Indiana YRC and the Temple of Bling

Jing 'An at Night.  Note the central rotating neon thingy.

Twelve hours in the future, it is a sunny, cracking with energy sort of day.  The smell of incense is in the air at the YRC because it's time to go to the temple!.  Jing 'An, temple of course, is the oldest, newest and brightest temple in the spiritual firmament here in the good old 'Hai.



Before we head out there we have two housekeeping items:

Access to the YRC.  Anyone, and everyone, has access to the YRC.  It's public, kids, so there is no need for the YRC staff to "add someone to the mailing list" unless, of course, they just like to be reminded.  Just send a new YRCer a link to the Blog and they are on-line.  The Blog is completely and totally open to the public and is on-line 24 hours a day.
The link is simply "thekrezchronicles.blogspot.com".

Here's a real link, if you want to copy and paste:                
Check here once a week on Friday for the Yellow River Chronicles

Thanks for listening in a sharing the wonder of the YRC with friends and family. Now, the second item, an update:

Food Scandal Bingo Update:   The discoveries of terrible materials in terrible places are getting too frequent to keep up with in the 'Hai.   Recent discoveries include cancer-causing fake shampoo, radioactive materials in offices, cancer-causing Shanghai fog, yada yada.  But a new one was the discovery of "rare earth" materials in tea.  Here's the article for Shanghaiist, a good place to keep up on the news in China:

19 oolong tea brands, including Lipton, found to be toxic

Resist the temptation to reach out for Lipton Tieguanyin the next time you see it along supermarket aisles.

China's quality watchdog, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, says that 19 products, including Lipton Tieguanyin (pictured on the right) have been found to contain excessive levels of potentially harmful rare-earth minerals in a random check of 58 oolong products from Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Fujian and Guangdong. Five of these brands are manufactured by Shanghai-based companies and they are: Mingfeng, Jiaranlu, Zhengxiangyuan, Cuiming and Shenxin.

The offending labels all exceeded the maximum 2 milligrams per kilogram limit for rare-earth mineral content stipulated under Chinese law. Rare earth is said to help raise output and improve the flavour of the tea, but excessive use can be harmful to health, especially to the bones, said the watchdog.

Now here's the real kicker, if you're ready for it:

The Shanghai Bureau of Quality and Technical Supervision remained silent yesterday. Last month it inspected some locally produced teas but found no rare-earth content or other problems. Two brands were found to have less net weight than stated on the package, according to inspectors.

UPDATE: Lipton has recalled its toxic tea.

WE NOW RETURN TO THE REGULARLY SCHEDULED COLUMN...

Central Courtyard

Now, on to the Temple!  This review of the Jing 'An Temple from Frommers:

Always lively and crowded, this garishly decorated temple has the longest history of any shrine in Shanghai (about 17 centuries, though the shopping annex is considerably more recent, as is the 63m/207-ft.-tall gold pagoda at the back, completed in 2010). 


The temple's chief antiquities are a Ming Dynasty copper bell (the Hongwu Bell) that weighs in at 3,175 kilograms (3.5 tons) and stone Buddhas from the Northern and Southern States period (A.D. 420-589). Although its name means "Temple of Tranquillity," it is hardly the place for quiet meditation these days, nor was it in the past. 


Before 1949, this was Shanghai's richest Buddhist monastery, presided over by the Abbott of Bubbling Well Road (Nanjing Xi Lu, as it was known in colonial times because of a well that was located in front of the temple), an imposing figure who kept seven mistresses and a White Russian bodyguard.

Take that, Dali Lama!  Garish, my saffron robes!!  The YRC staff rolled through the Jing 'an Temple recently during one of our Tours de  Hai.  Often at night we can see the Vegas-like glow of the Temple until the Shanghai "Lights Out, Comrades" at 11:00 in the p of m.  So, we were...curious.

As Frommer's reports, to visit the Temple is to step from the manic madness of the nearby shopping center (The Temple is part of the the shopping center, actually) and enter the madness that is the courtyard of the temple.

I got your serenity...right here!

In the temple, three primary rites by the worshipers were observed.   The first was the offering of incense. In this rite, incense was purchased at the temple and then lit in the central burners.   A bow was made in each of the four directions of the compass.  The incense was then placed in a burner as an offering.  This being Shanghai, of course, there was quite a bit of action, similar to the trading floor of the Chicago Board of Trade, as worshipers were elbowing their way to a free space to bow and meditate in a chaotic frenzy of serenity seeking.

Aim high and duck!

The second rite was the offering of coins for good luck.  Small change is placed in the hand and then hurled skywards towards the central iron pagoda.   As best the YRC staff could determine, the amount of luck depended on which level of the central tower the coin reached, so considerable force was being used to reach the top of the pagoda.

The air was filled the sound of pinging metal and ricocheting yuan coins zipping through the air like spiritual shrapnel from the quest for good fortune.   Worshipers had to advance across the central courtyard under a constant hail of small change fire as they sought space to bow and achieve tranquility.




The third ritual was the giving of gifts to the gods as offerings.  It has been our observation that things are very well-packaged in Shanghai. As part of the traditions of the Bling Dynasty, an offering or gift should have an inner box and an outer box.  The colors should have lots of red and gold and there should be something expensive looking inside, be it cookies, or cakes or incense.

So while the gods themselves received a small package of snacks, the actual offering generated a small mountain of empty red boxes that piled up just out of range of the hail of coins.  Recycling has not quite caught on in Shanghai, unfortunately.

After nearly nine minutes under fire from the coins, we decided to retreat from the free-fire zone of the central courtyard.  Having visited the gods, observed the rites, dodged some coins, and burned some incense, the YRC staff went in search of amulets.  Luckily, many fine examples were to be found and victory was declared.  There are other, quieter temples that the YRC has visited that we can share in future issues.  In the meantime, as Lao Tzu said:

Humans follow Earth, 

Earth follows Heaven,

Heaven follows Tao,

Tao follows Nature.

And so this week's story ends.  Armed with fresh amulets, we made our way out of the temple, dodged the beggars haunting the doorway and vanished into the crowd as quietly as we had arrived, as the story goes.  See you next week and thanks for reading!