Though I realize that I’m a little late for completing my travel blog, I figure that I might as well jot the rest of the trip down before I forget everything. So, here goes…
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When we finally disembarked from the train in Hangzhou, the gang and I were bleary-eyed from the suboptimal train sleep, not to mention slightly odoriferous – a natural side-effect of spending 40+ hours in one’s clothes in a hard-sleeper car whose air conditioning was inconsistent at best. More than anything, we just wanted to meet up with the rest of our group, check into our hotel, and rest up for the trip to Mount Tiantai.
For a bit of background, Tiantai is one of the most important holy mountains in China, as it’s the site from which the first indigenous school of Chinese Buddhism initially emerged, so the opportunity to see it was the only reason that the three of us had endured the cross-country train trip. The plan, which had been formulated by the venerable Buddhist nun who had masterminded the whole trip, was that any interested parties (note: there had been ten of us in total) could find our own ways across the country, meet up with some Buddhists in Zhejiang (the province where Tiantai is located), and tour around the holy mountain for a day or two. Unfortunately, an unexpected medical issue waylaid the nun and her assistant, which meant that the Hangzhou gang didn’t include anyone that had actually taken part in planning this stage of the trip… This would prove quite problematic!
We were met at the train station by a lovely middle-aged woman who introduced herself as “Charity” as she beckoned us to follow her to a waiting vehicle. After stowing our luggage and donning some designer driving gloves, she ushered us into the leather-upholstered backseat of a beige Lexus SUV and proceeded to take us on a vehicular tour of the town’s primary tourist destination: the West Lake – a carefully manicured waterway surmounted by numerous ornate metalwork bridges and surrounded by gorgeous watery expanses of lotuses. While it was quite picturesque, I have to admit that I was having a hard time staying awake… As she and Julius had an involved Chinese conversation in the front seat, I exhaustedly rested my head on the side window and collapsed into a stuporous half-sleep (until I noticed the greasy face-print that I left on the glass, which impelled me to sit up).
After this detour (and rather than taking us to our hotel), she then drove us to a monastic complex in an adjacent metropolitan area (around an hour away). This should have been my first clue that something was amiss. The second (and more overt) one was that we were then presented with giant name tags and red V.I.P. sashes. When the remainder of the group joined us in the early afternoon, it became clear that our status as token international scholars was being exploited, as we were then led to a three-hour-long press conference (announcing the compilation of a new edition of the Buddhist Canon), where we were expected to help unveil the wooden chests holding the texts and then stand for innumerable photos celebrating this event. Our (unwilling) participation had been orchestrated by the bearded Buddhist abbot of a nearby monastery, who had commissioned the new canon. As an aside, the only thing worse than listening to a bunch of pretentious, sycophantic speeches is listening to them in a language that you don’t understand.
That evening, once the interminable event concluded, we were delivered to the sketchiest hotel I’ve ever seen. The walls of our room were covered in a spongy pink wallpaper the approximate colour and texture of Turkish Delight, which featured a number of dark, foul stains, as if someone had beaten a small animal to death against them. Rather than having the regular assortment of “room service” items that I’d come to expect from previous hotel stays (e.g., noodle bowls, tea, bottled water), this room featured a wicker basket in the bathroom bearing a reasonably large selection of sexual aids (condoms, lubes, etc.) that guests could use for a nominal charge. I slept in my clothes.
Note the stains on the left- and right-hand walls...
The next day, we woke up early to make the trek to Mount Tiantai – a drive of several hundred kilometers from Hangzhou. Accompanied by the abbot and a number of lay devotees, our group was divided between two vans, which sped along the highways for a number of hours, stopping only for a snack of fruit, water caltrops, and stinky tofu. Once we finally bounced along a rutted, gravel-strewn path towards a small complex of monastic buildings inset into an open cave-wall, it was already close to 1pm. The site was interesting, featuring, in no particular order, a series of pavilions contained within natural caves, a giant recumbent Buddha sculpted from white jade, and a human mummy (preserved in a copper alloy). That said, it was *not* Mount Tiantai. Instead, it was the abbot’s personal monastery, which he was currently in the process of “sprucing up” in order to create a potentially lucrative pilgrimage destination. In fact, many of the temple structures were still under construction, with some Buddha statues (ordered in from Burma) still boxed or wrapped in plastic.
For a sense of scale, note the human figure on the left-hand side...
One of the monastery structures, built out of the cave wall
Inside one of the undeveloped caves
When we finally finished our tour, the abbot flatly refused to take us further, arguing that Tiantai was “just another old monastery,” not an exciting new complex like the one we were seeing. “Besides,” he said, “I’m sure that they’ll be closing for the day soon” [it was 4pm]. The drive back was frosty, given the time and expense that we’d all invested in traveling across the country to see Tiantai.
When we finally got back to the Hangzhou suburbs, our collective irritation was only exacerbated by the posse’s peculiar (lack of) organization. We just wanted to go back to the hotel and buy some food, but instead we spent another two hours being driven around town as the organizers (i.e., the abbot’s lackeys) attempted to figure out what to do with us for supper. In the end, we were taken back to the complex where the press conference had been held on the previous day, where we were unceremoniously dropped off near a dimly-lit, ramshackle, mosquito-infested building. Inside, we saw a variety of tepid, partially-eaten dishes sitting out on the table, somewhat protected from the buzzing clouds of insects by a set of plastic plate covers. Overhead, the single light-bulb was installed behind a whirring ceiling fan, giving the room’s lighting a vaguely discomfiting, horror-movie-esque strobe effect. We ate the proffered food more-or-less in silence, wanting only to get away, though some of our group’s number held conspiratorially whispered conversations about hiring a bus and sneaking back to see the mountain the next day. I, on the other hand, was done. I was done with the temple tours, the strict organization, and the lack of freedom… I just wanted to leave the group behind and strike out on my own.
