Jokhang Temple

We visited the Jokhang Temple in Barkhor Bazaar one morning.  It was only a short walk from our hotel.  The Jokhang Temple was the first temple built in Tibet back in the 7th century.  Per our travel guide on Tibet, “The Jokhang is Tibet’s most sacred shrine, the focal point of pilgrims from the entire Tibetan plateau.  Situated at the heart of the old town of Lhasa, it was founded by Queen Bhrikuti on a site deemed by Queen Wencheng to be the principal geomantic power-place in Tibet, identified with the heart of the supine ogress.”  I have no idea what that means but I knew that we were somewhere different in the world and that I really wanted to visit this temple and have that experience.

Much of the Jokhang was destroyed by the Chinese in the Cultural Revolution, but not the main temple.  This temple was a yellow-hat temple.  The Jokhang Temple housed over 1000 monks back before 1959 but today only has 70 monks.  All monks pray here every day before 7:30 am.  All the monastery monks used to come here for their examinations.  The Dalai Lama also used to visit here every year.  The Jokhang Temple is still considered the most sacred and the most important temple in Tibet.

The temple’s architectural style is a mixture of Indian, Tibetan, and Nepalese design, quite striking, and had plenty of color. In the photos below, you can see the front of the temple from the Barkhor Bazaar and in the next photo, Vicky and I are on the roof of the temple.

There were many dozens of people praying outside the temple.  This goes on all day long every day.  We went into the main cathedral and of course, there were no photos allowed inside.  We saw many of the same things as in the Potala Palace.  Many paintings covered the walls with historical stories being depicted.  There were many wood carvings in posts and ceiling beams including many snow leopards with complete genitals.  Tapestries were hung in great abundance.  The palace has some 3,000 images of Buddha as well as other deities and historical figures.  The main statue of Buddha is called the Jowo Shakyamuni.  It is made of gold and considered the most sacred image of Buddha in Tibet.  Our guide said that it was cast in India from the actual Buddha when he was eight years old.  Later the statue was taken to China but eventually returned to Tibet and to this temple. The next photo is one that I took from the roof looking down on the area in front of the temple.

Jokhang Temple was much noisier since so many people chanted loudly and many hummed at full throttle.  Incense and Yak butter candles were being burned in copious amounts.  People packed this temple.  Often times, we had trouble moving through the crowds and sometimes we had trouble just finding a place to stand still.  In places, it was like a slow moving sea of people.  We went up to the temple roof, took photos, and purchased souvenirs from the monks, though prices were cheaper at the airport than from the monks.  We then walked the inner prayer circle (within the outside of the temple proper) and the outer prayer circle (actually outside the temple itself).

Jokhang Temple, like the others, had very dim lights with very low wattage, fire extinguishers, Chinese guards, telephones, and so on.  We also got to see the staff counting and bundling the money that was collected.  I even got a photo of the money being counted.    

More Lhasa, Tibet

We made a stop at the Sera Thekchenling Monastery one afternoon.  This monastery was founded in 1419 and housed 5,500 monks before 1959.  Today, it only has 400 monks.  Sera is the second largest monastery in Tibet.  Much of it was destroyed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.  Sera is a yellow hat monastery dating back to the days of the red hats and yellow hats.  These were evidently two conflicting groups of monks who fought each other for power.

Sera Monastery was an interesting place.  Many items were the same as we saw in the Potala Palace.  They had many scriptures and these scriptures were carved in wood.  We also saw many statues of the same nature as in the Potala Palace.  We saw prayer rooms, sleeping spaces, sitting rooms for the Dalai Lama visits, baptism places, and so on.  Pilgrims were passing through with prayer shawls, yak butter, and money.  There were large piles of money everywhere and trash and garbage everywhere too.  We were in the main and largest prayer room and large rats were running across our paths and across the monk’s prayer seats.  We did see a few temple cats but the monks were feeding them.  Big mistake. 

We visited Sera Monastery for two hours.  No photos were allowed inside so I’ll just include two photos of the monks that were outside.  They were exercising and doing drills using ‘koans’ and lots of physical movements.  The monks were going one on one and they seemed to be quite athletic.

We visited the Dalai Lama’s summer palace on another afternoon.  It was the summer palace for the 7th through the 14th Dalai Lamas.  Each new Dalai Lama built his own new palace.  The palace gardens and grounds are about 89 acres.  It’s located a short distance west of the Potala Palace.  Originally, the Dalai Lama used to go to the summer palace area to picnic.  Eventually, the peasants built the 7th Dalai Lama a summer palace here.

