On January 3rd, we visited Jinbaoshan, a cemetery near Dharma Drum. Read on for the details…

If you are wondering what happened on January 2nd, it was pretty quiet. Bill went to Taipei to take care of some business of his. He bought a cane for Debbie and brought back some nice bread.

Armed with the cane, Debbie was better equipped to walk around the Dharma Drum complex. So I led her around the complex to visit a bit. I showed here the office room I am borrowing from Joey. I also showed her the main hall and the Wish Fulfilling Guanyin hall. In the main hall, two volunteers were very eager to show us how to properly bow. The way we bow in our group in the US is a little different than in Taiwan. Here, they end their bow with a gesture of the hands which we do not do in the US. The women showed me and I tried as well as I could to do it. It was not perfect but hmm…. well… I tried. Even after months at Dharma Drum, I still bow with a Koreano-American “accent”. Debbie was not able to try because of her bad back.

After lunch Shuya took Bill, Debbie and I to Jinbaoshan. It is a cemetery located higher on the mountain, behind Dharma Drum. It is contains rows of mausoleums organized in terraces along the slope of the mountain. We passed by the Christian section and headed to the Buddhist part of the complex. We limited our visit to the lower levels of the cemetery because of Debbie’s back. Still, we got to see quite a few intricate sculptures of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. There is also a building which houses a series of sculptures by Ju Ming. Appropriately, the sculptures housed at the cemetery touch upon the topic of birth and death. I found the middle sculpture showing man and woman in the heat of passion particularly amusing because of the evident enthusiasm with which they embrace.

The rest of the day was uneventful. The photo album for that day is here: