I present to you installment #7 from my blog thread describing what to call groups of animals … See how many you can guess. Answers listed at the bottom of the page. (I’m especially proud of No. 5 on this week’s list!)
Their knot knotted in the mud.
He heard the murmuration’s murmurs.
Unblinking, the stare stared back.
The dole didn’t look doleful.
The earth’s earth was in the earth. ***
Stuffy noses don’t suit a sute.
Stare, Raptor rescue center, AustraliaDole, Wong Tai Sin Medicine Temple, New Territories, China
Answers:
Knot of toads [1]
Murmuration of starlings
Stare of owls [2]
Dole of turtles [3]
Earth of foxes; place the vixen (female fox) searches out to raise her kits; ground she finds the earth in. ***3 uses of the word!
Sute of bloodhounds
Knot member, back trails Cranberry Lake, Adirondacks USA
I always feel a little strange when I recognize it’s time to mark milestones and I have several to announce.
This is my 99th blog post.
I’ve posted in these virtual pages twice a month since I began way back in September of 2012. It all started with my husband’s suggestion that I establish an Internet presence….
My published books are fiction, and this blog serves as a good place to present excerpts. Potential readers of my books might want a sample of my writing and a glimpse of the human being behind the words. It’s also a place for non-fiction essays. I get to explore ideas and topics that don’t need to be transformed for novels. Posting every other week is great writerly discipline. I’ve never missed a bi-monthly posting date!
…. and this all began simply as a way to introduce my two novels Tsunami Cowboys and Broken In: A Novel in Stories. Both are available at amazon.com in book and eBook form.
It’s been a fun journey these last three years! Thanks to all of you for visiting these pages. I wish everyone the happiest of holidays. I’ll be back in the new year with an announcement. Milestone #2 is on the way!!!
I spent a few weeks north of Hong Kong in the New Territories. The transportation system is easy and each day I went exploring. I’d read up, select yet another fascinating place to discover, and off I’d go.
Entering the temple at Wong Tai Sin
As a massage therapist I went to pay my respects to Sun Si-miao Zhen Ren, Perfected Master and god of Chinese Medicine.
He was a doctor and herbalist who lived from 581 – 682. (Yes. 101 years.) Perfected Master Sun authored some of the most important Traditional Chinese Medicine treatises. Along with medical recipes and information on everything from acupuncture and massage to herbs and diet, he wrote the following: “A Great Physician should not pay attention to status, wealth or age. Neither should he question whether the particular person is attractive or unattractive, whether he is an enemy or a friend, whether he is a Chinese or a foreigner, and finally, whether he is uneducated or educated. He should meet everyone on equal grounds. He should always act as if he were thinking of his close relatives.” [1]
He tried to heal whoever needed his help, regardless of whether his patients were rich or poor. He turned down offers for jobs as physician at the Sui and Tang courts, working instead with ordinary people.
His books are still required reading for all TCM practitioners. Taoists honor him as a god of healing. Even today, the ill and infirm (or people wishing to stay healthy) visit his temple to make offerings.
So I headed to Wong Tai Sin Temple.
I was delighted to discover that at the temple you can worship gods. Goddesses. Protectors and saints. Local deities. Buddha.
The entrance is protected.
I was met by wonderful bronze statues of the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac.
Then I ascended the stairs and entered the compound.
The temple is just outside a metro stop, smack dab in an urban area. The serenity of the shrines and their religious activity is set against a backdrop of tall buildings.
Click on the photograph and check out all the turtles
Wong Tai Sin Temple includes a meditative garden, and I wandered around to take photographs.
Even more turtles on this side!
As I walked I thought about the gods of medicine. When Uwe and I were in Egypt in 2013 we visited the ruins at Edfu. They contain a room known as the Laboratory. The high walls are covered in hieroglyphics that are some of the world’s oldest formulas for incense and unguents. Our local guide Khairy spoke German and was finishing a degree in Egyptology. Khairy believes that the Egyptian gods were real men and women. He thought they’d once lived and had made discoveries or created things so extraordinary that over time they came to be considered gods. He said, surely whoever wrote the recipes inscribed on these walls must have seemed like a god.
