A trip to China - Day 6 - The Shaolin Temple

The Shaolin Temple

So this is not a single building, that's not how the Chinese work.  It’s a whole host of buildings, the first of which is up some steps, through a gate, then along a tree-lined avenue with monument stones to some more steps, past a cauldron burning incense, and then to the temple.  There are several monks inside.

The front entrance:



Inside the entrance building, there are some large statues that I'm guessing are there to scare away the wrong sort of people



Once past these characters, you are on a walkway between pagodas where there are trees, and sculptures

                          

and through the next pagoda brings you to the first of the temples.  There are three doors and three buddas.  This is through the middle door



And no you can't go inside, you just stand on the outside looking in.

                               

In one part of the temple there were three monks, and, believe it or not, they were all on their mobile phones.

This is certainly not ancient times, so what did the monks do before mobile communications?

Up some more stairs to the next building,



And so on till we reach the one at the top.  Outside each is a cauldron burning incense, and that aroma hangs on the air everywhere you go in the compound.



Then it's a case of what goes up must come down, and strangely enough, it doesn't take as long to go back down, and in doing so we got to see and hear a bit of singing by the monks.

There was a story to go with the various buildings and other aspects but I didn't hear half of it, and couldn't understand our guide for the rest.

All in all, it was an interesting place, but still not worth the money we paid.