Of temples, martyrs...and beggars

Has it really been three weeks since my last post? My, how the time flies when you're not having fun. For lack of a better word, I've been feeling blase about life here in Shànghăi 上海, and the weather the past few weekends hasn't been ideal for mood enhancement, unless you enjoy being outside when it's cold and drizzly. I haven't been a recluse these last few weeks - we've gone out to department stores, restaurants and such, and I've taken a few long walks around the neighborhood. It's just that  I haven't been seeing or doing anything interesting enough to generate a blog post (I have posted a few photos to Facebook). I'm not sure if today's outing to Lónghuá Temple 龙华寺 and the Martyrs Memorial 龙华烈士陵园 was anything out of the ordinary, either, but I've got to do something with all the photos I took this afternoon, so here goes...

The first thing you see as you approach the temple is the pagoda. 44 meters (144 feet) high, it dates back to CE 977.

Until the 1910's, when some of the Western-style bank buildings being put up in the International Settlement area began to overtake it, the pagoda was the tallest structure in Shanghai. 

The temple itself also has a similarly long history, going back to the 10th century and making it the city's oldest monastery. The current buildings inside the complex are of much more recent vintage, being only about a hundred years or so in age, but the temple still retains its original layout, resembling a scaled-down version of the Forbidden City in the way hall follows on from hall once you've bought your entry ticket and made your way through the front gate.

Tourists such as ourselves were outnumbered this afternoon by serious devotees. Plenty of offerings and prostrations were to be seen in front of the various religious statues. 

And there was certainly some impressive Buddhist statuary to behold in the different halls located on the temple grounds.

Despite the recent rainy weather, temperatures in Shanghai have apparently been warmer than usual this winter, and a couple of cherry trees at Longhua Temple were starting to bloom. 

The one unpleasant aspect of visiting the temple was having to deal with the beggars outside the main entrance. While you would have to be extremely cold-hearted not to feel some pity for these poor unfortunates, their aggressive panhandling and zeroing in on Westerners whom they feel must be easier targets to lay guilt trips on made me think twice about giving anyone anything. I've donated spare change to people asking for charity on the Metro and in the streets, but if I had given one beggar some "alms" today, the others would no doubt have quickly converged on me and my family and wouldn't have let us alone. And it isn't just the disabled: in front of the pagoda and before going inside the temple, my wife was conned into buying what looked a Topps Buddha bubblegum trading card from a guy dressed like a monk. Pamela offered him 20 RMB ($3.25), but the "monk" complained, saying others had paid him upwards of 300 RMB ($48.80). When she told him to take it or leave it, however, our man of the Buddha took it and quickly left. Scenes like this are virtually non-existent in Japan and fairly rare in Taiwan, but unfortunately seem to be very commonplace in China.

Lunchtime. Though Longhua Temple had an onsite vegetarian restaurant, my carnivore spouse can't bear to have even one meatless meal, so we ended up eating at a place across the street (in case you're wondering about my daughter's bandaged hand, she broke her left pinkie finger a few weeks ago by falling down while carrying a large stone for some strange reason, and somehow dropping it on her finger in the process).

Next door to Longhua Temple is the Longhua Cemetery of Martyrs, a large park which memorializes those who died in the name of Chinese Communism. Communists the world over used to commemorate fallen heroes and significant events by erecting grotesque statues and sculptures, and the Chinese Communist Party was no exception. Here, Amber poses in front of the Children's Heroes Sculpture.

The Independence Democracy Liberation Construction Sculptures. Pamela couldn't understand why the figures on these and other statues in the park resembled muscular and big-breasted Western males and females. Neither could I.

The statues of the Martyrs Memorial seemed frozen in time while outside, Shanghai continued its mad rush into the 21st century.

In the center of the grounds stands the Memorial Museum, devoted to those who gave their lives - some at the hands of the Kuomintang (KMT) 国民党 (Shanghai was the site of a notorious massacre in 1927), others killed fighting the Japanese (and, later, the Americans in Korea), and even some who were killed during engineering projects or police officers who died in the line of duty after the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949.

It was sobering how many of the idealistic martyrs commemorated in the hall were only in their twenties and thirties when their lives were snuffed out. Frustratingly, the English captions only gave their names, hometowns and positions in the party at the time of their deaths, leaving the facts of how they were killed reserved for those who could read Chinese. Too many of the English-language explanations were of the "glorious-" or "heroic deaths in battle" variety. My daughter said it best when she wished all war could be stopped.

The most sobering photos were those showing the executions

On the other hand, some of the paintings were bizarre, like this one of a group being led to the execution ground (the park housing the Martyrs Memorial was built on the site where the KMT put 800 people to death for political crimes between 1928 and 1937). It was more Christian than Communist.

My favorite painting was this one of a battle during the Korean War. American soldiers on the right are being cut down by heroically-depicted Chinese "volunteers". Most of the 250 martyrs memorialized in the hall, though, were victims at the hands of fellow Chinese, and not of Japanese devils or American imperialist paper tigers.