Chamber of medical recipes at Edfu, Temple to Horus
I recalled Khairy’s words as I explored the temple.
When I left Wong Tai Sin I don’t know if I came away a better massage therapist, but I love the idea of a temple to a person who dedicated his life to healing others.
NOTES: [1] On the Absolute Sincerity of Great Physicians (大醫精誠 Dayi Jingcheng). This has been called the Chinese Hippocratic Oath.
On Kowloon Island’s Victoria Harbor you can walk to the Star Ferry pier and the Hong Kong Museum of Art along the Avenue of Stars. Hong Kong’s vibrant film industry and its stars are featured with statues and hand imprints. It’s a great place to take photos of the city, too!
You are seeing correctly. Placards of other cities had been placed along the water front.
In January 2014 I blogged about The United Buddy Bears, a non profit art project that first appeared in Berlin. I saw them when they came to Stuttgart. They’ve gone on to tour around the world and raise money for UNICEF.
When Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan was in Berlin to film Around the World in 80 Days he discovered Buddy Bears scattered around the city streets.
The project’s message of peace, understanding, love and tolerance among the world’s nations, cultures and religions resonated deeply with Mr. Chan, and he got involved. He created the Jackie Chan Kids Corner where children create their own Buddy Bear designs. Jackie approached the Hong Kong Government, proposing that the project tour to Hong Kong.
He brought the bears to Hong Kong and on May 15, 2004 a “United Buddy Bears Exhibition, the first major event that Hong Kong jointly organised with an overseas organisation to promote public art, opened.” [1]
It’s fitting that the exhibit came to this city. Here East and West meet, and Hong Kong remains a bastion of diversity, tolerance and openness.
The flags of Hong Kong and Germany, side by side
Along with promoting public art, the exhibit raised money for the following charities: the Hong Kong Committee for UNICEF, the Community Chest of Hong Kong, and the Jackie Chan Charitable Foundation.
Jackie Chan was deservedly nominated UNICEF ambassador extraordinary.
Now the postscript: Imagine my surprise (and delight) to find a Buddy Bear on the Avenue of Stars. A plaque states that since the bears appeared more than $4,800,000 HK have been raised!
Everyone walking by wanted to be photographed by the Buddy Bear. I felt ridiculously happy when I spotted it. This bear seemed to connect me to Hong Kong and to my host country Germany and the rest of the world, too.
Some messages just never go out of fashion. As Nick Lowe put it, (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love And Understanding?
NOTES: [1] United Buddy Bears Exhibit Opens press release at www.info.gov.hk. Go to my earlier post The United Buddy Bears if you want to read more.
My father was a fisherman. If you grow up in the house of someone who takes his fishing seriously, you learn to love fish.
Or not.
Although I can’t imagine that scenario.
My childhood was filled with family camping trips where brook trout, large and small mouth bass, sunfish, perch and blue gills filled the menu. This is one of the only times I was glad I don’t have brothers, because my sisters and I got to fish with Bobbo. Now I’m not saying a son would have been his sole fishing companion, but in all likelihood that would’ve been one of their bonds. As it was, one girl rowed the boat while Bobbo and the others cast lines off the back. If we all hiked in to a back pond in the Adirondacks, one of us floated on the second, mini inflatable raft and did her own fishing.
When everyone moved away and established adult lives, visits to see Mom and Bobbo always included a meal of fish. I remain unspeakably moved that my father began to freeze the fish he caught, making sure there’d be enough when everyone came home for the holidays. Every family has its own food traditions. For the Campbells, one of the best is fish for breakfast. The simplest and best of recipes, whether prepared over a campfire or on the stove in your fancy kitchen is: Fry some bacon until crisp. Dredge trout in seasoned corn meal. Fry the fish in the bacon drippings. Serve with the bacon, scrambled eggs, Sandy’s coffee cake or toast with jam (preferably homemade by somebody you know and love), mugs of hot coffee and glasses of juice.
