Tanzhe Temple (潭柘寺)
Trekking out to the Western Hills (西山) to check out Tanzhe Temple was…an adventure. I was thinking about it the night before, on whim, and decided to go only just the morning of — which just happened to be the mid-Autumn festival. It’s funny, because I know myself to be the risk averse, planning ahead type, but I find myself becoming more and more comfortable with planning on the fly. Where ‘fly’ is defined as reading the guidebook, quickly confirming the travel route online, and leaving an hour later.
We first went on the subway to Pingguoyuan Station (苹果园, the western end of the 1 line), which was a trek in itself. It was a long subway ride on one of the older, dimly-lit trains, but a middle-aged couple from Heilongjiang started talking to us, intrigued by Matt and Nick’s A. Caucasian-ness and B. Chinese-speaking skills. The conversation circle got a little bigger, and by the time we got to Pingguoyuan, we were invited to lunch by a lady who lived in the neighborhood. It’s funny, because if this happened in New York, I would have internally panicked and walked away as fast as possible, but the easy-going, congenial nature of meeting and talking to people you’ve never met is just so much more…natural in China.
After we got off the subway stop, we met up with another international student, and proceeded to look for Bus 931 that would take us to the temple. I saw the bus, just by chance, going down the street, and ran to the stop, slowly climbing on while waiting for the guys to catch up (probably angering a solid crowd of passengers in the interim). The bus driver asks me where I wanted to go, and then told me to get off because apparently that Bus 931 doesn’t stop at the temple.
So there we were, 4 very confused foreigners chilling on the side of the road, trying to figure out how to get to the temple, at which time we were practically ATTACKED by a crowd of black taxi drivers. It was terrifying, with all of the screaming, yelling, arguing that 10 yuan per person was a good deal. We weren’t sure what to do, but when one of the drivers proposed 8 yuan per person for a total of 32 RMB for the ride (less than 5 American dollars), we went.
It might’ve not been the safest route, but it got us to where we needed to go. The ride from was a little more than an hour — a bit of a distressful hour, really, because the driver was a little aggressive with his steering technique, and the car, which was functional, was definitely straight from the 70s or 80s. We took a regular taxi back from the temple to the subway stop, and the fare turned out to be more than twice than that of the black taxi.
The trip to the temple was probably one of the most relaxing moments I’ve had so far. The weather was beautiful and the scenery was just gorgeous. It’s just an hour and a half away from the city, but after we got off the highway and started driving up the hill, occasionally winding through small towns, we passed by people on the roadside selling fruits, tall persimmon trees with ripe orange fruit juxtaposed against the light green leaves, and saw seemingly endless waves of hills upon hills. There was one part of the ride while racing by the branches and leaves, we could see Beijing far off in the background with its hazily outlined buildings. I tried taking pictures the best I could, at 40 kilometers per hour, with a standard point-and-shoot (digital) camera and calling my inner Henri Cartier-Bresson. Haha, who am I kidding.
There were also ladies selling honey on the road — oh, how I miss good honey. Can’t wait for the Ithaca Farmer’s Market.
When we started seeing incense vendors lined up along the road 10 feet after one another, we knew we were getting closer. We didn’t know whether we were actually close until the driver pulled into a crowded parking lot, because there were a lot of incense vendors, standing next to towering carts, waving around packages as vehicles passed on the road.
If you are in Beijing for a period of time, I highly recommend checking out the Western Hills, especially Tanzhe Temple. There was also the Jietai Temple (戒台寺), which we half-heartedly considered going to, but we were tired, hungry, and wanted to go back to Tiananmen to check out the floats from the National Day parade. Pingguoyuan seems to serve as an access point for a lot of things to see, besides the temples, like the eunuchs’ mausoleum. Not sure if I’ll go there myself, but it certainly sounds interesting.
