YONGHEGONG LAMA TEMPLE

The day after Nicholas arrived was mostly spent traipsing around the city shopping for things to get him warm and adjusted. It involved an unfortunately large amount of time spent on the subway, where ridership was not quite back to the pre-holiday level, but getting uncomfortably close. After making many successful purchases at various locations, I thought we would head into the city so I dragged poor Nick onto the subway again for another subterranean journey. Counting of the stops to go I noticed that we would pass through "Yonghegong Lama Temple Station", a stop I had always suspected was near to a temple of some kind. Nick was happy to get off early to explore and save the city center for another day.

The best part of having family in town was finally getting to share China; getting to see people I care about express curiosity and wonder at this fascinating, chaotic, sometimes cruel, and occasionally beautiful place. The second best part was just seeing the place I live through their eyes. Although Beijing is among the last places in China I would choose to live, it is undeniably awesome that you can just get off a subway car here and in a short while be here:

While the whole place is stunning, the most impressive part of the temple is the Maitreya Buddha housed in this building:


The Buddha stands 18m high (that's approximately 54 feet for you poor backwards pagans) with several meters underground to keep the girl stable, and is made of a single trunk of white sandalwood. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside, which truthfully, I was glad of, as it would have ruined the atmosphere, so I cribbed a photo from here:


Fragrant incense burned in every courtyard, but instead of blending in with the Beijing smog, the smoke hung like mist or curled like steam against the backdrop of the crisp, startlingly blue afternoon.


As with every other old temple or significant building in Beijing, two lions flanked either side of the entrance, one pausing with his paw on a ball in a position that suggests he was teasing a rival team with his possession of it,

and the other engaged with a tiny lion lying on his back who he is either threatening with death or tickling (I'm sure that if you knew how to use them, those claws could be weapons of endless tickle).

Someday I am really going to have to figure out the real significance of these lion-guardians and their accessories, but for now, ignorance at least allows me to imagine highly entertaining possibilities....

Confidential to flamingbanjo: I can't respond in the comments section due to the limitations of the software I use to get into my blog, but I can tell you that the orb is generally understood to represent heaven and earth united and/or the totality of Buddhist law. As these abstractions have historically been embodied by the emperor, I would say it is quite fair to say that they represent imperial power.