Hanshan Temple New Year

Corbett | January 2, 2009 5:12 PM

It's been an interesting and cold couple of days. Irene had a fantastic idea of going to Suzhou's famous Hanshan Temple to ring the bell for New Year's. Every New Year they ring the bell 108 times, with the last bell ring struck at midnight. Then they immediately let another 108 lucky ticket holders ring the bell as well. Somehow miraculously Irene managed to score tickets 100-104 and we got on the train the next day with our Taiwanese friends, Monica and Stanley.

Everyone was excited to visit the famous temple they had read about in the poem, A Night Mooring by Maple Bridge 楓橋夜泊, by Zhang Ji 张继, that they all had to study as kids in Taiwan:

月落烏啼霜滿天
江楓漁火對愁眠
姑蘇城外寒山寺
夜半鐘聲到客船

After spending the day cruising my old haunts around Suzhou, we did some touristy things then decided to walk out to Hanshan Temple. Walking 5 or 6km in -4C weather is a bitch! I had to pick up a bottle of 二锅头 baijiu to warm us up along the way. Still it was fun, and frozen or not we finally got to the temple and immediately got lost in all the festivities and food. As with any successful Chinese outing there was a fair amount of chaos and excitement.

We stumbled into a little tea house before the bell ringing to warm up and sat front row sipping hot bilouchun tea and checking out a really cute guzhen player in a red sleeveless prom dress:

When we got inside the temple it was a mob of pushing, jumping, praying people trying to get close to the bell. We managed to push, jump, and pray our way to the front door of the little pagoda where the bell ringing takes place, and were smashed from one side by monks trying to get into the temple, and excited people on the other side queing up with tickets. I hung onto a post and Irene hung onto me, and we were OK but it was still scary as there was no idea if this mass of people would suddenly get out of control. The most amazing part of the evening came when they started ringing the bell, and then it got completely silent for about 18 minutes (one ring every 10 seconds). Several thousand completely silent people jammed up against each other wishing for a better 2009 was a pretty weird experience. I tried to compose a reasonably thought out prayer for Guanyin but the guy I was shoved up against kept talking about what bar they were going to next, so Guanyin probably received a muddled prayer in Chinese that was interspersed with not a few English swear words.

The next day we went out to Tong Li to cruise around as tourists and visited the Troubadour of Tong Li (小光头) again like we did last year. The day ended at The Bookworm in Suzhou which is a really nice addition to the city. A great two days of fun!

Category: Mr. Asia

Comments (0)

---

Add a comment

---

---

Name

Email Address

URL

Remember personal info?

Comments

Captcha:

Type the characters you see in the picture above.