All the Way Home With You?

It’s Lunar New Year’s holiday.  We’re all sitting around without much to do in a city that has dwindled to half its normal population.  My wife suggested a Temple Fair in the city.  I opined one temple, and she countered with another.  I found a list of ten on line and suggested that she and the kids pick one from there.  “The God of Wealth” she exclaimed.  Let’s go and visit him.  It was over in the west side of the city.  It sounded interesting.  And calling a cab, off we went to pick up my older daughter, who’d had a sleep over in Wang Jing, and then cut across the city to visit the God of Wealth Temple. 

Alas, the God of Wealth needs to invest in an advertising budget.  We got to the location, circled around once and then twice, asked a pedestrian or two, and endured the doubts of our grouchy driver all in vain, searching for the temple of mammon that should have been here somewhere.  Our driver didn’t want to hear this, but I told him to take us over to the White Cloud Temple, some fifteen minutes away, instead.   Look, we’re doing a temple.   

The driver began to complain.  As if.  “It’s awful late in the day. “That place will be so crowded.”  “I don’t think you want to head all the way over there.”  I had been quiet, absorbed in my latest book most of the ride, about a man chasing the world’s best surf from Guam to Polynesia.  But now, something needed to be said.  I raised my voice and asked, at twice the volume anyone else’s heretofore offered up, “What do you want us to do then?  Go all the way home with you?  We came out today.  We’re finding something to do.  Bai Yun Temple then.  If you need directions let me know!”    We we’re on our way.    (I refer you, tender reader, to the title and theme of the entry prior to this one.) 

We pulled up on the street to find barricades and plastic stalls lined along outside in anticipation of many thousands of guests.  But they were vacant at 3:45PM.  Cops and guards and a myriad of officialdom were there to protect everyone against disruption or worse.  I could feel a guy trying to rush behind me in the tight, cattle queue pathway, and once the stall broke free he tried to cut before me with a dash to the ticket gate.  Times like this I always feel like I’m back on the Lexington Ave Line.  Brusque, self-interest?  Nothing wrong with that.  “I’m first.”  I told him, elbowing my way back before him.  

Inside, I tried to remember the place from my memories of seventeen years ago, or was it twenty-one years since the last time I was here.  At the front door, to the side, a line had formed of people waiting to rub the marble knob of the front door.  We passed on this auspicious opportunity and crowded around the masses throwing coins into the well, to ring the bell for luck.  At any one time some fifty people were chucking fake coinage that you could buy at ten kuai for twenty.  In the pit, a hapless man with a hat and a broom was sweeping up the ever-growing piles of phony bronze.  “Girls.  That is why you work hard in school.”  I offered.  You don’t want to wind up with the coin-sweep-up job at the temple.

We trudged through one temple door and further back in, repeating the temple ritual that has slight variations but is otherwise always the same throughout the Chinese world, in much the same way that most churches have pews and a nave and an altar.  At one building, I noticed was from the early Ming period, the monk inside was handing back out the offerings earlier deposited, to the folks who come to pay respects.  He gave my wife an enormous bouquet of lilies, which she was thrilled to receive and carried around for the rest of the day.  Too many people to allow you or the next worshiper to burn incense themselves.  Put it here and the monk will drop it all into the large silver receptacle with the hot coals burning.  My older one coughed on incense smoke and wanted water.  Now.  “I don’t see any darling.  If its that bad, why don’t you ask the kid over there with the plastic bottle if you can have a sip?”  Off to the side a man was selling a ginger tea that we bought and this had to suffice.  

Every temple has its final edifice.  At the rear of the main hall seventy guards or so line up waiting to usher everyone out.  As I walked past someone murmured something and I wished them all a joyous new year loudly, which they eventually replied to.  Later they all filed out, reminding people it was time to leave.  The White Cloud Temple is closing.

Tuesday, 02/20/18