Living Shanghai, My Perspective!

Waiting…

waiting…

still waiting…

turning around but still waititng…

waiting but seeing the yellow wall of the temple…

almost there to the admission boxes…

ready to get in…

even more crowded inside…

praying with burning incense sticks…

incense sticks everywhere…

getting into the mail hall…

worshipping the 18 Buddhas…

worshipping and praying in the main hall…

People were sincerely on their knees…

more…

worshipping in the courtyard…

consulting the monks…

tossing coins into the incense burning tower will bring good luck…

All of us slept over in my parents’ place last night –well, it should be this morning since we did not go to sleep until probably 3am. We really crowded their 3-bed 2-bath apartment: they slept in the master bedroom; three of us got to pick the second south facing bedroom since we have Tanker; my younger sister and her hubby stayed in the north facing study of Dad’s; and my poor little brother had no choice but to sleep on the couch in the living room –well, his girl friend is on a family vacation in Singapore now, but they chatted on phone for quite long time last night.

I had promised to go with parents to the Xiahai Buddhist Temple (下海寺) (strangely located in an old residential neighborhood) in Hongkou district to attend the New Year’s services this morning to pray for a goodYear of Dog. Mom woke me up around 9:30 and she had already prepared me our family’s traditional New Year’s breakfast: Ningbo Tang Yuan –a type of sticky rice flour ball of about 1 inch in diameter with the very sweet and yummy sesame syrup and mixing inside and is usually boiled in sugared water. There were eight of them in the bowl since the number 8 sounds close to “hit a fortune” in Chinese. I quickly downed the 8 rice balls before I realized that I should have taken a picture for my blog readers –oh well, whatever, bottom line is it tasted really good. Su did not get up since Tanker wouldn’t get up anyway.

Three of us took a cab to the temple and not surprisingly there was already a very very long line waiting outside to get in, and there are quite a lot of policemen on the street maintaining the order. People were nice and waiting patiently. Luckily it was not too cold for a Chinese New Year’s Day in Shanghai. We waited about an hour and half to get in.

It was even more crowded inside, but in an orderly and graceful manner, and the air was full of holiday joy and sincerity. The pleasant scent of burning incense sticks and red candles together with the heavenly mixing sound of Buddha songs by monks, temple bell tolls, and prays by the worshippers created a very blessing atmosphere. Mom is a very sincere Buddhist and I am always amazed in watching her carrying out all the steps of worshipping to very details. We spent about 15 minutes worshipping and praying for peace, health and prosperity, and then we walked around in the temple to appreciate its architecture and decorations.

Xiahai Temple was originally built in 1770’s and is now relatively a very small temple with one main hall for worshipping and several smaller supporting chapels. This temple is a good place for worshipping but it would be nice to have a garden in the back for spiritual meditation, but I know I can’t complain about this given the very limited land resource in the busy downtown Shanghai. By the way, my favorite top 5 Buddhist temples are: South Mountain Temple in Sanya (三亚南山寺), Yonghe Palace Temple in Beijing (北京雍和宫), Snow Summit Mountain Temple in Fenghua (奉化雪窦寺), Cold Mountain Temple in Suzhou (苏州寒山寺), and Gold Mountain Temple in Zhenjiang (镇江金山寺).