The cloister Huihua or also Song Zanlin is a little bit away from Zhongdian in the mountains. It was build in the Ming dynasty (roughly 300yrs ago, as we all know) and destroyed during the cultural revolution. Since a couple of years the rebuild is ongoing, financed by entrance fees, donations and the chinese government. Only some of the living houses of the monks are still original.
Currently 800 monks are living in the cloister, in former times it was more than 3.000 and it's one of the 13 biggest lama monastery in the world. Well, there is a difference between Buddhists and Buddhists. Some of them are having Lamas (no, not the animal but a spiritual leader), one of the most known of them is the Dalai Lama. He is by the way the big boss of all lama or Tibetan Buddhists. Ok so far? As the first step on the carrier ladder they have to study for several years hard and some when they get a monk. With a lot of large middednes, patience and more study you've got a small chance to get Lama. But there are also different Lamas. The Dalai Lama is always the re-incarnation of his pre-decessors. So you can't study Dalai Lama, you have to be (re-)born or it ;-) And then there are also the Buddhas. From one of them we got red cord for our healths.
The architecture of the temple looks very similar to the "headquarter" in Lhasa. A big wall around the area, inside there are the living houses of the monks and at the uppermost point of the area some temples. We guess it's a quite nice view from there, but it's still raining.....
There are also nuns in the Buddhist temples, but we couldn't find them, seems to be a man only monastery. But they are taking care of the women, as you can see on the sign.
In the mountain areas it's tradition for buddhists not to bury the deceased but to have a air funeral. For this the dead is sliced into 180 handy pieces by an specialist and these pieces are laid into the mountains. After the birds and other animals finished their job the bones are collected and stored at home. Sounds cruel in our ears, doesn't it?
Back in Zhongdian a tour through the ancient town was planned. This time Stephan felt really flabby with the cold so a very easy solution was found: put Stephan in a tea house, order a hot ginger tea and Regina and Anna were doing sight seeing and shopping.
There are a lot of fabric producers in the town. If the sold fabrics are really hand made, well definitely not all of them.
Bicycles played a big role in China since a long time. Eating is also a very important thing in China. No wonder that you see a lot of modified bikes as mobile kitchens or market booth.
Hunting seems to be a pretty nice thing in the forests around Zhongdian but it's nearly impossible to get a hunting license or a riffle. Only the official government hunters are allowed. But there is still the traditional way of hunting with the cross bow. And hey, who forbid a cross bow? Beijing is still far far away.....
Zhong Dian wouldn't be a important city if there isn't at leas one"biggest of" blabla. And we found it, the worlds biggest prayer mill. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.
Partly the old town is also a new town but build in the old stile. No bad idea in our eyes. Why building concrete buildings if wood is that nice.
Between all the scarfs, fabrics, Yak tails, outdoor clothing, back packs, mushrooms you find from time to time also an chairman Mao. Seems to be China here.
There is no lock of interesting people and characters.
Some people are also spinning, we're wondering if this is the reason behind the red honey?
Now it's time to get back to Stephan and his ginger tea. Looks not too bad, ok, let's go to lunch - Yak for sure.
Full and nearly healthy we went to the Pota Tso National park. Are we still in China? Unbelievable, it looks more like the Allgäu. And what was the altitude? 3.600m over sea level? Unbelievable.
Lichen at the trees, birches in the water, mountain lakes, maintained walking paths. Somehow this doesn't really fit to China.
And funny colored Squirrels. If you point them in an ordinary brown you could sell them as European squirrels. The right picture by the way are no squirrels. It's us!
After getting to an altitude of 4.100m without oxygen but with the bus we went back down town for window shopping, dinner, and watching the locals dancing. Really an all age event every evening around 8 o'clock.
Next morning pretty early we had to leave this beautiful Shangri La and Yunnan province. A last glance out of the plan window and we're back in Suzhou. Some of our memories will stick together with some of our small shoppings......
Somehow we have the feeling that we should come back some day, but this will be a completely other story.....
tractors...
...in the adjusted size for
the land and people...
