Berkley Center

Religion to me means not just respect for things around you, it also encompasses belief and a joy in creation or in life and a thankfulness for what we are given. That'’s what I’'m still waiting to find here. I think it’'s somewhere in this culture and in this country, because my own faith leads me to believe we all need something bigger than ourselves. The problem is where to find it, amidst this culture where friends and family do not even hug or touch each other —how do I reach out to try to understand something as deeply personal as spirituality? The answer came last weekend on a trip to Song Feng Shan, a Buddhist mountain about two hours away from Harbin. Initially this seemed to be the typical Chinese tourist activity. The bus drove up, a bunch of Chinese guys walked on and counted us and sold us overly expensive tickets because we'’re foreigners. As we began our hike up the mountain, peddlers tried to sell us water and Coca-Cola, and tacky Chinese trashcans and ads were prevalent. However, as we hiked further up the mountain, the peaceful, contemplative atmosphere made it obvious we were entering a holier, sacred space.

Song Feng Shan is a mountain with three smaller peaks jutting out from a common platform. At that platform, there is a Buddhist shrine; to call it a temple would be incorrect, as it has none of the large, extravagant trappings of a temple. Instead, there are three buildings that form three sides of a square. In the building on the right, there is an altar devoted to a female goddess, in the middle building worshippers kowtow to pay homage and ask for help from the Buddha, and the building on the left is devoted to a female god of marriage. In the middle courtyard formed by the three buildings as well as in front of each altar is an incense pot filled with sticks of incense, so that a sweet scent pervades the area. Here, we saw worshippers kowtow three times, and bow to the Buddha and the altars reverently, asking for protection, assurance, or any of the other things we ask for in worship.

As we climbed the first peak, I was surprised to find that the guardrail along the path was covered with huge padlocks and knots made of red cloth. Upon closer examination, each red cloth held a different message of good luck, wishes, or needs. I asked one of our Chinese roommates, who explained this phenomenon: the red cloth banners had been placed there by couples asking for blessings on the birth of their children. The padlocks were there for a similar reason; they represented a union that wouldn't be broken. Somehow, seeing physical manifestations of the unbreakable lock symbolizing a marriage commitment brought everything home for me.

The more we explored the mountain, the more we saw red ties wrapped around trees, animal statues, and other things. Our friend explained this too. Red cloth ties symbolized someone's soul, of sorts, and people tied them around things that had been there for a long time and had attained peace. In this way, after death the souls could find the object they'd tied themselves to and be reborn.

I was struck by a different feeling. While I had previously thought that the Chinese were near godless, in fact the opposite was true. Their religion was so intensely private that the only places you could really see people worshipping or see manifestations of their beliefs were at the tops of mountains. These shrines were a far call from the commercial, huge, or famous temples I had been to before, and I think seeing the serene calm of the mountains, watching the slow kowtow of the people who had come all the way up the mountain to pray, gave me one answer to how the Chinese practice religion.