Two years ago I was in Costa Rica for Easter and now I’m in China! BRS is outside of the downtown area of Beijing, where all of the churches are, and it took us 2 hours to get to the church that we went to a few weeks ago. A friend and I were talking yesterday about how we take for granted that we only have a 5 minute drive to church and sometimes even complain about having to get up early, get ready, drive there, and that the parking lot is too far away from the church. When you’re in America it’s easy to say that you know that church in other countries can be inconvenient, but it’s another thing entirely to actually live it. When I get back to America, I don’t think I’ll ever think of church the same way again. We take for granted the privilege we have to worship freely and that it’s so convenient to find a place to worship. If you worship legally here, it can take as much as 2 hours waiting for a bus to get to the crowded subway and then walking to the church. If you worship illegally (at a house church), then you break the law and risk punishment.
We decided that we would have our own service to celebrate Easter here at the school, solemnly mindful that if we were Chinese citizens we would have been breaking the law. My friend and I walked to the convenience store on Easter morning and bought grape juice and small rolls of bread. We all had lunch at the school cafeteria and when we got back to our lounge, we found out that the guys had put together an Easter egg hunt with the German Kinder eggs (that are now not sold in the States because of choking hazards since there are toys inside :( !
We decided that we would have our own service to celebrate Easter here at the school, solemnly mindful that if we were Chinese citizens we would have been breaking the law. My friend and I walked to the convenience store on Easter morning and bought grape juice and small rolls of bread. We all had lunch at the school cafeteria and when we got back to our lounge, we found out that the guys had put together an Easter egg hunt with the German Kinder eggs (that are now not sold in the States because of choking hazards since there are toys inside :( !
Then we had our service and my roommate Megan, who is Methodist, went through the sequence of home services that she does with her campus ministry. Madison was our worship leader and pulled up a couple of songs on iTunes that we sang to and I read the reading from Luke about the resurrection of Jesus.
This service brought up another point: that in our service there were non-denominational Christians, a Catholic, and a Methodist and we all worshipped together. How often does that happen in the States? Being in a situation in which we don’t have the “luxury” (if that’s what it is) of dividing ourselves every which way into many different denominations brings us together in the one belief that we share and the one that matters the most: that Jesus Christ died on the cross as the final sacrifice for our sins and rose from the grave, almost two thousand years ago, to bring us eternal life and the Holy Spirit that lives inside of us. If we all had an experience like this one, in a country as a religious minority, I believe that it would be an experience that would bring us together in our similarities, rather than divide us over our differences, as so often happens in the States.
I bet you can’t guess what we did next…
I bet you can’t guess what we did next…
We took the subway to the Lama Temple, the largest Buddhist temple in Beijing. According to dictionary.com, “Lamaism” is “the Buddhism of Tibet and Mongolia, a Mahayana form including non-Buddhist Indian elements as well as elements of the preexisting Bon shamanism.” Well that answers my question as to why there were figures with many arms (like you see in Hinduism) and why some of the scripts had writing on it that was not Chinese, more similar to Hindi.
The Lama Temple was built in 1694 and it was going to be where one of the emperors of the Qing dynasty was going to live, before he took the throne. Then it was converted into a “lamasery,” a Buddhist temple. When we bought our tickets, we got a mini CD with it that plays traditional Chinese music (I think… I’m kind of paranoid about playing it on my computer until I get home. Viruses are rampant!) Then each person got a free bundle of incense. There were various stations throughout the temple where you could burn three sticks at a time. The Buddhists bow three times (kneeling or standing) at each shrine. There are offerings of fake fruit and people can leave money at the shrines. There is also a prayer wheel that people spin.
I did not take pictures of the inside of the shrines to be respectful, but at the end of the temple there is a HUGE statue of Buddha (we’re talking 18 meters high)
The Lama Temple was built in 1694 and it was going to be where one of the emperors of the Qing dynasty was going to live, before he took the throne. Then it was converted into a “lamasery,” a Buddhist temple. When we bought our tickets, we got a mini CD with it that plays traditional Chinese music (I think… I’m kind of paranoid about playing it on my computer until I get home. Viruses are rampant!) Then each person got a free bundle of incense. There were various stations throughout the temple where you could burn three sticks at a time. The Buddhists bow three times (kneeling or standing) at each shrine. There are offerings of fake fruit and people can leave money at the shrines. There is also a prayer wheel that people spin.
I did not take pictures of the inside of the shrines to be respectful, but at the end of the temple there is a HUGE statue of Buddha (we’re talking 18 meters high)
All of the old buildings (such as the Summer Palace, the Forbidden City, etc.) that we've been to have this metal bar that you have to step over to get into a room. The people believe that it keeps out evil spirits. A funny sidenote: all of the classrooms have this 2 inch metal bar that we almost trip over every time we walk into a classroom. One of the student teachers here told us that it was to keep out evil spirits, like the one pictured above. I asked my mentor teacher if that was true and she said "Oh no! Haha that's just the door frame!" :)
And after we got back, Madison and I went to the student singing competition. Our mentor teachers performed at the teacher one last week. The one last night was awesome! The kids got really into it, with really great hip hop dance routines and great singing.