Travel With Danser to Tanzhe Temple-May. 2007

My last tour to Tanzhe Temple was a sort of village tour, visit the buildings and monks was just a little part of the trip. The most inportant thing is the night I spend in the village close to the temple. We live in a small village house which is owned by Mr. Niu ( mean ox ), and have dinner together with my friends.  It was cheap and special, we only spend about 600RMB For the whole trip for 3 persons, and we already lead a life that buy everything we want to buy, eat everything we would like to have.

The trip start all in a sudden, the idea to go to the temple was just came out at 5 pm, for most people,  visiting The Tanzhe Temple at late afternoon is impossible, but for us, just do it.

We take a taxi to the subway, change the line one to the Pingguoyuan Station which is the last one on the west Beijing. Then took a local tax which means it is cheap but irregular. We spend only 50 Yuan from Pingguoyuan Station to the foot of the mountain where Tanzhe Temple located. If we start early, it's very easy to take a bus leading there too. We direct went to Mr. Niu's house. His house doesn't need to check in at all, you just choose a room you want and go inside, put your bag in and then do what you want. Living there, you even don't need a room key, cause no one lock their rooms purposely. We talked with the driver and Mr. Niu, they are all local present their, but they already stop farming for a long time. We find a table facing to the mountain, Mr. Niu light two big big incense for us to ward off the mosquito. ( By the way, taking a Mosquito Incense for the night is necessary ). We drink beer, eat the local food, and talk until mid-night.

Then we walk to the temple. It was so quiet. You almost can feel the breath of the building. We talk about the legend we know about the Tanzhe Temple and came to the entrance. Two man sit there and guarding. So we turn back, play guitar and sleep.

Next morning, I was waking up by the sound of chicken! We take all our equipment and start our Tanzhe Temple tour.

When we arrive the entrance, it had already a little crowed.  My friend Ganser love this temple best cause he love the legend and budism story. The Temple is more than 1,700 years old, and keep it's royalty in every dynasty.  I am not intrested in story or legend but I like the old building and old trees there. Because of the long history, almost every tree, every brick under your foot, has a story, they feel like alive by the power of time if you can tell. The knowladge of Tanzhe Temple can tracing back the history of Beijing City, even the building style of Forbidden City followed the buildings in the temple.

There are many many old woman outside the temple selling incense woods. They followed us all the way to the entrance from the big tablet writen the name of the temple. At last Ganser bought some for us.

Starting from the entrance, we can see lots of big old trees, even the lion in fron of the gate were almost covered by the leaves.

In front of the entrance gate, I found two stone lions coved by glasses.

I guess most of the visitors here are Budism Believers, they start to burn incense at the first fuilding, the smell come to me earlier than the sight. Every one keep quiet here without noising, shouting and fast moving.

There are two kinds of bamboo in the Temple, their name is Jade Inlaid with Gold and Gold Inlaid with Jade.

There are so many buildings here and some of them are unique in China.

Their is a old tree called Emperor Tree or Imperial Tree, which is said has theurgy. When a new emperor birth in the world, there will be a new branch out, and when the emperor dead, the branch will grow with the tree body together. As a result of this, there are so many red silks covered here writen with wishes.

There is a Tea house beside the big tree, we drink there for a while and start again.

Then we arrive a special place where is said to be a gaming place when the emperor came. The water flowed in side the special map, and it is said that it look like a dragon from the left and a tiger from the right.

Then we passed by the living quarter of the Master which was under repare at that time.

There is a very big building in the center, in front of the building is a big incense burner and many many incense woods gifted by visitors.

After visiting the buildings, we went to the east of the temple. There was a mountain road there, which was leading to a Dragon Pool. In the half way, we saw the top of the buildings, one of them are very special.

Later, is the most important part for our Tanzhe Temple trip. A 4-hour hiking. We take some Chinese strong wine with us, we drink, talk and hike. Until we arrived a big stone writen the name of this area-Dragon Pool.

When we really arrived the Dragon Pool, we found it has already drougt, a stone dragon left inside, next to it, is a tablet writen about the history of the pool and a small pavilion. Many local farmers are resting inside. We had lunch with them, and drink the mountain spring, 1 RMB for one bottle.

The locals there told us that is not end yet, there still a big reservoir on the top of the hill, this made us so exciting. We going on our hiking trip, and find many new things. The stone on the mountain road changed into purple and blue colour, the hill change into red. The mountain are so deep, we all take a deep breath, feel the quiet and the sunshine.

At last, we found the  reservoir, Ganser tried how deep it is with my camera frame, no one know how deep it is. But we jump inside and swim. This was the high-end of our Tanzhe Temple trip.

On our way back, we found a Relic Tower Forest, it was amazing, but it has already too late, so we just took some pictures and took a bus back.

More picture of Tanzhe Temple Beijing:

Map and introduction of Tanzhe Temple:

I'm not sure that you can find these next in Tanzhe Temple:

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