Hong Kong Part IV: Ngong Ping Plateau and the Po Lin Monastery

An overdue addendum to my Hong Kong adventure:

It was a cold, misty morning on Lantau Island, China. I stepped into a small, comfortable tea house, glad for the warmth. My friend Evan and I were the only two visitors this early on a weekday, and the lone tea girl at work that morning seemed happy for visitors. She invited us to sit down and join her for a tea ceremony. It was my last day in Hong Kong, and the sky had turned cold, grey, and rainy. My flight was due to depart from Lantau Island's Hong Kong International that evening, but we were determined to make the most of my final day by visiting two of Hong Kong's most interesting and famous landmarks, Po Lin Monastery and the Tian Tan Buddha.

the tea house

I've written before about the misconceptions I had about Hong Kong being a completely urbanized city-state. The truth is, more than forty percent of Hong Kong's territory is preserved in national parks and natural reserves. This is something that my friend Hincent, an ecologist, works to protect. Outside of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, much of the territory is still very green and undeveloped. 

I met up with Evan early that morning and we took the train to the outskirts of Hong Kong, in the New Territories. There are a couple ways to get to Po Lin, possibly one of China's most famous monasteries. There's a city bus that drives up the back side of the island to the top of Ngong Ping mountain, but that's boring. I suppose you could take a taxi as well. More interestingly, there's a walking trail that starts at the foot of the mountain, and winds its way up to the top through the dense forest on the undeveloped side of the island. I'm sure that would have been the way to go, but we didn't have time for the long walk to the top; It would have taken the whole day.

There's another option though, one that offered me a great memory of my last day in Hong Kong: the Lantau Island Crystal Cable Car. The glass-bottomed cable car carried us to the peak, high above the green forest floor. 

the glass cable car

From time to time, we were able to spot a hiker or two following the trail far below, and at one point we briefly followed above a stream to a small waterfall.

you can see a river and the path winding its way up the mountain

The cable car ride took at least half an hour from the bottom of the mountain to the peak where Po Lin is located. Looking out in front of us, we could see our destination through the mist, the Tian Tan Buddha - the largest seated Buddha in the world.

The Tian Tan Buddha; the worlds' largest

There's a small, for lack of a better word, village atop the mountain. There's a short street just outside the gates of the monastery with a few shops and restaurants, a museum about Buddhism, the tea house, and yes, a Starbucks. I'm kind of a tea aficionado, so we entered the tea house, the first shop on the street. Inside, we browsed around the small shop. They didn't just sell lots of different types of tea from all over China, but porcelain teacups and teapots as well.

a fine selection of of teas from all over China- some were very expensive

Shortly, the girl who was running the shop that morning invited us to a side room for a tea ceremony. We sat across a large wooden table from her on comfortably cushioned chairs, as she began to explain the ritual behind every motion. Hong Kong excels at taking ancient aspects of Chinese culture and blending it with the modern, and this tea ceremony was no exception to that. She demonstrated a special kind of Hong Kong flowering tea, displayed and served from a modern glass teapot.

Chinese tea ceremony - "The Way of Tea"

A tea ceremony involves lots more than just drinking tea. Using various specially designed glass containers, our hostess casually poured warm water over the small cups and tea-ware in such a way that suggested very specific training. The tea ceremony was performed over a specially-designed stone table that funneled all the spilled water (and there is lots of it in a real tea ceremony) away. 

Hong Kong "Flowering Tea" 

Our hostess served us several cups of tea while explaining the importance of tea in Chinese culture. Although the tea ceremony was offered to us for nothing, I wanted to buy something from the shop to thank her for her time. I bought some of the tea we sampled to take home as a souvenir, and as a free gift I got a small yellow Chinese teacup.

in the village just outside Po Lin- the seated Buddha is behind us

Back in the village, we decided to check out the Buddha museum. They showed a short animated film about the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha. The film was presented in Cantonese, but I was given a headset that played the audio in English. I took a World Religions class in college (Evan and I were in the same class, incidentally) and we studied quite a bit about Buddhism. Our professor lived in China for quite some time, and knew a lot about Mahayana (Chinese) Buddhism. It's very different from Theravada (Thai Buddhism), and watching the film was a really good reminder of the things I learned in that class as it was from the Mahayana school.

After the museum we had a tea set lunch at a noodle house, then we headed into the monastery itself.

the gates to Po Lin Monastery

Although Po Lin (meaning "Precious Lotus") is a popular tourist spot, it's a functional Buddhist monastery, and you're greeted with the smell of burning incense and the sound of ringing bells. In the monastery's Hall of Buddhas there are three statues, representing the Buddha's past, present, and future lives. Robed monks bustled about their business, ignoring all the tourists who were beginning to arrive in groups as the day wore on. We looked around for a while before heading up to see the "Big Buddha," the main attraction at Po Lin.

The Tian Tan Buddha is a huge bronze seated Buddha, the largest in the world. It was completed in 1993, and it's built atop the plateau, surrounded by the forest to symbolize harmony with nature. It is so large, that it is rumored to be visible from Macau on a clear day. I don't know... It wasn't a clear day when I was at the Buddha; nor was it the day before when I was in Macau. The Big Buddha is one of China's five "Great Buddhas," and interestingly faces north, while the other four uniformly face south. There are three levels inside the base of the monument. The first two are free to enter and hold Buddhist artwork and scripture. To be allowed into the uppermost level, you have to "make an offering" to the Buddha (ie. purchase a ticket). This is worth it, however. The upper level holds a holy Buddhist relic, which some believe to contain Siddharta Gautama's cremated remains. Plus, if you buy a ticket, you can get a free snack from the monastery.

the Big Buddha

You must climb 268 steps to get to the Buddha. I'm not sure if that's significant or not. Either way, it was unbelievably crowded on the steps and at the Buddha statue itself. We didn't stay there for too long, just long enough to look around and get some pictures.

Back down the steps, there's a lesser known attraction. Past the temple's tea gardens lies the "Wisdom Path." A short walk through the forest brings you to an interesting site, tall wooden pillars carved with calligraphy from the Heart Sutra, one of the most well known and popular Buddhist scriptures describing insight and enlightenment. The pillars are set into a figure 8 to represent infinity. There was hardly anyone out there, but as we arrived it began to rain.

Heart Sutra Trail

Luckily the forest was dense enough, that once back on the path we didn't really get rained on. It was getting on into the afternoon, so after collecting our vegetarian snacks from the monastery (from buying our tickets to the Buddha) we went back to the cable car to take us down the mountain. From there it was only a short bus ride to the airport. Within a few hours I was on my way back to Bangkok, ready for my next adventure.

The Wisdom Path

Note: 

This post is a follow-up to my previous posts about Hong Kong. November and December were really busy months, and I decided at the time that it was best to try to keep my blog up to date rather than fall further behind in my updates. I never really intended to write this post, to be honest; I thought that the previous three were enough. 

I've had a lot of time off from work lately because of... things. Anyway, since I've been bored just sitting around my apartment, and since I haven't really done anything new of note to write about, I figured I should finally put up the long-lost fourth chapter in the Hong Kong Adventure.

I'll publish this post now in January, 2014, but after a few weeks up on the main page, I may backdate it and move it to where it belongs chronologically- October, 2013.

Thanks for reading! Anyway, here are a few pictures of some pandas that I saw at Ocean World.

they don't do much

red panda

... because everybody loves pandas.