This is a particularly ornate buddha statue behind glass. The decorations between the Buddha image and the door are particularly numerous and colorful with a lot of red (a favorite color of the Chinese). | =0= |
This was one of my favorites. Much more subtle. I also liked the dark blue theme. | =0= |
This is a temple under construction as they are adding a second story. Their scaffolding was made of bamboo trunks, perhaps tow or three inches thick. They are tied to together and support the structure under construction. Once they complete the general construction (bare wood), they then will begin the process of decorating it, which, I presume, is the more time consuming part of the process. | =0= |
This is the view of the ceiling of a temple from just outside the temple. They really go for ornate carvings which are then painted. In this picture you can also see a couple of smaller ShiShi dogs which were just everywhere (and we liked them all). | =0= |
This is a particularly impressive carving at the top of a supporting column. | =0= |
This is an example of the decorative dragons that would be on the temple roofs. I presumed that originally the roofs would slant down for better drainage, but then an up turn as you got closer to the edge was intended to send evil spirits back up as they were sliding down if they happened to land on your roof. This was further stylized to upward points at the corners which were then decorated as dragons. Who is to know how these traditional styles developed? | =0= |
Most every part of the temple was decorated and this was a particularly ornate supporting stone pillar. | =0= |
This is a close up of one of these impressive pillars. Each of the carvings was very detailed and they were very large and there was a full row of them. Perhaps the carving of these pillars helped Buddhist monks develop patience. Well that ends the third of ten tape sides (two sides per tape), so I will end here rather than trying to cut and paste the audio from two different recordings. | =0= |
This page was last updated on September 19, 2005.