Monday, May 22, 2006

The Peak Flying Afar and Lingyin Temple

When in Hangzhou we went to the Lingyin Temple and The Peak Flying Afar. THIS PLACE WAS HUGE!!! The tour only allowed us an hour here and you could have easily spent and entire day looking around, or longer. It was amazing.


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The Lingyin Temple is a very old Buddhist temple more than 1600years old. It is built on a mountain and is practically as big as the mountain. It consists of 72 halls, 18 pavilions, 1300 rooms and 3000 monks. Oh and a hotel. It is beautiful and breathtaking. I saw only pieces of it and was dazzled at every turn.

I tried taking photos but none of them do justice to the beauty of this place.


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Oh quick parental note – strollers don’t work well here as it is all steps. It just keeps going up and up and up.

Directly across from the main gates to the temple is a cliff of a mountain covered with amazing carvings. We only saw the outside of it and just that was fascinating.


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This is The Peak Flying Afar.


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The legend says that this mountain was a wanderer and did not like to sit in one spot. It would always fly into the air and every time it landed it would kill many people. Finally the priests learned that by carving certain beautiful figures into the rock the mountain would not fly away. There are 300 carvings in total and they were carved at different times through out Chinas long history. The carvings are not only on the main face but also with in the caverns that go into the cliff wall. We never had a chance to see them and it really sucked.

Basically you could spend two days at the Temple Hotel: one just for the temple and one just for the Peak Flying Afar.


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Just beautiful!!!



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Posted by (Top)Andrea::5/22/2006 :: 6 Comments:

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