted a yellow- orange color. It is built into the hillside near the top of the hill and surrounded by trees. Since we came upon it along the hilltop trail we did not realize how large it is until we left and followed the trail and steps down the hill in front of it. Then when we looked back we could see most of it through the trees.

Our friends then took us to a vegetarian restaurant for dinner. The variety of meat simulations was astonishing ­ all the way from shrimp to steak. It was all very flavorful and our hosts who had never been to this restaurant seemed to enjoy it as well. During the course of the meal Darleen inquired about Chinese pictographs, characters. We had heard that a pictograph for ship included elements that represent 8 people ­ suggestive of Noah and his family. After some thought and discussion it was concluded that there was such a thing. We asked them to write this pictograph for us so that we could ask some other Chinese its meaning. We will see if this holds up.

And that concluded another interesting day.