Excursion to Ta'er Si
Ta'er Si is the name of yet another Tibetan monastery I visited, located in the town of Huangzhong, 26 km South of Xining. A bus took me there in 45 minutes for 5 Yuan. Ta'er Si monastery is at least as big as the Labrang monastery where I was 2 days ago. It's actually a whole village, perched on a hill side. A special feature of this place is that some Buddha sculptures are made of yak butter. That's right, yak butter! Unbelievable, but this stuff is used for many different things. Tibetans put a chunk of it in their salted tea, and in the monasteries it's also used as fuel for the many oil lamps (erm, butter lamps) placed in the temples. You see barrels of butter standing aside, with a spatula stuck in to scoop up the stuff and refill the lamps.
Not as many Tibetans here as in Labrang, but many monks wander about the place. I heard that 3500 monks live here! Some of the temples are incredibly beautiful inside. An overload of colour, in the form of banners hung from the ceiling, every bit of wood painted in minute detail, books wrapped in embroidered silk stacked up on shelves in glass cabinets, and of course the sculptures of the many deities. Some several meters tall, rising up to the ceiling wich is much higher than you expect when you enter the temple. Money is piled up everywhere, pilgrims are generous with their offerings. Besides banknotes, I saw fruits, small bottles of hard liquor, and other edibles like eggs and walnuts. The monastery complex has several buildings for teaching, a hospital, a printing shop, a main assembly hall, and many housing blocks. There was quite a bit of construction going on at different places, expanding the capacity for even more monks? A Chinese girl, a tourist from Guangzhou, told me that many religious families send their youngest son to a monastery when he reaches 7. I always wondered whether the young boys decided themselves to be a monk, or if they are just sent by thier parents. I guess they can always bail out when they are older and don't feel like spending the rest of their lives as a monk.
Leaving the monastery, I wandered around the town of HuangZhong for a while, admiring the work of the boys in the many metal workshops who are hammering brass to create prayer drums and sculptures of deer and other animals usually placed on top of Tibetan temples. I had some great tasting dumplings filled with curry-flavoured meat before getting on the bus back to Xining.
Not as many Tibetans here as in Labrang, but many monks wander about the place. I heard that 3500 monks live here! Some of the temples are incredibly beautiful inside. An overload of colour, in the form of banners hung from the ceiling, every bit of wood painted in minute detail, books wrapped in embroidered silk stacked up on shelves in glass cabinets, and of course the sculptures of the many deities. Some several meters tall, rising up to the ceiling wich is much higher than you expect when you enter the temple. Money is piled up everywhere, pilgrims are generous with their offerings. Besides banknotes, I saw fruits, small bottles of hard liquor, and other edibles like eggs and walnuts. The monastery complex has several buildings for teaching, a hospital, a printing shop, a main assembly hall, and many housing blocks. There was quite a bit of construction going on at different places, expanding the capacity for even more monks? A Chinese girl, a tourist from Guangzhou, told me that many religious families send their youngest son to a monastery when he reaches 7. I always wondered whether the young boys decided themselves to be a monk, or if they are just sent by thier parents. I guess they can always bail out when they are older and don't feel like spending the rest of their lives as a monk.
Leaving the monastery, I wandered around the town of HuangZhong for a while, admiring the work of the boys in the many metal workshops who are hammering brass to create prayer drums and sculptures of deer and other animals usually placed on top of Tibetan temples. I had some great tasting dumplings filled with curry-flavoured meat before getting on the bus back to Xining.
posted by marc at 22:00
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home