Ms Waterman (teacher) |
We spent the rainy afternoon outside at Mt. Qingcheng, a mountain with 36 peaks which is also the center of Daoism in China. Daoism (or Taoism), as the girls reminded me, is focused on human’s worship of nature and search for harmony with nature. The pavilions we passed were all made of and decorated with natural materials - wood, bark, and moss. We noticed that there are trees growing through some of the temple roofs, and Maya told us that Daoists seek harmony with nature in all ways, including in their construction. The park was very peaceful even though there were many other visitors. We could hear birdsong and at several points, I smelled jasmine flowers but couldn’t locate them.
Despite the drizzle and general mistiness, we walked up part of the mountain, took a cable car, and walked again until we reached the temple at the top of the mountain. The temple is one of 72 temples on the mountain and Maya showed us the correct way to bow and pray before the statue of Laozi (also called Tai Shan Laozi), the first man to worship Daoism in the Sichuan region. We couldn’t see anything at all as a view from the temple, but it was beautiful with the clouds and rain. We slipped and slid down the many steps to reach the bottom of the mountain where we collapsed gratefully into the car to drive back to Chengdu. Liz and Iona have step-trackers and apparently we walked 20,000 steps (about 8 miles!) today!
1 comment:
You are all getting lots of exercise, Rebecca. Keep up the writing, everyone...the blog entries and videos are really great to read and view. I certainly get a sense of what things are like for you there, though I am sure there is nothing quite like the actual experience. Dad
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