Somehow, I find it hard to believe that the idealistic young pioneer struck the Socialist-building pose as the flood waters engulfed him.

The Unknown Martyrs Sculpture and some actual graves

Amber demonstrates some joie de vivre (the pyramid in the background is the Memorial Museum) while the Tampa Bay Rays meet the Aggression with One Mind Sculpture.

Behind the Liberating Shanghai Sculpture was a lone tai chi practitioner

Writing (and lighting) the way

The Lunar New Year (aka the Spring Festival 春节) is coming to the end. The tourists are leaving the city (several million visited Shànghăi 上海 this past week), while the residents are returning in droves. The cacophony of exploding fireworks is dying down (our neighborhood sounded like Baghdad under attack from American bombers and missiles during the first and third nights of the holiday), and after having five days off including last weekend, I've been back at work since Wednesday (though my daughter doesn't go back to school until the day after tomorrow, much to her mother's relief). As it was my turn to be duty officer during the first part of the Spring Festival, we were required to stay within the city limits, which restricted where we could go. All in all, it was a quiet, often dull holiday period (a plus in regards to the duty phone), not much different from the ones we spent in Taiwan in years past. Next year I hope to take advantage of the time to escape from Greater China and do something more productive with the paid time off.

But that will be then, and this is now. Today, on a cold, overcast Saturday afternoon (at least the rain had finally stopped), we rode the Metro to the city's Hóngkŏu district 虹口区 to reacquaint ourselves with one of China's most celebrated writers, Lŭ Xùn 鲁迅 (see here for our first encounter). The novelist's former residence, where he lived from 1933 until his death in 1936, can now be visited for a small admission fee.

The house is small but looked surprisingly comfortable and provides a neat insight into what it must've been like to live in a Japanese-style home during that period (Hongkou was the site of Shanghai's pre-war Japanese settlement). Photography wasn't allowed inside.

Lu Xun's Former Residence 鲁讯故居 lies just off of Shānyīn Road 山阴路, a street which retains the look the city probably had before China's economy starting taking off in the early 1990's. 

The supposedly romantic Tiān'ài (Sweet Love) Road 甜爱路 also has a number of fine period pieces lining the street opposite Lu Xun Park 鲁讯公园.

No sweet lovin' to be had on Tian'ai Road, but there was the Lu Xun Memorial Hall 鲁讯纪念馆, free to get in (and out of the chill) and providing more details about this writer I had never heard of before coming to China than I thought I needed to know. Pamela had never heard of him, either: the KMT 國民黨 wasn't very enamored of a decidedly left-wing novelist who had been celebrated by the Communists, and had banned his books in Taiwan up until the late 1980's.

The photos above depict the period in the late 19th/early 20th centuries when Lu Xun was studying medicine in Japan. It included a photo of a blindfolded Chinese about to be executed by a Japanese soldier for spying for the Russians during the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War (second from left on the bottom row in the picture above). According to Wikipedia: 

Lu Xun was shocked by the complete apathy of the Chinese onlookers (in the photograph); he decided it was more important to cure his compatriots' spiritual ills rather than their physical diseases.

In front of the memorial hall and behind the blue fence lay the park, which unfortunately was closed for "reconstruction". That and the weather didn't stop a determined group of senior citizens from doing their taichi exercises. 

An interestingly-named teahouse standing just outside of the park gates

While the park itself is shuttered for the time being, a small retro amusement park was still open for business. Amber and Pamela took a spin on the dangerous-looking roller coaster. I was told I was too tall to ride. 

Had it not been for the weather (I could've sworn I saw a couple of snowflakes), we would've rented a boat to take out onto the small lake. The cold didn't stop some people from dancing, playing badminton or even practicing opera singing (of the Western variety); Chinese parks make for interesting tableaux at times. In the background on the right is the Hongkou Football Stadium 虹口足球场, home of the local Shanghai Greenland Shēnhuā soccer team 上海陆地申花.

Soccer season doesn't begin until next month, so the stadium is closed for now. Peeking through the gates, it appears the pitch is being used as a driving range for golfers until Chinese Super League 中国足球协会超级联赛 play kicks off.

By this point, my wife was feeling tired from having to walk around in the winter chill, so she elected to return home. My daughter, however, was having none of that and eagerly accepted my suggestion to head over to the Yù Garden 豫园 area to see the Lantern Festival 元宵节 decorations. The festival falls on the 15th day of the first lunar month (which happens to coincide with Valentine's Day this year), and is the last event to be held in celebration of the Lunar New Year. 

Everything, of course, was bright and beautiful, and Amber really enjoyed the scene, pointing out the horse theme (it is the Year of the Horse 午马, after all) and enthusiastically identifying such figures as the phoenix.

Even the Garden of Eden was given the lantern treatment. Although it was busy, the bazaar around Yu Garden was surprisingly not as crowded as I'd expected (relatively speaking, of course).

Finishing off the day at the nearest branch to our home of Curry House CoCo Ichibanya カレーハウスCoCo壱番屋, a Japanese curried rice restaurant chain that has become one of my daughter's favorites (it has a kid's meal, a definite plus in her book).