Leshan and Mt. Emei
Visiting Buddha
The next day was a travel day filled with some incredible sites. We first travelled to Leshan-a city which sits on a wide river and is home to the largest Buddha statue in the world. According to legend, a powerful ruler came to Leshan and thought that the city needed protection from its demons. He decided to build a large statue of Buddha to protect all of the city inhabitants. It is an amazing site and we were able to descend a stairway along the side of the statue to fully appreciate its incredible size. One interesting thing about the statue is that the Chinese are superstitious about taking pictures of themselves “touching” different parts of the statue’s face. The goal is to manipulate where you are standing and hold out your arm so that in the photo it looks like you are actually touching the statue in a specific place. For example, touching the eyebrow means you will have a happy family while touching the forehead means you will have no worries in your life. The students had fun arranging their photos to touch the special parts of the Buddha’s face. While at the site, many of the Chinese tourists were very excited to see our large group and many asked to take photos with us.
After lunch, the group headed to Mt. Emei which is considered one of the most beautiful mountains in China. The reputation is well deserved! This lush tree-covered mountain is home to a variety of temples, monasteries and macaque monkeys. It was a combined bus trip, cable car ride and hike to reach the beautiful Wannian monastery. We relaxed in this tranquil place and enjoyed the incredible mountain air. The students enjoyed playing badmitton and ping-pong with the monks. After a restful evening, we hiked down the mountain. A group took a side hike to visit the monkey pavilion. Although we were warned by our guide that the monkeys would try to steal food off of our backpacks, we were not prepared for the incredible creativity of our monkey hosts. One monkey went into a velcro pant pocket to steal the eye-drops and chapstick of Professor Koplas and another took a Pepsi can from a student’s backpack. Apparently, all of the items were delicious as the empty containers were found while leaving the habitat. After leaving Mt. Emei, we took a flight to reach the ancient city of Xi’an.
