Viewing page 37 of 187

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

34
standing or kneeling or moving in unison, made a picture, accompanied by their chants and drums and bells, and that was thrilling to our souls.

This monastery is quite the most active and apparently best-supported that I have seen yet in China. It reminds me very strongly of some of the fine ones in Japan, where Buddhism is a real live religion and vital force in the life of the people. Here at Yun Lin there was nothing to support the contention that Buddhism is dead or dying. As to temple, priests, and most of all surroundings I was well pleased to accord this a chief place in my estimations of places of beauty and religious significance in the China I know.

From Lin Ying we walked on up a paved road through a valley lined with small temples belonging to one general group of the Indias, and with little villages and groups of houses. We went straight up to the Monastery of Upper India, a great old place, now dingy and run-down, with a temple court that might be beautiful filled with the booths of the sellers of all sorts of trinkets and souvenirs and rosaries and bells, not unlike the small dealers who make such a paltry bazaar of the great shrine of St. Anne de Beaupre near Quebec. The main hall, supposedly one of the finest specimens of temple architecture in Hangchou, is falling to pieces. The whole place was dis-spiriting. We inquired for some famous square bamboo trees said to grow here only in all this area of Hanchou, and were shown them in the court of a new building evidently built for the entertainment of guests who want to come her and stay for a little while. The bamboos do not grow to a great height or to large diameter, and their squarenes is not apparent to the eye. They are distinctly four-sided to the touch, however, and they are a little rough in texture, and dark green in color. The old priest here was intelligent and pleasant and we talked a bit as we drank tea and ate cakes and nuts.

On the way down the valley again we stopped at the Middle and Lower Temples of India, but we were not impressed and passed on. From the main road we turned off to a side path over the hills before we reached Lin Ying again. This brought us up to a sudden thunder storm which came up gloriously with one half of the sky covered with dense black clouds while the