Putuoshan

Over the weekend, I went to the island of Putuoshan with NYU as part of my Contemporary China class. Putuoshan is one of the four sacred islands in Chinese Buddhism. Putuoshan stands out amongst the four because it is the only one that is an island. In fact, the entire island is considered a national park, so there is an entrance fee to enter the island. Since there are so many temples on the island, the majority of the visitors are visiting for religious reasons. We seemed to be the only visitors there for the cultural aspect.

Putuoshan is only accessible by ferry, so we had to take a two hour bus ride to the harbor, and then a four hour (pretty rocky) ferry ride. Once on the island, the main mode of transportation is walking and buses. The island is 12.5 km squared, so not too big, but big enough that you might not want to walk to all the temples. The temples we visited were the Puji Temple, Fayu Temple and the Huiji Temple, which is located on the mountain and has 1,888 steps to the peak! The climb only took me and my friends about half an hour, and we were going pretty slow. In our free time, we visited the SiTian Cave, another cave, and the Guanyin statue. The Guanyin statue is 33m tall and is situated on Putuoshan's coast, so you see it looming in the distance while you're on the ferry. But there are over 80 monasteries on the island. These three are the biggest, and therefore the most crowded. 

I don't know much about Buddhism, but I do know that the Guanyin is a really important bodhisattva that was originally thought to be male, but later discovered to be female. All Buddhist temples are also built on a North-South, East-West axis, much like the city of Beijing. There are only 3,000 inhabitants of Putuoshan, 1,000 of which are Monks. Since monks are vegetarian, the majority of the food on the island is also vegetarian. There is also a lot of good seafood, but not all of my friends were willing to try the fish.

I thought it was a good weekend and it's definitely not something I see in my everyday life. I would certainly recommend going to a Buddhist temple. The architecture and iconography are always exquisite, and some of the incense smells good, but not all of them.

yummy smelling incense and pretty lotus candles

the Guanyin