杭 HANGZHOU
Saturday 7 November 2015
Intention is all, is it not? It took an hour to print out a pdf. I still do not understand why. My good software engineer friend Hua Pin Shen, who knows everything there is to know about computers and software and electronic mysteries was there, but it still took an hour for the shop to print out thirty pages.
Hua Pin had kindly arranged for a meeting at the Hangzhou Arts and Crafts Museum, where he had a connection. A wonderful museum it is, with all the Chinese crafts displayed and offering lessons for the Chinese to try their hand today. Again, the 1908 China photos found an interested audience, and requests were made for more information. We were shown around the museum, and it was raining, and we were given, to take home, umbrellas of the most beautiful blue color. Is it not interesting how such a small piece of beauty can lock into the mind and be the thing so strongly remembered amidst a day chock full of those other, surely, more important business matters.
Then there was the most wonderful lunch. Hua Pin took us to a restaurant with an aquarium for a back wall and whose seafood were, therefore, absolutely fresh. The taste of that fresh fish. I had no idea that fish could taste so delicious. How very satisfying, that white fish with its delicate flavor. That and the blue umbrella and the conversation of conjectures over lunch, the cleanliness and elegance that attended the space and the good manners surrounding us.
I needed to visit the Jinjci Temple. The Gamble photos include what we believe was the Buddha then in the Main Hall, and we wondered what is the Buddha there today. By this time it was late, but as we drove by the temple, we saw the doors were open. We parked and walked up to the doors, but the doors were now closed. Quick, this way, and my friend pulled me from whence we had come to a driveway into the temple, just as the gates were sliding to close up the entry. Three feet away from the closure, and in-between we slipped. “I am here to see my friend,” Hua Pin called out to the guard, who ignored us. A few other stray lingerers were in the temple grounds, and the rich scent of incense reached us.
The temple is considered a small temple, but the stone-paved courtyard around which the smaller buildings stand is spacious enough. In front of and within the Main Hall bright yellow cushions decorated in shocking pink invite the devout to kneel and bow in comfort.
The Buddha in the Gamble photo of 1908 is pure nineteenth century, embroidered, elegant, an expression of Chinese art of that time. The Buddha in the Main Hall of the Jingci Temple today is pure post-revolution Chinese, towering, the smoothness of its broad curved surfaces enhancing the massive gleam of its gold. Clearly, even the monks embrace the aesthetic of massive.
And so we were able to see the Main Hall. I managed to take the needed photo. We even found a stray monk, who had little to say, but the visit did get done. Just by a hair. It worked out perfectly..
