Lotus Temple and Slender West Lake - Yangzhou, China - March 10th, 2012

Last weekend Randy and I went to Yangzhou together. Yangzhou is one of the famous cities in Jiangsu Province and dates back 2000 years. We would see things from tombstones to gates that dated back to the Song Dynasty. I'll reach those areas when I come them...first I want to talk about the visit the Slender West Lake where the Lotus Temple was located.

First I want to talk about Slender West Lake or Shou Xi Hu in Chinese. It's a very beautiful location and is modeled after the West Lake in Hangzhou, which I visited last year when I was studying abroad in Hangzhou.

This lake is much easier to take in though since it is in a large park. The Original West Lake is enormous and is a major part of the city versus the Slender West Lake which is a tourist attraction/park with an entrance fee.

The fee was very worth it though. Throughout the entire length of the area was an assortment of locations to relax, to explore and to reflect. Exploration could be seen by folks who had rented electric boats to tour the lake to get the islands on it, and there were many paths that branched off to different areas...one could spend an entire day here.

Arrival at Lotus Temple
It was following one of these paths that Randy and I arrived at Lotus Temple. Lotus Temple is next to the White Pagoda which looks more phallic than most Pagodas, but is quite lovely with it's coloring of white and gold. It was from this area that we entered through the back of the Temple.

The Temple was peaceful and much emptier than Daming Temple, the large Temple Yangzhou that brings the tour busses...and because of it still had that naturalness to the place. Natural in that there was only one stand selling spiritual items connected to the Temple. It wasn't trying to be anything more then a place where people could come and worship. Not many people were though, so it was quite empty.

Along the walls were beautiful paintings of the life of the Buddha and Bodhisattvas and large Guan Yin's(The Goddess/Bodhisattva of Compassion) and Buddhas were in the main hall and at the back walls, much like Statues of Marys or Saints in a Cathedral. The similarities between Chinese Buddhism and Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christianity will be an ongoing theme you will find, since there are many even in the simple things like aesthetics and placement of objects representing "higher beings." I'll go into this more later in the next post about Daming Temple.
For now, Lotus Temple was a rest in a very interesting exploration of the Lake. The Temple has been around for a long time, like many of the sites would see, and with it, I've found in modern day China there is that awareness of the past that there isn't as much in America.


To reach Daming Temple we would follow the West Lake all the way to its back entrance. It was wonderful seeing the change in landscape and the amount of people became less and less until we saw only an old man with his young granddaughter. The old are very close with the young here in China. Any place you go, you will usually find a Grandma or Grandfather with their granddaughter or grandson. Something much rarer in the States to see.

We would eventually lose site of the Grandfather and his granddaughter and arrive at the gate. Across the street we saw the Nine storied Qiling Pagoda and Daming Temple, the next adventure awaited.