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PILGRIMAGE IN CONTEMPORARY PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
Chün-Fang Yü
In
1987, I was in Hangchow......Pilgrims followed a pilgrimage circuit sanctified by tradition. As
soon as they disembarked from boats or buses in Hangchow, they would first head for the Upper T'ien-chu Monastery
to workshop Kuan-yin. The Upper T'ien-chu Monastery has a history of over a thousand years. Since its founding in the
middle of the 10th century, it had received royal patronage from successive dynasties. Kuan-yin of the Upper T'ien-chu
protected Hangchow by providing timely rainfall and sunshine. She would also give guidance to pilgrims who came to seek
dreams of her at the temple. Miracles abound. Restored in the spring of 1986, only the main hall and a few buildings
were now ready for use.
Groups of women pilgrims often
bore gifts to Kuan-yin: many tiered lotus lanterns made of colorful paper, or silk capes of red, pink or purple for
the image. Turtles were sometimes brought to the temple to be set free in the Pond for Releasing Life in the temple's
front courtyard. Bought from the market and saved from sure death, these creatures would be protected by the temple
and allowed to die naturally. Such activity, called "releasing life", has long been a characteristic of Chinese
Buddhism. Some pilgrims took a few pinches of incense ashes from the incense burners in front of Kuan-yin's image.
They would bring these back home and use them as medicine.
The
Pilgrim's Way leading to Upper T'ien-chu Monastery must be covered on foot. Once inside the temple, the pilgrims
busied themselves with lighting candles and incense, burning the spirit money for their ancestors, having their yellow
incense bags and incense belts stamped with the seals of the monastery, having their own names and names of their
loved ones entered in the temple's donation book. They usually spent half an hour to an hour doing these, depending
on the size of the group. Even though the temple ground was filled with pilgrims, they always stayed with their
own group and never mingled with other groups. The sense of communitas stressed so strongly by Victor Turner
was found among members of the same group, but strikingly absent between different groups, which usually had nothing
to do with each other. If it was a large group composed of people from different villages, new friendships were often
formed after spending four days together. The sense of camaraderie and fellowship was especially strong when I visited
them at night in the inn. After they returned to the inn around four in the afternoon, they relaxed in the evening
by visiting each other, sharing gossips and laughter, exchanging stories about Kuan-yin and singing pilgrims' songs
together.
The height of the pilgrimage season centered
around Kuan-yin's birthday, the 19th day of the second month according to the lunar calendar. Pious pilgrims kept an
all-night vigil on the 18th and attended the pre-dawn service.
After
pilgrims concluded their worship at Upper T'ien-chu Monastery, they would visit other noted sites, for instance,
the Smoky Cloud Grotto and the Yellow Dragon Grotto. When they finished making the pilgrimage circuit, they would then
do their sightseeing and shopping before they returned to their home villages. Coming to Hangchow was as much
for fun as for religious reasons. Many villagers used the term "enjoying the spring outing with the pretext of worshipping
the Buddha" to describe their trip.
***
The above
is an excerpt from a wonderful description of how a pilgrimage to Kuan Yin is made in the city of Hangchow, China, including freeing of large groups of turtles!
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