The Jade Buddha Temple

Originally posted 25th January 2015 I set off this morning with the intention of visiting the Jade Buddha Temple, but I got side-tracked by seeing the words Flower Market, two stops in the other direction on line 7. Anyone who knows me well knows my love of flowers and how six years ago, if I had not been ill, I might well have become a florist. So I’m a sucker for flowers and I was interested in seeing what the local flower market would have to offer. It took some finding, hidden away underground, to the northeast of the metro station, in amongst a housing estate and what turned out not to be a flower market after all but a wet market. It might be a flower market at the weekend, or in the early morning, but who knows. Anyway I had a wander round because as a family we always seem to end up at the local market. It’s a way of understanding what’s actually being eaten locally. The fruit and vegetable stalls were in the middle aisles of this underground market, the meat along the south side, the fish stalls along the north. The main meat was pork and chicken with the odd duck stall. In the centre there were piles and piles of green leaved

vegetables that I couldn’t identify, although I could see large cylindrical Chinese cabbages and pak choi. I’ll have to get that cookery book out once we get to the flat and do some serious identification later. The local aubergines are pale purpled long curly sticks. Sticks of taro and galangal and long oriental chives were amongst the most unusual veg. The fish stalls had the greatest exotic flavour, with bullfrogs held together in nets, just as mussels are sold in the UK, but in larger bags. There were buckets of eels, and fish held in plastic bowls in shallow water – some had turned turtle due to lack of oxygen I hoped, rather than disease. And talking of turtle, there were those too. Small crabs were abundant – I know

that there is a particular crab that is a Shanghai delicacy, but I don’t know whether these crabs were they. There were very long very thin fish and very fat, very large carp. Some fish sold dead, some sold in tanks alive. Everywhere there was a cavalier attitude to detritus, the stallholders evidently just flung their sacks of rubbish into the main aisle when they were full, or even just the plain waste if they hadn’t got a sack. It wouldn’t have happened anywhere in the UK, the combination of water and leaf would have been a slippery litigator’s paradise. A dirty small truck was being filled by a couple of cleaners who scooped up what they could of the mess. I headed back towards my original destination the Jade Buddha Temple, four stops back on the metro towards the centre of town. The temple lies in a street surrounded by shops

selling incense, beads, statues of the Buddha in jade, porcelain or wood. Flowers were being sold from bicycles on the street, so I saw some after all and Chinese guardian lions protected the outside of the temple. Red was the dominant colour here and indeed in the temple. Entry costs 10Yuan (£1) and the entrance was guarded by a couple of men in smart overcoats with an air of American secret service men about them. There were others elsewhere inside – they all seem very incongruous and in marked contrast to the relaxed monks in brown habits.

The incense burners were ablaise this January day and added to the wafts of incense that hung heavy in the air from

burning sticks. Red Chinese lanterns dripped from the ceilings of the corridors, red cloth kneelers softened the praying of the faithful, red candles and red banners hung from the ceiling and red ribbons tied were onto plants and the incense burners outside. There are two jade buddhas here – one standing and one reclining, reported to have been carved from the same lump of jade brought in from Myanmar. But there are others too made of other materials and huge statues of various temple kings stand guard.

In a small courtyard a row of bonsaied trees of palms, pines and other trees in a small courtyard generated an area of serenity in marked contrast to the rest of this busy temple where many had come to pray even on a weekday early afternoon.