Giant Buddha and Pearls

Day 5  Saturday, November 16, 2019  Wuxi and on to Hangzhou

Grand Buddha, built in 1997, is 88 meters (289 feet) tall, since 88 is a lucky number in China. Why? Because the word 8 sounds similar to the word fā, which implies wealth. Also, the shape of the Chinese character for 8 (八) implies that a person will have a great, wide future because the character gets wider toward the bottom. (The Chinese government has been auctioning auto license plates containing many 8s for tens of thousands of dollars. And, the Beijing Olympics opened on 8/8/08 at 8 p.m!)

We had another breakfast with a vast array of items from the buffet, some quite odd from our Western cuisine. Every previous breakfast had had a juice option, but not this morning, although they did offer cola from the glass juice dispenser!

Our first stop of the day was the Pearl "Museum", but it was really just a fancy term for their tourist shop for buying pearl jewelry and pearl health supplements. In the entry they had these oysters in water.

I must mention that on the bus drive to the pearl place, our local guide, Vivian, talked non-stop about the holistic health approach she recommends, about how Wuxi citizens believe in natural, and vegan, and how healthy pearls are. She, and later the guides at the "museum", made it sound as if pearls can cure everything. According to Vivian and our guide, pearl powder strengthens skeletal tissue and function, especially bone, and helps cardiovascular functions. Pearl apparently cures constipation and increases endurance. And she made an emphatic point, pointing to her own pretty face, that pearl is one of the great secrets of the most beautiful women in Asia.

Before the sales force descended on us in their jewelry display, they gave a presentation about pearl cultivation. They've been harvesting pearls here for 2000 years. The oysters grow well in the adjacent Lake Taihu. My photo is blurry, but she has just sliced open a large, 4-yr-old oyster and she's picking out the many pearls inside. There are three so far sitting there, but she ended up pulling out 28 of them. They gave one to each of us (somehow, Janet and I lost ours. Oh no!).

I have no more photos from here, but it was crazy-sales-pitch time on the display floor. The sales ladies would follow you around and if you showed even the slightest interest in anything, they'd swoop in and give you a sales pitch about it. We did not purchase anything. I don't know whether anyone in our group did either.

Then it was off to the Grand Buddha, at the Lingshan Buddhist Scenic Spot. In this photo, you can get a glimpse of Vivian behind Janet's head. You also can see the "Ascending Cloud Avenue" leading up to the statue, with 216 stairs standing for 108 troubles and 108 wishes. The stairs are set on seven rising platforms (why not eight, I wonder?).

Lingshan is located at the base of a peninsula jutting south into Lake Taihu, just west of Wuxi. It is actually a lot more than just the Grand Buddha, more like what I called "the Buddhist Disneyland." It was 74 acres, and developed only 20 years ago, when China began allowing religion again following the Cultural Revolution.

There were all sorts of sites to see there. Our group took two trams, one from the entrance gate to Ancient Ginkgo Square (where there was a 1400-yr-old ginkgo tree), and then another tram up to the Grand Buddha statue. Thus, we saw several of the sites only from our passing tram, but we did visit in depth the Xianhu Temple and the Brahma Palace, plus we ate lunch at the Vegetarian Restaurant.

The Grand Buddha had a swastika on his chest, which Westerners typically find interesting based on the Nazi symbol (which was right-facing, whereas this symbol is left-facing). The swastika has long been a religious icon in Eurasia, used as a symbol of divinity and spirituality. It has different specific meanings depending on the religion, but in Buddhism, it symbolizes "the auspicious footprints of the Buddha".

 We took a tram to the bottom of the Grand Buddha, and here, people were praying and looking steeply upward to the massive statue.

There at the statue's base, you could buy candles and other prayer pieces. Many Buddhists were there and actively taking part.

One more photo of those giving prayer in front of Grand Buddha. You could pay extra to climb stairs up to a lookout point in the statue, but Vivian warned our group that it would likely take too much time based on our next assembly time back down in Ancient Ginkgo Square.

To meet up again with our group, we had to descend this long staircase! You can sort of see the 1400-yr-old ginkgo tree at the base down there, with the Xiangfu Temple right behind it.

As we descended the steps, we saw many Buddhists ascending two steps at a time, and kneeling to pray after each stride ahead. That would have taken them a LONG time to reach the top, since there were 216 steps.

Here's another photo of one kneeling to pray every few feet on the way up.

Still others were praying as they ascended, but they did not kneel down every few feet along the way.

Down the center of the long stair-steps were intricately carved sculptures. This is the only one I photoed, and it's a "map" of the entire "Buddhist Disneyland".

There's the NEW Janet and the OLD ginkgo tree. That tree was planted when the adjacent Xiangfu Temple was built, 1400 years ago during the Tang Dynasty. It continues to bear ginkgoes every autumn.

What a colorful roof line on the Xiangfu Temple. When the Lingshan Buddhist Scenic Spot was created in 1997, this temple was its historic base since it was originally built here in the 7th Century. It had to be restored following the Cultural Revolution.

