Bound for Vietnam by Lydia Laube Page A

had met in Wuhan. Joe had been travelling in China for several months, and he told me some of his interesting experiences as he bounced around the room trying all of the beds like a middle-aged, bearded Goldilocks. It beat me why – all the beds were identical. I worried that I would disturb Joe the next morning when I got up long before dawn to catch my train, but he was more concerned about the presence of rats.
    I went looking for the thousand-year-old Luohan Temple – and found it! Luohan is a Buddhist term for the Sanskrit arhat – people who have released themselves from the bondage of greed, hate and delusion and obtained the status of saints or holy men. You entered the temple by turning off one of Chongqing’s main streets and climbing up a very steep, skinny alley to a narrow gate. From there you took the steps up a further incline, and marvelled at the rock carvings and shrines set into the natural rock face. Old ladies tended the shrines, bringing the idols offerings of incense and flowers.
    The Luohan complex contained several temples, the dwellings of the resident monks and the monastery. At its peak the temple had seventy monks, but now there are only about eighteen. In the grounds much fragrant incense was burning and candles, some of them gigantic, were being sold. In one place, luckily outside and away from the buildings, a great row of enormous red candles, enough to start a grand conflagration, roared and blazed away.
    In one temple a colossal gold Buddha enclosed in a glass case beamed down on me. The main temple was home to five hundred life-sized painted terracotta statues of arhats . Row after row of them gazed down on you from where they sat on platforms a metre off the ground. The route around the statues was cordoned off with string, so that once you started you had to keep going until you came to the end and not miss any – unless you hopped under the string and then you would be lost. The place was a maze. Without the string, you would never have got out again. Round and round I went in the temple’s dim recesses. Now and then I came across a big gold-plated Buddha or an attendant, old women or men murmuring low over their prayerbooks or reciting their beads. The statues were so uncannily life-like that it was spooky. I swore that at least one of them was alive. And every one was different. They were of all races and skin colours. The expressions on their faces all differed too; some were holy and saintly, some cheeky, some naughty, friendly or fun loving. Each arhat ’s name was inscribed beneath his chair and each one held something, either a musical instrument, a child, an icon or an animal. Walking among them in the dark, gloomy atmosphere was a curious experience and when I came out of the temple it took a while to accustom myself to the light and the real world again.
    My friend, Denise, an American Buddhist I had met on the Trans Siberian Express on my way to Mongolia, had told me that she thought the communists had only re-opened the monasteries in China as a source of loot from tourists, but I think some older people had kept their religion, albeit underground.
    Chongqing also boasted other attractions. The United States and Chiang Kai-shek Criminal Acts Exhibition Hall was one. This offered such dubious enticements as a visit to the prison cells and torture chambers. No thanks. The dental department had been enough for me.

5 Snakes Alive!
    At four in the morning I found a driver asleep in his taxi in front of the hotel. I poked him awake – drivers here weren’t protected by the plastic shields that I had seen in taxis in Shanghai.
    Off we drove through the pre-dawn mist. Suddenly I knew why a feeling of de ja vu had been haunting me since I had arrived in Chongqing. Seeing the city in the misty half light made the penny drop. It reminded me of Naples. It was nowhere near as beautiful, but the way the town ran clinging to the mountain-side along a cliff, and its narrow, crooked