Bing, bing, bing. Gong. Bing, bing…
These are the sounds that surround me. I’m in a shiny temple with massive statues towering over me. None of them look like the Buddha from the donut shops. I’m holding a small blue book in my hands, and I’m not sure if it’s upside down or not.
Standing next to me are two other Chinese guys. One is slightly taller than me, and the other is marginally shorter. I think the shorter one is named Bill. There are fifteen guys, only five of them, including myself, are westerners. We’re ordered by height. The ten women who came are on the other side of the room ordered in the same way. There’s no pews or tables in front of us, just padded stools to kneel on.
There are maybe thirty monks in the rows in front of us. They’re lighting incense and playing instruments. We’ve been standing for 30 minutes, and I’ve been up for an hour. Oh yeah, and it’s only 5:30 am. The bald monks in front of me hit their instruments in regular time. The sounds resemble music, but it’s a little too scheduled and orderly for that label.
I don’t know why the monks are doing this. Maybe they’re warding spirits away or inviting spirits into their body. Perhaps it doesn’t have anything to do with spirits at all.
The monks turn to face the aisle that cuts the rows of stools in two. Some of the Chinese turn and the rest follow suit. The monks are seasoned professionals. Standing for this long is nothing to them because they do this chanting every morning. The monks start marching into the aisle. I bend my knees slightly to warm myself up for the inevitable movement. Even when I did marching band, I didn’t stand this still for this long.
I’ve only been in the country for four days. Those first few days were to get over jet lag and travel to the temple I’d be staying at for the next six weeks.
When I quit my job three months ago, I wrote “Become a Buddhist monk” on the list of potential adventures I could have during my impromptu sabbatical. This chanting and standing weren’t what I had expected. Standing and hearing people chant Chinese at 12-foot tall buddhas was not going to help me find a future I wanted to pursue.
I landed in Shanghai, toured the city for a few days and then took a train to Ningbo where the monastery was. I met with two other participants at the train station, and we took a cab to the temple. It was raining and humid in the city, and I had to wipe the cab driver’s passenger side mirror off so he could navigate traffic in the city.
After the forty-five minute drive, we paid the driver and walked towards what looked like a monastery. Whether or not it was the right one we had no clue.
Then a westerner walked out of the gates and greeted us. The Chinese have a saying “People Mountain People Sea.” It means everything is crowded. I would quickly learn over the next eight weeks that a western face was a buoy of potential help in the sea of Chinese people.
I was also greeted by some dogs.
“Those are the temple dogs. We feed them,” Zoltan explained. He was the Hungarian that “interviewed” me and invited me on this trip. I found him through Reddit. What the hell have I gotten myself into?
The dogs were cute for strays, but I wasn’t going to pet them. Their skin was matted, and they weren’t exactly dying for the attention. They wanted to see if the newcomers had food. They didn’t know it, but I came bearing the closest thing to a chew toy they had ever seen. A brand new Outdoor Research down jacket. It was supposed to keep me warm in the late October and early November. It would never fulfill that purpose.
But at the moment that jacket was the last thing on my mind. Right now it was muggy and sunny. My sweat was drenching my shirt, and it was so humid that evaporation was out of the question.
Zoltan lead us to the back of the courtyard where our rooms were. As we were walking a Chinese guy around my age approached us. He said, “Hello, my name is Bill.” He had short black hair and a friendly face. He was the first Chinese person to introduce himself to me.
“Hey Bill, I’m Nicholas” I responded.
He looked at me for a moment then said, “Nice to meet you.” The words came out in slow, measured English. He didn’t have much of an accent.
I wouldn’t realize it until later, but I had spoken too quickly for him to understand. Additionally, “I’m Nick” was not a colloquialism that his English teachers knew.
The room had my name on it and the name of my roommate. Bill looked at it, “You are Nicholas” He sounded the word out slowly.
That’s what I said earlier, I thought. “Yeah,” I responded as Zoltan unlocked the door to our room.
“Here’s your bed.” Zoltan was also speaking a second language, and I think it was actually his third. His Hungarian accent was noticeable, but I still understood him.
The Americans seemed to be the only people around here who spoke a single language. Luckily for us, it was the one everyone used. Over the next six weeks, I planned to fix that problem by learning Chinese.
However, I didn’t know a word of it yet. But they promised to teach it to me here. In return, I’d teach English and write a handbook to introduce Westerners to Chan Buddhism. I didn’t know much about how to do either of those either.
The room itself had two twin sized beds on opposite walls. Each one had a one-inch thick foam mattress. There were two windows on the corner walls and a bathroom. There was no tub in the bathroom nor was there a shower curtain. It had a shower head that one could move around and a drain in the middle of the floor. We were about to learn that if you didn’t keep the toilet paper by the door, you wouldn’t have any dry toilet paper after a shower.
The other amenities that the bathroom had was a sink, mirror, and a Western Style Toilet! My roommate and I were grateful that we wouldn’t have to use the traditional squat toilets that are common in China.
Zoltan told us where we could get sheets, a water boiler, and buckets to use to wash our clothes. Then he added, “If you want to take a shower you can, but we’re going to a birthday party for a man named Mr. Money in a little bit.” Zoltan explained.
A Chinese birthday party. That will be interesting. I thought.
Then he added the last thing we were expecting to hear, “Also we’re getting up at 4:30 and walking to the temple a mile down the road. We’ll be participating in their morning chanting routine and eating breakfast there.”
“Oh!” My roommate and I said in shock. Well I guess that was probably in the itinerary, and I just glossed over it, I thought.
As we unpacked our things into our small room, my roommate quickly informed me of two things.
- It was not on the itinerary
- 4:30 am was far earlier than he had planned to get up on his vacation
To Be Continued…
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