A Visit to the Temple

After the tea lesson with Mango and Fei, we went to the Temple.

The temple area was a riot of color, smells and sounds.  Just getting to and from it meant traveling streets lines with shops selling temple accessories.  The temple itself is a series of old style buildings right in downtown Guangzhou (one of several temples), and as I understand the process after paying an admission, Vicky and her cousins went around to several shrines inside the temple walls and prayed to the appropriate Buddhas which signified what they were interested in or worried about.  There were shrines for health, wealth, relationships, etc.  Evidently they used to light incense at or in each shrine, but now the practice is to place the incense on a table in front of the shrine and workers come by and collect it to burn in large cauldrons.  I guess this keeps the insides of the shrine from getting black with incense soot.

I won't try to explain it beyond this except to say that I finally figured out that the "Lenten Fare Restaurant" was a vegetarian restaurant.

One interesting aspect was the fundraiser to fix the older roofs.  You could purchase a roof tile and write your prayers on the underside.  So your prayers literally became part of the temple itself.