Jacky and his family came to Changzhou last week. The night before, his wife, Daisy, told me our plans for the next day. She said, "Tomorrow we will go to the temple." She had no idea how much my heart skipped a beat with that statement! And how much I wished I could show her pictures of our temples.
Our weather for the day was pretty uncomfortable, but it is the tallest pagoda in the world, so it was very cool to see!
We're not sure what this was, but it came out on this plate with dry ice smoke. It was some sort of dragon fruit preparation with a mint leaf on a Pringle potato chip on and slice of sweet potato. Very unique.
Burger, French fries and chicken nuggets. (Note, we also got a plate of meatless spaghetti; both the burger and the spaghetti are attempts at American food and just like we do to their food in America, sugar is added. I definitely don't prefer sweetened spaghetti, hamburger buns or mayonnaise.) But I will give their chicken nuggets two thumbs up. The texture was impressive and the breading a very good.
Vegan "egg yolks". I was in the squatty potty when these were served, but the girls said they were mango. The texture was egg yolk-like and pretty gaggy in my opinion. I would definitely pass on these next time. But they look amazing!
Not sure what these suspicious things were. I think tofu dipped in crushed green tea leaves, but they said they weren't. I only nibbled and then set aside.
We had a couple of other side dishes that were good that I didn't photo, one was an avocado in a Chinese sauce. I could eat that one all day! And I don't remember the other one. Needless to say it was way too much food and we got very full! Daisy and Cynthia really took care of us!
It is some place we've been wanting to visit, but because it costs money to enter, we were postponing the visit as a family until we got paid. We'll have to go back another time so Tom can see it. It is the icon of Changzhou, so we need to go back again. And I wouldn't mind spending more time looking at some of their statues when the temperature is more bearable.
Thankfully a couple of areas of the temple were air conditioned and the elevator took us up to the 11th floor so we only had to hike the stairs a few floors. The view was nice and it was slightly breezy up at the top so that was relieving!
Daisy and Cynthia are practicing Buddhists. I tried to ask questions about what they do to practice their religion and what it means to them to worship and what they believe in. Daisy's English is really quite good, but limited in vocabulary so it is hard to engage in that type of conversation. But she says they worship because it brings them peace. To worship, they go to the temple and do the bowing at the altars and in passing the Buddhas. They believe in living a good life so that they will be able to have a good time in paradise after they die. The religion practices ancestral worship and in the pagoda, one floor surrounding the 25-30 ft Buddha statues (just a guess at the height) they had at least 6 walls of small Buddha statues in plastic cases. These statues were only about 5"x7" all stacked to create the walls. There were 250 on each wall. You could 'buy' a statue and put your ancestor's name on the statue. When someone dies, they honor them every 7 days, for 7 weeks. During this time, they have dreams about their loved ones and whatever they dream about is what they are to 'send up' to their ancestor at the next remembrance. So if they dreamed that the person wanted clothes, at the next remembrance, they would burn some clothes to send up to them. They send up things such as money, cars, motorcycles, household items, furniture (I'm not sure how they do that, but that is what Jacky told Tom.)
In visiting places such as this, I always look for traces of truth. One of the 30 ft statues had 1000 hands coming off the side of the Buddha. It kind of looked like large wings, but they were hands and on the center of each hand was an eye. The statue explanation said that Buddha has a thousand eyes and those eyes were on outstretched hands to represent the perception that Buddha has to care for his followers. It reminded me of this scripture in D&C 112:13 "And after their temptations, and much tribulation, behold, I, the Lord, will feel after them, and if they harden not their hearts and stiffen not their necks against me, they shall be converted, and I will heal them." I am thankful that others have religion to strengthen them during hard times and that no matter how individuals worship, our loving Father indeed 'feels' after each one and will provide that perceptive care for all of His children, each doing the best they can with the knowledge they have.
After visiting a temple, you must eat vegan. So that is what we did. We ate at a place called Pure Gourmet. And I would highly recommend giving it a try! I don't love vegan in the US, but in China, they are much better with their tofu. When I visited in 2004, our tour guides were vegan and so that is what we ate when we were with them and most of it was very good.
This is chicken-like tofu on sticks, a mostly eaten plate of sushi and another kind of tofu.
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