The Temple of the Red Snail

Two days back my younger daughter asked “what’s the plan?” with pressing earnestness.  I had none.  You’re on vacation, but I’m not; was my default reaction.  “OK, let’s talk to mom and plan a family outing for tomorrow.”

So yesterday I went online and had a look at various hikes around Beijing.  I happened upon a Tang Dynasty Buddhist temple that I’d never seen: 红螺寺, The Red Snail Temple, which boasted of a big hill behind, open for climbing.  It was also under an hour’s drive from where we live. 

During the national holiday any sight could be swarmed. The Red Snail was merely crowded, which is merciful by Chinese standards.   Parking was a pleasant surprise at five kuai, though I had to drop nearly thirty bucks US to get the whole family into the house of worship. 

Walking through a temple in China, once again, for the hundredth time, it jostles all sorts of memories of when you did it the first time, perhaps something you saw early on, twenty-two years ago in Hangzhou perhaps that truly impressed you.  And while it should hit the same way a cathedral in Europe from 800 AD might, it does not. 

I explain to my daughters how the Si Da Gang were there at the entrance to guard the temple from would be plunderers.  We do a review of Buddhism and how it swept into China, an alien religion, finally becoming a state religion under Wu Zetian, whom I know they’ll remember.   And we talk about how so many temples were destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and how that’s why none of the paintings seem particularly captivating.    

Behind the temple is the remarkable peak that must be why the earliest monks chose the location.  We only know that there is a way to the right and a way to the left.  The latter is known as the Guanyin Trail and there are faux marble statues of the goddess placed at odd intervals on the way up.  

More exhausted than I reckoned I should be, I rested at a fork in the road, with my older daughter.  It wasn’t clear how much further we were supposed to go.  We walked toward a ridge of the mountain and saw a pagoda on a bluff another half a mile up the trail.  I wasn’t in the mood to sell it and no one wanted to be sold to.  After some photos, which the sun always seemed to dominate, we followed the steps back down.

Walking down we came across the tired masses plodding upwards.  More than once I heard a child yell: “抱抱,” Or “carry me.”  That phase of parenting came flooding back, uninvited.