Trust me. I expect to eat this meal in Heaven.
Flash forward to my recent trip to visit my sister Pam in China’s New Territories.The town of Sai Kung receives lots of weekend day trippers from Hong Kong who come for the green scenery and the quieter pace. And to eat, because Sai Kung’s waterfront is lined with restaurants.
Almost all of them keep live fish and crustaceans in tanks out in front.
Customers bring their own catch and pay a fee to have it prepared based on weight, or you can select the seafood of your choice. The restaurant will prepare it steamed with ginger, cooked with soy sauce and scallions, or deep fried and served with a sweet and sour sauce.
Pam and I sat down at an outdoor table to order. The waitress had us follow her over to the live tanks and we chose snapper.
Choosing our meal was more intimidating than it sounds. Some of the fish were ridiculously huge. How much would our fish cost? She eyeballed it and announced, 450$HK, plus the fee to prepare it. Not cheap.
What if a group of customers came in and ordered a one hundred pound fish? What would that cost? Could the cooks prepare it whole? Just how big a fish can a deep fat fryer hold, anyway?
A short time later a man brought out our fried snapper. He gave us a few seconds to appreciate its sizzling and then upended a plate of sweet and sour sauce. The sauce contained bright, chewy, sweet strips that we finally identified as preserved citrus peel. True daughters of a fisherman, we stripped that fish carcass clean.
I just spent a few weeks visiting my sister and her family in Hong Kong. I was there in May, ahead of the rainy season. It’s already hot and humid, only a hint of the weather to come….
It can’t be a coincidence that this time of year is also the birthday of Tin Hau. [1, 2]
She’s the Goddess of the Seas, patron saint of sailors and fishermen throughout China and Southeast Asia. Her festival is always held on the twenty-third day of the third lunar month of the lunar calendar. This year her birthday fell on May 11th. My friend Weiyu flew over from Beijing, and we had the good luck to see a dragon parade. [3]
Lin Moniang (don’t forget that Chinese put the family name first) was born during the Song Dynasty on Meizhou Island in Fujian, China. Her dates are 23 March 960 – 4 October 987. She was the seventh daughter, an excellent swimmer, and wore a red dress. No matter how bad the weather was, Lin Moniang stood on the shore in that red dress in order to guide the fishing boats back home.
Wikipedia’s description of her legend is so good that I’ll repeat it verbatim here: “Lin Moniang’s father and brothers were fishermen. One day, a terrible typhoon arose while they were out at sea, and the rest of her family feared that those at sea had perished. In the midst of this storm, depending on the version of the legend, she fell into a trance while praying for the lives of her father and brothers or dreamed of her father and brothers while she was sleeping or sitting at a loom weaving. In both versions of the story, her father and brother were drowning but Moniang’s mother discovered her sleeping and tried to wake her. This diverted Moniang’s attention and caused her to drop her brother who drowned as a result. Consequently, Moniang’s father returned alive and told the other villagers that a miracle had happened.” [4]
She was deified shortly after her death. There are many reports of miraculous sightings of Tin Hau by sailors in distress. Chinese who immigrated often built temples once they arrived overseas to thank her for the safe journey. Each year a major festival is held on her birthday.
One of the most spectacular is in Yuen Long in the New Territories. Weiyu and I headed out early to reach the town (an easy trip on the MTR, the wonderful regional transportation system). We left the metro station and immediately saw bright colors and a crowd of people. As we got closer, firecrackers began to go off! We’d arrived right on time!
The firecrackers exploded and confetti fell out and rained down!
This village had just begun to parade their dragon. They circled the lot a few times accompanied by a loud drum and cymbals. There was another loud bang, more firecrackers popped, and everyone followed the dragon as it headed into town.
We arrived at another square where more dragons waited.