The large golden Buddha inside the temple, with numerous visitors offering prayers. Note all the floral arrangements, presumably added frequently.

More intricate carvings inside the temple.

Our next stop there was the vast Brahma Palace, to showcase Buddhist culture, traditional Chinese art, and host events and gatherings. It had a symmetrical layout, and was built of stone with grand halls, high porch pillars, wide girders and towering domes. CNN named it one of the 40 most beautiful sights in China. It took two years to build, opening in 2008 for the 3rd World Buddhist Forum.

The main hall was very spectacular, and three stories high. We had to remove and carry our shoes once inside. Around the outer walls were 12 huge oil paintings, 9 feet wide and 21 feet tall, depicting the 2000-yr history of Buddhism - its origin, spread, communication and development.

The ceiling was pretty fancy! You can see the golden Feitian, or sky gods, on both sides.

This dome, called Tower Hall, is the palace highlight, right in the center of the palace. It's over 180 feet to the top.

At the far end of the main room was Alter Hall, containing this giant oil painting portraying flying angels around a sitting Golden Buddha statue. They used more than 10 kg (22 lbs) of pure gold as its core component.

 This was my final photo at "Disneyland". After visiting the palace, we ate lunch at a huge cafeteria. Steve had to help us order food. Our table had more "tame" foods than those at the table next to us, where they ordered a wide variety of items to try. On our way out, I got a shot of this rock garden with waterfalls, to welcome visitors, with the Grand Buddha way off in the distance.

I do not have any other photos for the day. It was a long drive south to Hangzhou ("hung-joe"), and Steve talked about all kinds of topics. Here are some things I wrote down:

1) Population issues: Avg age in the 70s was 55, and now it's 76 for men and 78 for women (Steve said longer life was partly due to their diets now having more fruits and vegetables). The one-child policy, initiated in 1980, means that now there are far too few younger people supporting the aging population.
2) As of 2016, China allowed parents to bear two children instead of only one, but it's not taking hold. At this time, birth rate is at its lowest in 60 yrs (14.6 million babies born in 2019 is low?), continuing to put pressure on the country's under-funded pensions and overcrowded hospitals.
3) The low birth rate is due to a) the rise of women in the workplace, who don't see marriage as necessary for financial security; 2) the lopsided population of men vs women (30 million single men out there!), because during the one-child rule, males were favored and therefore female fetuses were aborted; 3) couples cannot afford children due to rising costs and jobs demanding more time and energy; and 4) attitudes toward having children have simply changed.
4) In the 90s, China had its "Big Leap Forward", becoming more industrialized and moving away from small-family farming. (It meant to me: The country became authoritarian capitalistism and they gave up communism.)
5) Prior to the Big Leap Forward, China lied and tried to show off its communism, and in the early 60s, they suffered a widespread famine and millions died of starvation.

6) 400 million farmers have moved to the cities during the past 30 yrs. Farming has become "agri-business", with 100s of miles of greenhouses in the northern provinces, fish farms (fed silkworm poop!), and vast tomato and chili farms in the west. And, with genetically improved "super rice" strains, China is a food exporter for the first time.
7) Nov 11 every year is "Online Shopping Day", when 200 billion Yuan are spent. Because today was Nov 16, just five days since Online Shopping Day, Steve said that one billion items were in process of being shipped all over the country and world.
8) China has 26 provinces. Beijing is the northern capital, while Nanjing (a bit to our northwest) is the southern capital.  On our trip, we started in Shanghai Province (yes, it has its own), then Jiangshu, and today we headed south into Zhejiang (once we were south of Lake Taihu). They have 56 nationalities among their citizens.
9) China's capital 900 yrs ago was where we're headed tonight - Hangzhou. Where the famous Terra Cotta Warriors are, Xi'an, was the capital city for 13 dynasties, from the 11th Century BC to 770 BC.

10) They have four national languages: regular Chinese (which has many dialects), Manchurian, Uyghan, and Tibetan). Uyghurs is in the far west, and its people are Muslim. (There are numerous reports of religious intolerance and injustices against the Uyghurs, just as the Tibetans are discriminated against because they want their independence.)
11) The Cultural Revolution, 1966 to 1976, destroyed four things: royalty, religion, private business, and "smart people" (scientists and engineers). If you represented any of these four areas, you would be, or could be, put in prison.
12) The Marriage Market. In Shanghai, parents are advertising their daughters for marriage! There are so few women that when a family did keep a girl baby, they grew up having the best of everything. Consequently, these young women now have high expectations for a husband.
13) Fake divorces. I forget now how the details went, but Steve described how some couples get divorces so that they can qualify for better properties as singles than as married. But, the couple actually stays together and remarries once their windfall is achieved.

I do not recall anything that evening when we arrived at our hotel. It was an airport Holiday Inn, and I think we walked to a nearby restaurant.