golden buddha

But Evelyn, what have you been doing on the weekends?

My first weekend in Taichung, I decided to go see the statue of the Laughing Buddha at Paochueh Temple. The fifteen meter high enormous golden statue of the Buddha.

I looked on the map and tried to figure out where it was. I was pretty sure that I could identify which intersection it was at, and so I counted the streets and intersections that I needed to cross to get there, and started out. The problem, though, as I have mentioned before, is that the streets and the maps don’t always match up precisely. So I had to keep stopping and checking back and forth from my Chinese map to my Chinese/English map to my English map to try to figure out where I was. At one point, I couldn’t tell from the layout on the English maps where I was, so I was trying to use the Chinese one by matching up the characters on the street sign to the characters on the map. I knew about where the street should be, but I couldn’t identify it. After a few minutes, I turned the map 180 degrees and found it.

So then I knew that I was walking in the right direction. I thought I had 3 more blocks to go, but as I was walking, I saw to my right this huge ornate set of buildings with big walls and Buddhist symbols and a bell tower and I thought, hey, there can’t be 2 of these compounds within 3 blocks of each other, so I went over and sure enough, found the temple.

I felt a little out of place wandering in the area around the entrance. It wasn’t clear to me where I should or could go. There was a big dirt area and a pile of construction materials, and a very old looking sign pointing in just sort of pointing around. I started wandering over towards a big open area, behind one of the buildings on the edge of the big dirt area. This was where the statue ended up being. However, on my initial approach, I was denied access to the statue. Instead of being able to walk up to the statue, take a few pictures, and leave, I was accosted by two very nice tiny Buddhist women.

The women stopped me and talked to me very informatively for a while in Chinese. They were clearly explaining something. I could tell that it was something good, because they were smiling and nodding a lot. However, as I don’t speak Chinese, I had to simply nod back and try to go around them. Then they nodded and waved some more, and helpfully showed me out of the temple compound area, and around the block and down the street and up an alley and into a house. I thought at first that maybe there was some sort of admission fee that I had to pay, and they were taking my to the box office, but then when we kept walking and went into a sort of house I decided that I was wrong. (unlikely that I would have to pay a fee at a Buddhist temple anyway)

All the Buddhists were out and about that day. They were lining the streets and smiling and waving and nodding like mad. The ladies walked me right through them, and I felt like I was on some sort of victory walk. I also felt weird, because I had absolutely no idea what was going on. I felt very safe (I believe that it is unlikely that I would be kidnapped by a gang of tiny Buddhists) but I also felt completely lost. I adopted the always-easy plan of smiling and nodding and waving at everyone.

At this house (which, it turns out, was being used as more of a temple) they found someone who could speak some English, and she explained to me that that day was an extremely auspicious day on the Buddhist calendar, and that I was very lucky to be there that day. Then they had me write my name down on a piece of paper, and told me to wait. Then they gave me a few cups of water because I looked like a sweat hog, which happens whenever I am outside for 10 minutes in this country. (NO one else sweats, I swear. You can tell a foreigner from a mile away from the sweat marks.) Some people went in and out, a few more people came in and after a while the lady who spoke English motioned for me to follow her upstairs. I went up with a young couple and a grandmother who had her 5 year old granddaughter with her. At the top of the stairs we went into a room with a shrine.

The shrine was cool. On the wall was a large picture of the Laughing Buddha. In front of the picture was a medium sized table covered with a red and gold cloth. There were some incense sticks going, and the table was multi level and had candles and bowls of apples and mangos and little cakes. There were several kneeling stands in front of the shrine. I stood in the corner of the room, surrounded by tiny Buddhists, the couple, and the grandmother and granddaughter. A few more people trickled in. A nice Buddhist lady kept handing me tissues because I was still so obviously sweaty. After what felt like forever but what was probably only about 20 minutes or so, the holy man came in. The lady who spoke English explained that he was the great teacher of the temple. He went through a ceremony with some words and motions, then he had the young men in the room come up and kneel at the stands. There were about 7 high school age-ish guys in high school type clothing there. They went up and went through the motions dictated by the teacher, repeating words and kneeling and so on. Then the teacher said their names and burned a piece of paper with their names on it. The teacher took it pretty seriously, but the kids seemed extremely casual about it. Then the boys left and the Buddhists had me and the little granddaughter go up and do the same thing. It was kind of funny to me, but I figured, hey I am in Taiwan to experience a new culture. And really, the whole process was a really neat thing to see. And I guess now I am under the protection of the Laughing Buddha, which it totally the Buddha that I would have picked anyway, had I been given a choice.

The grandmother kept commenting on how white my skin was. White skin is big here. There are all sorts of skin whitening products out here, some safe; some, I think, not so safe.

As I was leaving I asked the English speaking lady if I could go back to the original site and take a picture of the statue. She said that would be ok.

So, finally, after an hour or two, I get back to my original plan of seeing the statue. It was huge. You start walking around the temple, and the first part you see is this huge golden toe twinkling at you from around the corner of the temple. Just sneaking around at you, daring you to believe that it exists. Then you go a little further, and you see some enormous jolly eyes looking at you, peeking over the edge of the roof. Then you can’t stand it any longer and you rush around the temple to see the gigantic Buddha himself. And he just sits and is big and fat and happy at you. And you are faced with the biggest happiest goldenest fat thing you have ever seen, and you have to sit down and bask in the big golden happiness. Then you get too hot because of the big golden happy sun beating down on you and so you go to 7-11 and get something cold and wet and lemony.

So that was my first weekend in Taichung.

I bet the Buddhists would have been psyched to know that I’m vegan.