Flying from Tokyo to London in 2007
I had a stopover of a couple of hours in Hong Kong. Too long to sit about in
the airport, but not really long enough to do anything else. I’d been to Hong
Kong several times before, but I’d never visited the Big Buddha on Lantau, the
same island as the airport. But what the heck, I thought – I’d take a chance
and be adventurous. Outside it was a bright sunny day with blue skies. So instead
of waiting in the transfer terminal I passed through immigration and with my passport
freshly stamped, I headed down to the taxi rank where I jumped into the back of
a turquoise cab and asked the driver to take me to the Tian Tan. Normally you would
probably choose to take the cable car from the airport over the hills right up
to the top of the ridge where the Big Buddha sits serenely gazing out over the green hills,
but at that time the cable car was closed indefinitely due to on-going
maintenance issues. So the quickest way that day would be by taxi. Another one
of my madcap dashes to squeeze the most out of every flying visit I ever seem
to make (see here)!
It was quite a long drive, through
the small town streets and then slowly zig-zagging up the hillside roads
through the valleys, past a prison and a reservoir. The roads getting steeper
as we climbed. We had to pause part way up as there was roadworks ahead – a
huge machine with an industrial hose mounted on a truck was blasting concrete against the hillside
above the road, reinforcing the cliff-face to prevent landslides. I didn’t know
it then but some friends of mine later said they’d got stuck at this point a few days
before and had sat in a traffic jam for a couple of hours as banksmen with
Stop/Go signs alternated the flow of traffic going up and coming down, everyone
inching along tediously in the baking hot sunshine – little did I know the risk
I was running, given that my flight was departing in just a couple of hours’
time!
When the taxi finally reached the
top of the ridge I asked the driver if he’d wait for me. But he shook his head
and pointed to a taxi rank at which I could see two turquoise taxis waiting,
telling me I could pick up another cab there when I was done. So I thanked him,
paid him my fare and watched as he zipped away, heading back down the hillside
as fast as he could.
Before climbing the steps to the
Big Buddha I decided to take a look around the Po Lin Monastery. The monastery
was first established in 1906, but only properly founded as the Po Lin (meaning
Precious Lotus) Monastery in the 1920s. It is dedicated to Guanyin, and the
main temple building houses three bronze statues, representing the past,
present and future Buddhas. The Tian Tan, or Big Buddha statue on the peak
overlooking the monastery was built much more recently in 1993. The monastery
itself was quite a secluded place until the 1970s when it first opened its
doors to visitors – now, especially since the building of the Big Buddha, it’s
one of the main tourist attractions in Hong Kong, visited by coachloads of
tourists daily. However, I was lucky in that it was relatively empty the day I
visited. Great sticks of incense burning in the courtyard outside. It seemed
blissfully quiet and peaceful.
I climbed the long flight of steps
up to the Tian Tan – 268 of them according to my guidebook, not that I counted
them myself. The great Buddha looming overhead is quite an imposing sight as
you climb, and the view from the platform on which the Buddha sits in serene meditation
is quite something else. The Buddha’s right hand is raised in a gesture that
signifies the removal of affliction and his left rests in his lap in an open
gesture of generosity. Unlike the other great Buddha statues elsewhere which
face south, this Buddha faces north. The circular stone dais supporting the
giant bronze lotus flower on which he sits is modelled on the Altar of Heaven
in Beijing, but unlike the Altar of Heaven it’s made of grey stone rather than
polished white marble. Surrounding the Buddha are six smaller bronze figures,
representing the Offerings of the Six Devas – each offering in turn, a flower, incense,
a lamp, ointment, fruit, and music – symbolising the Six Perfections of
generosity, morality, patience, zeal, meditation, and wisdom. The Big Buddha
itself is also made of bronze – it is 34 metres tall and weighs over 250
tonnes. It was constructed of 202 separate pieces of bronze on a steel
framework. Inside the statue’s base I saw a set of photographs showing the
statue during the various stages of its construction, each photo accompanied by
a very British caption extolling the technical marvels of this feat of engineering in terms
of the relevant facts and figures. A list of statistics and Meccano-set-like
instructions which, I thought, rather robbed the Great Bronze Buddha of any
sense of reverential awe. More a case of empirical facts and figures rather
than faith and feeling, unlike going inside the giant bronze statue of the
Daibutsu at Kamakura in Japan (see here), which has the patina of some eight centuries
long since passed to burnish that sense of deep time and the sanctity of genuine
belief. Initially I felt much the same about the Che Kung Temple and Ten
Thousand Buddhas Monastery at Sha Tin in the New Territories when I first
visited these too – there’s just something seemingly not so very sacred about
modern concrete effigies, even if they do impress by their sheer size and gaudy
decoration. I wonder now though how they might mellow with the passing
centuries? – Even the Daibutsu must have looked new and shiny once upon a time
long, long ago …
Time certainly was ticking however.
Glancing at my watch I realised I should be getting back to the airport where
I’d still need enough time to check-in and pass back through immigration and
security before boarding my onward flight. Heading back down the steps I was
rather dismayed to find the taxi rank completely empty. There was nothing to do
but wait. The place was eerily quiet. As the minutes ticked by I tried not to
fidget too soon with a growing sense of unease, but luckily before my steadily
growing anxiety really got to sink its fangs in, compulsively causing me to clock up increasingly
fretful glances at the seemingly-speeding-up minute hand of my watch – a
turquoise taxi appeared, and laboured round the roadway to drop off a couple of
tourists arriving just in time to catch the onset of late afternoon and an
enchanting sunset if they chose to stay that long. As for me though, I hopped
quickly into the back of the cab and was soon whizzing back down the winding
roads, descending the hillside, past the hose-like neck of the industrial
dragon breathing concrete across the flank of the mountainside, zipping back
through the little towns to the airport where my onward flight was waiting to
take me back to London – my little adventure having been worth the risk to pay
my respects to the peaceful Tian Tan, the Big Buddha of our modern age, perched
upon the hazy hillside looking far out across the green hills and valleys to a calm and serene sea.
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