A night at the monastery

It all started with each of us finding a packaged condom neatly laid on our pillows.

The four guys who would be sharing a room that night at the Baoguo monastery (the largest on Emei Shan, the sacred mountain in the Chinese province of Sichuan) looked at each other in amused disbelief. What was this? Were the good buddhist monks, in their infinite wisdom, just being farsighted? Were they perhaps encouraging us to have a ‘busy’ night amongst the sacred temple walls? Considering we were at a monastery this was both puzzling and refreshing.

After the initial shock, a couple of us ran across the hall to see how the girls were settling in, but mainly to ask: “Did you guys find condoms on your pillows too?”. “What??? No!!!”, came the answer among shrieking bursts of laughter.

After dinner, two of us set out to explore the monastery grounds. The night was calm and chilly, and silence was only occasionally disturbed by distant laughter coming from the girls’ room.

Suddenly, we stumbled upon a dimly lit rectangular hall where seven larger than life Buddha statues were lined across an altar, peering at us from behind a glass panel. We stood there in awe.

I don’t know if it was the way the statues were lit (I tried to capture the supernatural light and atmosphere by taking about a dozen photos, without much success); or the stupor-inducing vision of those seven large, golden, colorful and similar but slightly different Buddha images lying next to each other; or maybe the ‘couple’ of beers we’ve had that evening (ok, that may have been a confounding factor alright).

Whatever the reasons, we stayed there for a good while, mesmerized, walking around to find new angles, whispering whenever we found an interesting feature of the statues that wasn't obvious at first sight. We went back to our room feeling rewarded and relaxed. My sleep was sound.

The next day started early for me, around 5:30, as I wanted to catch a glimpse of the morning prayers. I couldn't see much, as the ceremony was conducted behind closed doors. But the encounter with the Seven Buddhas the previous night, and easing into the new day while listening to the monks’ prayers and chants and discovering the incense-scented halls, courtyards and shrines for the rest of the morning made for one of my favorite experiences of the trip.

Oh, the condoms? It was the girls who’d somehow put them there to wind us up, as I found out a few days later.