Chenxiangge Nunnery

Originally Posted 1st February 2015

The Chenxiangge Nunnery is in the Old City area of Shanghai and is a pool of serenity and a haven away from the seemingly endless Chinese waving the same sheet of paper under your nose with pictures of fake handbags and fake watches for sale.

Richard says that he doesn’t get annoyed by the touters. I do. So paying 10Y (£1) to slip into the nunnery was lovely in itself, but even better, the nunnery was much less busy than the city’s monasteries I have visited so far, and far more like what I imagine a Buddhist place of religion should be.

Incense burners Chenxiangge Nunnery

The nunnery dates from the Ming Dynasty when the owner of a big house (of YuYan Garden fame) had had the river dredged and a statue of Avalokitesvara was dragged out of the Huai river in 1600. He had it gilded and installed it in a pavilion in his garden. The statue was moved to the monastery in 1801.

During the Cultural Revolution the statue was destroyed, so the one in this nunnery is a copy of the original eaglewood (a fragrant wood used for incense) made when the monastery was repaired in 1989.

Incense "cupboard"

In the main courtyard there were the same incense burners as else where, one a tower, one looking like a western manger and the third like a big cupboard. The statues and decoration here seem to be more subtle and delicate than I’ve seen elsewhere and certainly less red, even though we are getting even closer to Chinese New Year.

Chenxiangge Nunnery Decoration

I liked the orange fabric tubes hanging down from the ceiling. I don't know if these represent anything but this kind of hanging is in every Buddhist Temple.  The scattering of nuns in dark brown habits we saw were lively and friendly.

Maitreya

As you’d expect there are statues of Heavenly Kings and of Buddha, and I think this is a statue of a Maitreya (a future Buddha of this world), although as I’m no expert on Buddhism I have had to do quite a bit of googling to try and get this right.

We paid an extra 1Y or so to go up a storey to the first floor to view the remade statue of the dredged up goddess, which sat in a lotus position in a room with windows delicately complex window frames, which felt very old, but must be copies of the original.  It was all very serene and atmospheric.

roof tiles Chenxiangge Nunnery

The view over the rooftops from up there was somehow magical. The curved tiles were laid densely on the roof in interwoven rows one row facing up, the next facing down, in typical traditional Chinese fashion.  They must m