CHENGDU - CITY OF BROCADES

At the host’s urging, we rushed through our work today, and embarked on a visit to Xindu County north of Chengdu. Chengdu City has an urban population of 3 million and administers a number of counties around it. During my stay in Chengdu, my hosts brought me around this extended region which has a total population of 10 million, and of which Xindu County is part of. Our destination was Baoguang Si (Precious Light Monastery) in the central of Xindu, a little city with a few hundred thousand people. Built in the Han Dynasty (A.D. 25 - 220), the monastery had been destroyed and rebuilt a number of times. The main sights of the monastery include a 30m, 1000-year old Sheli Pagoda which leans to the left side (Sichuan’s leaning tower ?) and the Hall of Luohan. (Luohan is a Buddhist deity whose status is too complicated to be explained here.) The latter contains 500 life-size statues of luohans, none of which are similar in appearance. Some look like ordinary saints and monks while others grotesque - the stuff that may lead to nightmares... 

We drove around the city of Xindu and it is apparent that Chinese economic reforms have reached here as well. Heart of a wealthy countryside, Xindu now has quite a few skyscrapers and a number of foreign investments. And like anywhere else in China, not all developments are necessarily positive. Our hosts drove us passed a street nicknamed “Singapore Commercial Street”. A Singapore businessman first invested in a hotel here, and county authorities planned to transform this into a showcase of “modern management and commercial development”. However, despite the best intentions, it turned into a red light and entertainment district, with night-clubs, motels, karaokes, massage parlours, etc. 

Diary : 26 October 1996 A visit to Wenshu Yuan, Chengdu’s most important temple 

After a bit of work at the hotel, I went to the Temple of the God of Wisdom (Manjusri), which is located in an old neighbourhood in northern Chengdu. Built in the 17th Century, this is the most popular temple in Chengdu. The interior of the temple and the halls are typical of Chinese temple architecture. What I found interesting were the streets of shops selling anything relating to worship - incense, fire-crackers, “hell-money” (paper money meant to be burnt as tributes to long dead ancestors), candles, alters, etc - no different from those found around Shi Ma Lu Guanyin Tang in downtown Singapore, but certainly more exotic, as the latter is now surrounded with highrise housing apartments and other symbols of modernity. 

Visit Snippets for some of my Observations & Viewpoints 

The oldest profession 

The rule of law and enforcement 

One child policy & little princes 

Next : Leshan & Emei Shan : Pilgrimage