They took turns weaving up and down the main street, curling and snaking, rising and falling in an intricate dance. Sometimes two dragons danced at the same time.
People’s shirts indicated which village and dragon they were with. There were groups of old women waving fans, and children in costume, and lions.
Can you see the dragon on the side in green?
Flags and banners waved around the Fa Paus, ornate towers with paper flowers. Huge elaborate placards wished for luck and prosperity.
One village group’s Fa Pau
Offerings included entire roasted pigs.
I recognized those instantly from the worship of Bà Chúa Xứ in southern Viet Nam. It can’t be a coincidence that her festival starts at the beginning of the rainy season on the twenty-third day of a lunar month too…
NOTES: [1] Tianhou (天后) literally means “Empress of Heaven”. [2] She’s also known as Mazu, Tian Fei or A-Ma. The Buddhists conflated her into a reincarnation of Guan Yin, Goddess of Compassion. [3] She has over 90 temples in Hong Kong alone. [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazu
Go to my post The Cult of Bà Chúa Xứ to read about south Viet Nam’s most sacred shrine. More pictures from our trips to Vietnam and China and of Uwe’s photography may be viewed at viewpics.de.
My sister Pam is a teacher for international schools. For the last three years she’s been located in the Hong Kong area. It’s a great place to visit: the languages are Cantonese and English, the transportation system is so simple that anyone can feel clever using it, and contrasts between modernity and tradition are everywhere you look.
Pam and her family live in the New Territories. This part of China is on the mainland north of Hong Kong. While Hong Kong is the most densely and vertically populated city on the planet, the New Territories are still relatively quiet. The landscape consists of steep, lush jungle peaks that end in bays and inlets.
The vertical density of Hong KongThe view from their apartment near Sai Kung
The region is growing, and changing fast. On the bus from the apartment we pass villages on hillsides or tucked into hamlets and harbors. Several floating villages of traditional houseboats are minutes away. And then the high rises suddenly appear, row after row after row.
There are lots more that look just like theseSo did you hear the one where the Buddhist monk, the Catholic priest, and the Jewish rabbi enter a temple…
It’s not far to Man Fat Tsz, the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery in Sha Tin. It was founded by the devout layman Venerable Yuexi (the Chinese月溪法師; pinyin: yuè xī). Building began in 1949 as Yuexi and his disciples carried everything up from the foot of the mountain. For eighteen years they constructed the buildings – and 12,800 Buddha statues.
You head up through a bamboo forest and statues line both sides of the path to the monastery. There are roughly 500 Arhan [1] statues in plastic, painted gold. Each one is unique.
Their expressions represent the experience of enlightenment. Other statues await once you reach the summit. (Click on any of the thumbnail photos for a closer look.)
I felt like I was in a tacky Buddhist Disneyland until I got to the top and entered the main temple. Before the altar is a glass case, and it contains Venerable Yuexi’s preserved body! His body (still perfectly intact) was exhumed eight months after his April 24, 1965 death. Yuexi was next embalmed with Chinese lacquer, his head and face covered in gold leaf. The Diamond Indestructible Body of Yuexi’s robed corpse sits in the lotus position. I was oddly moved by his preserved body: with the sight, I had a glimpse of religious truth. [2]
That feeling became surreal as we headed back to the bus stop.
This pagoda appeared on Hong Kong’s $100 banknotes
We climbed down a different set of steps past my least favorite creatures: wild monkeys.
And from the meditative hillside of Ten Thousand Buddhas, we neared and then entered the shopping mall complex at Sha Tin.
Sha Tin shopping mall
As I say, the New Territories has both the traditional and the modern. They all line the same path.
NOTES: [1] To quote Wikipedia, “…in TheravadaBuddhism, an Arhat (Sanskrit: अर्हत् arhat; Pali: arahant; “one who is worthy”) is a “perfected person” who has attained nirvana. In other Buddhist traditions the term has also been used for people far advanced along the path of Enlightenment.”
[2] Taking pictures inside the temple is not allowed.
