Qixia Buddhist Temple

On October 25, 2008 Jake and I went with the Flagship students on a Saturday outing. I know there are a ton of pictures, but this is kind of my journal with pictures. It was a pretty neat place. It is called Qixia Buddhist Temple.
This temple is on Qixia Mountain north-east of Nanjing. It was founded by the Buddhist monk Ming Sengshao during the Southern Qi dynasty, and is still an active place of worship. Qixia Temple has long been one of China's most important monasteries, and even today is one of the largest Buddhist seminaries in the country. The area where incense is burning, quite a strong smell.

A girl praying to each direction.
Jake and the elephant on the way into the temple.
(We like taking pictures of Jake by stone elephants apparently...)

The temple...Jake is off to the right

This is where you can toss coins into for good luck, nice shot Jake. It looks like he played basketball at one time.

Jake and I outside the temple.

The monks inside the temple.

Jake and I overlooking the courtyard.

Behind the temple is the Thousand Buddha Cliff (Qianfo Ya). Several small caves housing stone statues are carved into the hillside, the earliest of which dates from the Qi dynasty (AD 479-502), although there are others from succeeding dynasties through to the Ming.

Me and the big stone tower.

Some close-ups of the tower.

The rocks had a lot of buddhas carved out of them.

One side of the carved mountain.

Jake with the carvings.

I guess I wasn't supposed to take a picture of this Buddha, but it was huge and I didn't know that when I snapped this picture.

After seeing some of the sculpting, they gave us some time to hike around and see the area. I just thought this was really pretty looking.

Jake and I found a path up a mountain that had a lot more carvings.

I was sooooo tired walking up all the steps.

Don't worry I kept going, but my thighs were burning.

Jake is always such a good sport on the outings, he always carries the bag, which I load up with everything "just in case". This is about as high up as we could get.

The view at the top overlooking the city.

Me at the top totally tired and exhausted.

More pictures of the sculpting, a lot of these have the heads taken off because they were smashed in the Cultural Revolution.

More carvings from the mountain.

Our hike back down, we found a little shortcut.

Some artwork that lined one of the pathways. Everywhere you go people are always selling all sorts of jewelery, artwork, and just about anything you can think of.