Wednesday, October 01, 2014

Neighborhood temple


About ten minutes' walk west of where I'm staying, past (under) the Yixian Elevated Road, is a temple called Sanguan 三观堂。It's apparently a pretty standard issue official Buddhist place, I learned from the person I went with, burning incense (but only that bought on the premises). The rules out front prohibit any outsider-organized activities, as well as non-"宗教 religion" activities like fortune-telling, divination or anything based in "迷信 superstition." Not that there weren't fortune-tellers set up just outside the temple walls, or that there wasn't a place for venerating a rather Daoist-looking figure (perhaps the God of Wealth) inside, but discreetly, unnamed. All quite
quite staid compared to the festival I'm going to see tomorrow, I'm told!