Today, I made a date with a friend to go sketching for the first time in years. She suggested we visit the Chung Tian Temple in Underwood, which is close by. It’s the weekend of Buddha’s birthday and the temple was holding celebrations with the temple grounds open to the public.
These stairs lead up to the new extension of the temple compound.
Before we walked too far, we spotted this lovely little bonsai garden in the middle of the grounds. It was edged with lined walkways, so I thought it a perfect spot to warm up for sketching.
My efforts. Pen, inktense colour pencils
I haven’t sketched in a very public and crowded location in many years so it was a bit nerve-racking. But once I got into the rhythm of it, I was fine and it soon became a very meditative exercise. Plus statues don’t move! That made it easy for me to get the lines down. Lots of people came around and took photos of the graceful statue and kids ran about playing chase.
Aren’t the red umbrellas glorious against the blue, blue sky?
Part of the newly extended temple complex
The entire temple complex is very dignified and graceful. This is apparently only stage 2, and there is another large extension to be completed by July 2023. In the centre of this new complex, is a large open courtyard, where live performances were being held. I imagine that outside of festival times, taichi and martial art classes would be held there.
Today the courtyard is lined with pop-up stalls selling food, drink and trinkets. There was a large central dais with a giant statue of Buddha for people to make offerings to, and a stage for performers. Rows and rows of white plastic chairs for the performances but sadly it was too hot in the fierce Brisbane sun today, so most people were huddled along the shaded corridors. Perhaps next time, large sunshades or marquees would be more practical.
Too sunny even for the locals. I would have sat there if Id remembered to bring an umbrella.
I can never walk past a shaved ice dessert without partaking.
A classical bronze (not sure if it is truly bronze or not) incense cauldron, flanked by a donation box. There were a number of incense urns around but I find it rather tasteless and obvious to have a donation box permanently paired with those urns. The idea behind these urns is that your wishes, hopes and prayers will be wafted to the heavens along with the joss smoke.
It wasn’t easy to sketch people as they were moving about too much. But I captured a few vignettes. This lovely elderly Chinese woman smiled at us sitting next to her as she wolfed down an enormous bowl of vermicelli. Another incense urn married to a donation box.
This very graceful pagoda was the highlight of the place. It is a shrine, as well as a resting place for the ashes of the deceased.
The original. I am a very non-religious person, but I would love to be able to rest here when I’m nothing more than a pile of ashes.
There were lots of other cultural performances, such as lion dancing, martial arts displays, choir performances, children’s dances, that sort of thing.
I know the public probably enjoys it. But I do find all these totally unsuitable for a religious festival. A Buddhist temple is meant to be a place of prayer and contemplation. The noise and chaos of all these performances didn’t sit well with my own ethnic understanding. The activities I did think appropriate were the tea meditation ceremonies, landscape and calligraphy writing, blessing ceremonies for babies. I would have loved to see a Taichi exhibition; perhaps that was on another day.
Even the martial arts shows made me uncomfortable. It was very strange to see the martial arts performers dressed in lurid orange uniforms in the style of Shaolin monks, down to the white booties laced with black laces, and yet none of the performers were Chinese in ethnicity. I am very glad to see others not of Chinese descent appreciating Chinese culture enough to join and learn about kungfu. It was, however, very disturbing to realise that no young Chinese person is interested enough to join in learning about their own cultural practices.
