Jade Buddha Temple

Monday, January 12th, was my first day of Chinese language class. Boy, it's amazing how out of commission I am! The class is going to be very difficult. For one, the professor only speaks Chinese. Her English is very poor, which makes it impossible for her to describe the subtleties of the language. She only speaks to us in Chinese, though we are allowed to ask her questions. So much for intermediate! Furthermore, I don't know how to read simplified characters. I can only read traditional, which, to my dismay, is only used in Taiwan. It's an understatement to say there is a bit of a learning curve with this class.

After the painful 3 hours of Mandarin, I needed a little break. After a little bit of studying, a couple of the guys and I decided to head over for an afternoon sightseeing adventure to the Jade Buddha Temple. People legitimately worship at the temple. Additionally, the temple is still inhabited by monks!



The temple is beautiful. There is fabulously ornate statues and traditional Chinese art everywhere. In fact, they keep a large inventory of fine Chinese art to sell as souvenirs. It is how they keep the temple up and running... that and the 20 yuan admission fee. Totally worth it. In fact, they even had an artist on site creating great works of art. This woman is a master of Chinese finger painting. Using only her fingers, she was able to create AMAZING watercolors. I wish I had taken a picture of one of her paintings, but they were of Chinese landscapes. Apparently, she is one of only 5 people in all of China who is trained in this type of art.



Similar to Disney, the tour guides all dump you in the gift shop to purchase some of their fine art. However, we just took advantage of our guide's knowledge and picture taking abilities. He told us the story of Piu Xi, a baby dragon with a taste for precious metals. His appetite was voracious and he consumed all the gold he could find. A mischievous dragon, his father spanked him so many times, that his bum hole closed up... making his stomach fat! No lie! Chinese legend for you!! As a result, Piu Xi symbolizes abundance and prosperity. Go figure! I would just have guess it symbolized the importance of Pepto.


Everything is "lucky." The tour guide suggested we rub everything from Buddha's belly to Piu Xi's snout for good luck. We took all the good luck we could get.


Coolest piece? The sculpture carved from one piece of mahogany. It took 5 artists 5 years to complete, but it has the most spectacular detail in each of the 18 Buddhist monks' faces. It depicts many of the main symbols of traditional Chinese art, including pagodas, which mean step by step, progress, and dragons, which symbolize power, as well as the certain tree, whose meaning I have forgotten.



They had a super sweet coy pond. Did you know that coy fish can live up to 200 years.

The oldest living coy fish is 226 years!!

As part of the price of admission, guests are welcomed to a tea tutorial, in which the fuwuyuan (server) describes the different functions of various flavors of tea, while the guests sample them. This was incredibly interesting, not to mention the tea was phenomenal. My comrade, Alex, wrote down the different types of tea and we are going to go to the tea mall and get the teas that we most enjoyed. Though I didn't like tea upon coming here, China has opened my eyes to the benefits of tea drinking. Also, I've learned that the key to drinking tea is to just drink really great tea!



Finally, as souvenirs, I decided to purchase a Buddha cell phone charm. Cell phone charms are really popular in China. As all the kids in my study abroad program bought the same cheap cell phone, I needed something to distinguish my phone. I have become pretty decent at haggling. Just I am about to make the woman an offer for the cell phone charm, Mike warned me of the sign that alerts buyers to the monks' blessings. This isn't the Roman Catholic Church circa 1300... no discounts for blessings. I saved face, just this once!!



January 13, I had Calligraphy class. It is so cool!! I can't believe what amazing things I get to learn. My professor is the cutest old Chinese man. I want to put him in my pocket! Though a very talented artist, he doesn't speak any English, so my program director is our class translator. He has clearly discovered that I'm the only person in our Chinese class who understands any Chinese. He only lectures to me. It's very different than my education at UF, school of 53,000+. I'm really getting a small school feel these days. It's a very personalized approach.

You Sha, our program director, and I discussed the differences between Chinese art and Western art and how those differences are deeply rooted in each culture's values. Chinese art, which is based on rules and form, focuses on the beauty of structure and organization. Western art, especially modern, looks to do the opposite. Modern art defines itself by it's ability not to conform to traditional ideals. You Sha suggested that this can even be seen in how children are raised. In the Western cultures, many families nurture creativity. In China, children are taught to obey and are brought up in the strictest discipline with immense respect for traditions.

Not a very interesting day. Spent the day studying and catching up on school work.