Temple atop the Town

Tiantang Si, or Tiantang Temple was a tiny town grown up around a large Tibetan temple nestled in a mountain valley separating Gansu and Qinghai Provinces. The day after having climbed Maya Snow Mountain, we took a bus up to the temple, a three hour journey up dirt roads.

The temple glimmered atop the town, dominating it like a giant golden star on top of a muddy brown Christmas tree. The town was little more than a handful of restaurants and stores.

A Square dominated by a bird on the back of a hare on the back of a monkey on the back of an elephant

Although a Tibetan temple had stood there for twelve centuries, almost everything inside the temple walls was new, built in the past year. It glistened, but felt fake. The drilling of a temple walkway on a hill behind the temple rattled throughout the complex.

Construction

Inside the main hall, two old monks were watching over young boys training to be monks, the faint hum of chanting lingering in the entrance. We walked around the hall. Beside the main hall’s exit, a dozen fire extinguishers stood guard in one corner; for the past handful of years, China has been roiled by a series of Tibetans setting themselves on fire in protest at communist repression.

Art at the Main Hall

Outside the main hall, there were several men wearing monks’ clothes, though they were not participating in any religious activities. They spoke Chinese to each other and they spent most of their time playing games on their phones. We had been told that the Chinese installed spies in monks clothes to watch the real monks. I could not be certain, but I assumed that these two monks were spies.

Monk Friend

A little ways away, I saw another monk reading from a Chinese Sutra. I talked briefly with him, asking him what he was reading. A few minutes later, when I was wandering around a different hall, he found me again and we talked more. Though the temple dated back to the 800’s A.D., he explained, there was only a single building that was at all old, and that building was just a little more than 100 years old, a small monks’ living quarters made of wood and clay.

The only old building in the complex

Courtyard of the only old building

He took me into one of the halls and showed me a photo of the complex from 1955. The complex was then vast and housed hundreds of monks. Rebuilt, too shiny and new, it was a shadow of its former, grungy glory. The monk said that all the other buildings had been destroyed in the 1960’s, when the youths took the banner of Mao Zedong and tore down anything they perceived as insufficiently Maoist.

Melting Butter with Mirrors

No one else was in the hall with us. Just to see how he would respond, I pointed out that the 1955 photo was taken just a few years before the Dalai Lama left in 1959. His eyes widened, but he said nothing else. I quickly changed the subject, fearing that I might inadvertently get him in trouble.

As we left the town, I noticed something strange. From Xian to here, most of the towns we have stayed in have been undergoing construction booms, the likes of which I had never seen before. That tide of building had even washed over this town. In this wide spot in the road, which few people from this province had even heard of, a three hour bus ride via mostly unpaved roads to the county seat, there were still six cranes standing over the town. It seemed amazing that there could really be that much of a need for construction in this tiny town.

Construction

We passed down across the river and into the next province.

Temple Kitten