More Putuo Shan Sights

Top Right: A 1,000 year old camphor tree that is 20 meters in height and two meters in diameter. Trees of this size are rare.
Top Left: (Lt to Rt) Mark Van Loan, Hannah Czehatowski and Michel Czehatowski in front of the character "xin" or "heart" carved in a large rock.
Center: The characters for Buddha (top of picture) blending into the character for "heart" bottom of picture. This was carved in stone.
Bottom: A balanced stone.

Jiuhuan Shan, Monk Wuxia

By now we had been in at least 30 different temples and though similar in layout they will have unique features. One of the temples on Jiuhuan Shan has imprints of the feet of a monk in the stone. The temple is built around the stone. It is said that a monk meditated there for quite some time and his footprints were left in the stone. Believers will take off their shoes and place there feet in the footprints. My shoe size is 12 and I stood in the stone footprints and they were much bigger than my feet!

We also saw the gilded body of Monk Wuxia. My understanding was that when a monk died they were put in a large jar and after three years the jar was opened. If the body was intact they were considered a saint. This was the case with Monk Wuxia. When they opened the jar his body was intact. It was later gilded and placed in the temple. We were able to see the gilded body.

Top Right: View of the other mountain we were on the day before.

Top Left: Inscriptions in stone.

Bottom Right: Locks.

Bottom Left: Mark Van Loan on the backbone of Jiuhua Shan.

Jiuhua Shan Temples

Once off the cable car there was plenty of more stairs. Supplies for the temples is carried up by laborers.

The other amazing thing about the temple, stairs, and walkways is that everything was carried up on the backs of men.

Top Right: Wu Han (left), Hannah Czehatowski (right) and Mark Van Loan in front of Hannah, ascending stairs on Jiuhua Shan.

Top Left: View of a mountain temple.

Center: Porter carrying up a heavy load of food up the stairs.

Bottom Right: The same porter going up another set of stair.

Bottom Left: Two laborers with a granite suspended between them carrying it up stairs. These granite blocks are used to make the walkway.

Hanging Monastery at Mt. Heng

After Yungang Grottoes we went off to lunch at a nice new restaurant and had an excellent meal. Then we were off to the Hanging Monastery at Mt. Heng (Heng Shan) which is one of the five sacred mountains of Taoism. The Hanging Monastery stands at the foot of Mt. Heng. The view from below is extraordinary and awe inspiring and on it is breathtaking and wonderful. My picture on the blog shows me clinging to the building for the photo. The walkways are narrow and we all had the impression that the railings came up to our knees though the photo's tell a different story.

Pictures:

Top right: Mt. Heng from the valley floor.

Top left: a view of the posts supporting the outer building.

Middle right: Mark Van Loan on the stairway with a good grip on the rail. It's a long way down!

Middle left: Hannah Czehatowski with guide Guo Bao carefully watching their steps!

Bottom photo: Posts supporting the structure along the walkway.

For more information on the Hanging Monastery see this Wikipedia article.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Heng_%28Shanxi%29

Yungang Grottoes

Yungang grottoes (Cloud Ridge Caves) is one of the four major treasure troves of Buddhist art. There are 53 caves containing over 50,000 statues. The caves stretch for about one Kilometer from east to west.

The statues range in size from huge (7 meters) to only a few centimers in height and are over 1,000 years old.

Pictures:

Top right: Buddha in a cave.

Top Middle: Buddha seen through a hole in the cave wall.

Top Left: Detail of Buddha carvings.

Bottom Right: Hannah Czehatowski, Mark Van Loan, and me in front of one of the statues which gives perspective on the size of these fantastic sculptures.