The grounds are covered with trees including many trees over 100 years old.  While 100 years is not that old for a tree, they seemed pretty old for China and Tibet.  The grounds have a stone and mortar irrigation canal system for watering the trees.  We saw mostly deciduous trees including many fruit trees but also some pine and cypress trees.  There was a zoo still there but it is in horrible shape.  We felt bad for the animals that are still there.  Animals included many bears, bobcat, monkeys, rabbits, and many birds including peacocks, vultures, ducks, and geese.

We visited the summer palaces of the 7th, 13th, and 14th Dalai lamas.  Each successive Dalai Lama built a much larger and more comfortable palace for himself.  Starting with the 5th Dalai Lama, the Dalai Lama was both the political and religious leader of Tibet.    

The first photo below is the summer palace of the 14th Dalai Lama, which is the current Dalai lama, who is in self-exile in Nepal.  He has a very large summer palace.  It is two stories and has 40 rooms including a meditation room, study, library, and parents visiting rooms.  His palace has a fountain in front and three large pine trees that the 14th Dalai Lama planted.  He also has a large radio given to him by the Russian president and another large radio given to him by the Indian Prime Minister, Nehru.  The Dalai Lama used to listen to the radio a lot and learned English and much else about the world over the radio.  His bathroom included a bathtub and a western toilet. 

The next photo is the Tyokyil Potrang which is a pavilion in the midst of a lake and a top scenic spot in the summer palace grounds.  It was built by the 8th Dalai Lama.  Two stone bridges connect both sides.  It’s decorated with gold covered roof and copper tiles and is full of Buddhist murals around the walls and different Buddha statues and rest rooms for Dalai Lama.

The last photo is the back gate where the Dalai Lama escaped on March 17, 1959.  He was disguised as a simple soldier and escaped the Chinese and went into Nepal.  He’s been in exile since.

This is the end of our visit to Tibet.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong was the last stop on our trip.  We heard about the SARS epidemic the day we left home and we monitored it our whole trip.  By the time we got to Hong Kong, SARS was raging.  Our flight to Hong Kong was only about one-third full.  We wore masks most of the time since we boarded our airplane for Hong Kong.  The news was that the SARS virus had inflicted another 1000 people that the world knows about and that the death toll was up to around 100 people.  We suffered no ill effects except perhaps a little anxiety.  We were in Hong Kong from April 7 - 10th, 2003. 

Our local guide took us out right away for a walking tour.  We toured each day that we were in Hong Kong.  The first day, I estimated that about 60% of the people were wearing gauze masks.  It was like being in a giant operating room.  People’s behavior appeared perfectly normal but the masks reminded us of the potential problem.  You can see Vicky in the first photo on a less-than busy Hong Kong street.  

We took a sampan ride in the Victoria Harbor.  Sampans are like big bumper boats and the ride is like a Disney ‘Pirates of Victoria Harbor.’  We passed and steered through the millionaire’s yachts, fishing fleets, floating restaurants, and floating housing with TV’s and dogs and everything. Below, Vicky is with our friends and frequent travel companions, Ron and Patty.

We also walked to the Star Ferry on our way to Victoria Peak.  On our walk, I counted people that I passed, up to 100 people.  Sixty-five of the 100 were wearing masks on their faces, so 65 percent.  We crossed Victoria Harbor again on the ferry.  The more I saw of the Hong Kong skyline, the more I noticed the buildings.  I’m not a big fan of skyscrapers, but Hong Kong has some nice ones.  They are complex and interesting looking with great variations in design, tops, shapes, color, heights, and at night, lighting.  We actually went to Victoria Peak twice.  The first time, we couldn’t see anything but the fog.  We were told that we got lucky the second time as you can see in the photo below.  We could actually see the harbor, even if just barely.

We did a lot of touring over our time in Hong Kong.  We did try to do social distancing as you can see in the next photo.  Some of it was made easier by smaller than normal crowds.

