Taxi, Bus, Trishaw, Walk, Ferry, Walk, Taxi-Sharing, Speedboat, Walk to reach Putuo Shan, Temple Island

and – voila… it’s that easy to go to Temple Island Putuo Shan from our last stop – the town Ningbo just 50 kilometers away… 🙂

But, Putuo Shan was worth everything… It locates one of the four holy mountains in China (300 metres high). The complete island (12 km²) is full just with untouched nature, temple buildings and walkways between: More than 100 monasteries and shrines are located here.

I joined the Buddhist morning pray in the main temple and enjoyed the untouched nature on that beautiful island…

Travelling

My travel book writes “Wenige Stunden benötigt die Fähre zur nordöstlich von Ningbo gelegenen Insel Putuo Shan…” – that’s just true if this direct ferry is going. But, for sure on that day this ferry was not going – because of too heavy waves the day before, or the captain didn’t want – or whatever. So instead of some hours it took us nearly a day to get there. It took already several time (also with the help of my Chinese friend travelling with me) to get out the information that there is no ferry and to plan another travel route to the island: With bus to another harbour, then the bus gets transferred with a big ferry to a sister island, the bus drives over the whole sister island and we continue with a speedboat to Putuo Shan. That was the plan, but plans change…

First change was when we drove for about one hour, still didn’t reach the harbour and got stuck in a traffic jam. After two hours of stop-and-go (yes, we went next to the bus) we got out the information that all these cars in front of us are waiting to get on ferries. The day before was a big storm, so some of them were standing still from yesterday for waiting to get shipped.

Then we saw the sign next to the street: 22km to the one harbour, 50km to the other one (see picture)… And our bus driver said of course in Chinese: “No, no, just go… the harbour is just 2 kilometers away”. After several discussions of my friend with other travellers we decided to take the risk, hired one of the lokal rikshaws, and the driver was sweating to bring us to our destiny. Yes, it was really just 2 kilometers, and we could use our bus-ticket to get on the ferry. Nice!

On the island: Just one bus; completely full… no next one… searching for other travellers, sharing a taxi (fixed price without taxameter), driving one hour to the other end and the other ferry station. Then we took one of the last speedboats to Putuo Shan. Yeees, we made it. It’s already getting evening, but we made it! 🙂

On the Island

At its peak there lived about 4000 monks on the island (no “normal” people have been allowed on the island), in the 1960s the number reduced to below 30 (luckily “Cultural Revolution” in China destroyed not too much), and nowadays it increased again to several hundreds.

The island is just impressive, actually you cannot walk all distances, but we tried to discover at least the southern part by feet. Later we also used one of the mini-busses to carry us to other spots on the island. Today the island is not any longer just for monks – people are welcomed, cause they pay more than 10EUR just for entry to the island, and that’s really really huge for an entrance-fee in China.

Main attraction is the statue Guanyin which is 33m high and bronce-colored. The Goddess of Mercy usually is visible from nearly everywhere on the island, but we had bad weather, so we often didn’t see the face – it was covered in clouds. Guanyin holds a Steering wheel in her left hand – this symbolizes the protection of fishers and travel-monks from sea-thunders.

Easter Sunday – Morning Pray with the Buddhists

I did this trip on the Easter-Weekend. As spiritual way of praying I intended to join a morning-pray with the Buddhists. Informed myself the day before, got up at 3 in the morning and went to the temple. There were waiting hundreds of people standing in a line. So I was trying to check out if everything was correct (I was the only Western guy, just Chinese in the line) and asked the monks at the entrance if I can enter (of course they cannot speak English, so I did with hands and feet). He said that I should have organized a ticket the day before and I cannot enter, at least this was, what I understood by his gestures and the give-away of tickets from all guys entering. But 15 minutes later I got to know a young Chinese guy speaking a little English. He integrated me into his group, and we entered the temple – I don’t know why, but maybe because of the rush they didn’t check my ticket…

Firstly, we had to wait till everybody’s ticket was checked; more than one hour later the ceremony could start. At the beginning it was very meditative and interesting, but after more than one hour getting up, kneeing down, getting up, kneeing down, turning, turning back, kneeing down, getting up etc. for me it turned more into a sporty event than a meditative one. There have been just small varieties, just like several acts of the pray. Cause I could not understand anything, after nearly 2 hours I tried to escape, go back and get some more hours of sleep. But impossible – the monks looked the outer security walls of the temple to avoid disturbances by other people. So I could move around freely outside the praying-house, but impossible to leave the temple. We had to wait till everything was finished, and at 6 o’clock I was able to get back to fetch some more sleep…

But anyway, this visit was a very nice impression, how Buddhists do their praying, I’m proud to have been part of it.