The last few days of September and the first week of October were a holiday celebrating the Chinese National Day. Alyson, a friend who'd been staying at my place for a few days travelled down to Chengdu with me on Saturday, and Sunday we decided to finally visit the Baogang temple 18 kms outside of Chengdu, a trip neither of us ahad ever gotten around to doing, though it's on the way from Chengdu to Santai, and I've passed the turnoff a million times. Took various buses out to the temple area, and spent several hours wandering around. Quite a peaceful and beautiful area, nice to get out of the city madness for the afternoon. The name translates as Temple of Divine Light, and most of it was built in the 9th century, though some bits are said to be much older. The complex was quite large, and included various temples, prayer halls and gardens but my favourite part was probably the arhat hall, which held about 500 2 metre high clay statues of Buddhist saints and disciples. Each was different, and they were holding all sorts of articles ranging from prayer beads to weapons. Some were seated on animals of various kinds, and many of them had unusual expressions on their faces, others had long droopy eyebrows or funky hats.
The drawback to the trip was returning into the city during rush hour traffic when it was impossible to get on a bus, which were all crammed so tight with people that the back doors couldn't shut, and as a result, it was even more impossible to get a taxi. After an hour of walking, we did finally get lucky and caught a taxi that was just disgorging some passengers, before the crowd waiting for it caught up, and headed into town for dinner with Lisa, another friend living in Chengdu. Then headed back to the hostel, as I was leaving early the next morning for Kangding, and Alyson was staying in town for a day or two before returning home.
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