We stopped to meet a local family who lived in some government housing.  It was a challenging experience.  They were in a 12 story building made of all concrete with steel bars on the door and windows.  The apartment that we visited was a little over 300 square feet and five people lived there.  The family included Grandma, 83, her daughter, son-in-law, and two grandkids, ages 24 and 26.  The apartment included a religious shrine, 2 TV’s, a VCR, computer, refrigerator, stove, washing machine, fan, bathroom, bunk beds, a double bed, and a couch and chairs.  The housing complex did have a market with fresh produce, food, day care, an elderly center, school, and more.  Laundry was all hung out the windows through the bars on bamboo poles.  You can see photos of the apartment building and the grandmother.

There was no chance for social distancing in this apartment and very little in the entire apartment complex.

Peng Chau

After a couple of busy days in Hong Kong, we decided to seek out somewhere less crowded.  We had another adventure by taking a ferry to Peng Chau Island.  The harbor was jammed with ships and boats of all sizes and descriptions.  No two ships or boats seemed to be headed in the same direction.  My favorites were the cargo ships.  They were loaded with shipping containers stacked high in all different colors.  It made them look like toy boats loaded with blocks.  We passed a bunch of islands but only a fraction of the 280 that make up Hong Kong.

Peng Chau Island was a 30 minute ferry ride and a million miles away from Hong Kong.  It was sparsely populated and the streets were empty.  People that we passed were all walking very slowly and almost all of them were wearing flip-flops for shoes, which included all generations.  We did see some public housing but there were no bars on the windows.

We walked the whole island.  We found a trail that rambles around the island.  It appeared to me that somewhere back in modern times, Peng Chau was a much busier place.  We hiked up Finger Hill and had good views all around.  We saw lots of old buildings that no longer seem to be used.  Fishing too seems to have faded out from this island.  People were very friendly as we walked around the island. 

We found a path that led up some steps to a very green area.  It turned out to be a large cemetery.  We always like to walk cemeteries.  The graves were such that people were buried, but could be removed later.  Also, graves often times had lots of flowers, incense, rice, food, fruit, sticky buns, eggs, cake, and beer.

The shopping district was a small, narrow alley that was several blocks long and had everything.  We, of course, sought out the more unusual buying opportunities.

I’ve often thought that the Chinese aren’t very good at basketball and primarily attributed that to their height, or lack thereof.  I found another reason on Peng Chau.   

I found the old basketball hoop to be somewhat symbolic of Peng Chau. I sensed that it used to be a much busier island but I enjoyed it as we found it today.

Food in Hong Kong

We learned a lot in Hong Kong about wearing masks, using hand sanitizer, and how to travel around a crowded city during an epidemic.  It was all new to us.  We felt reasonably comfortable but we stayed on high alert at all times.  We learned how to pass through doors as a group (one person opens door while everyone else goes through the door and then the person who opened the door uses hand sanitizer), how to walk stairs (no hands), and many other things - it was an experience that I’ll always remember. 

Meals during the SARS epidemic were also different.  We had a farewell dinner across the street from our hotel.  It was a very nice place and we enjoyed the meal.  When we sat down, I noticed that we each had two sets of chopsticks, a white pair and a black pair.  I asked our guide why.  The answer was that one set was for offloading food from the communal dishes onto our own plates and the other set was for us to eat our meal.  The two sets of chopsticks was a SARS addition.  The restaurant was a very large restaurant, which we had almost completely to ourselves.  The dinner was perfect except for two things.  I was served a chicken’s head.  Being a lifetime member of the ‘clean plate club’, I couldn’t decide what to do.  I eventually tried the chicken’s head.  I bit it and it bit me back.

We boarded a morning flight for the start of our way back home.  This flight was from Hong Kong to Tokyo and the flight was only half full.  We were instructed to leave our face masks in place during the flight.  Then, as soon as we were airborne, they served us a meal.  Go figure.  Vicky opted out but I held the line.

A SARS Postscript.  We landed in San Francisco some thirty minutes before we left Hong Kong, due to time changes.  The prior week, President Bush had passed a presidential order that allowed the government to quarantine people with or suspected of having SARS.  We didn’t know what awaited us in San Francisco, coming from Hong Kong.  What we saw as we deplaned at SFO were big signs about hoof and mouth disease and stopping its spread.  We were handed a small information leaflet about SARS.  Then, at the baggage rack, there was a television video playing and telling us all about hoof and mouth disease again and how important it was to stop the spread.  We wondered if we were much more concerned about SARS than the rest of the country.     

This is the end of this trip. We had a great time in China and learned a lot about a lot of things. It also gave me a lot to think about.