A trip to Daoist Hell

After barely missing a train to Inner Mongolia this morning and finding myself unexpectedly still in Beijing, I decided to break out of my "But I live here" routine and do some sightseeing. It was the first time I've done so in years, aside from my nostalgic little foray to Tian'anmen a few weeks ago.

I have, after all, been to: the Great Wall, the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, the Old Summer Palace, a bunch of old city gates, and more. I live inside a hutong that is right on the main stampeding path of rickshaw tours, and most days I ride my bicycle past all or most of: the Drum & Bell Tower, the Lama Temple, the Confucius Temple, and the Guozijian Imperial College.

I'm not claiming that I've seen all there is to see in Beijing, or all that's worth seeing: not by any means. But I get more than my daily fill of tourist crush, of beady-eyed vendors shouting "hallo! hallo! (insert barely comprehensible approximation of English word for whatever they're selling)." I can pretty succesfully ignore it whizzing by on my clattery little two-wheeled contraption, but it saps my will to go see other things.

But since I failed to get myself to Hohhot today, I steeled myself for whatever may come, and followed a friend's suggestion to go to Daoist Hell, more commonly known as the Dongyue Temple (东岳庙). Pedaling through wind and rain, feeling cold and uninterested, I briefly contemplated making a loop and going back home to my bookshelf of half-read and unread books instead. But I did find myself pulling up, locking my bike, and approaching the ticket window after all.

I paid my paltry ten yuan entrance fee, walked through the main gate, and was unexpectedly standing in a green, damp, peaceful courtyard surrounded by recessed altars. I was suddenly as alone as one can be in this city without walking into a room and closing the door.

It's a quite large temple complex, home to hundreds of life-sized statues that each represent some character belonging to different "departments", all of which are related to some aspect of life and/or death. There's the Department of Wandering Ghosts, the Final Indictment Department, the Department of Upholding Integrity, the Department of Wind Gods, the Department of Filial Piety, the Department of ... just about everything.

You can leave offerings in the form of dates or little red prayer tags for the deities ruling over departments you are particularly concerned with. Popular ones include those ruling over the accumulation of wealth, success in business matters, and having children. Some of these had piles of dates and prayer tags stacked on top of each other, while others seemed to be positively neglected, with what appeared to be a mandatory three dates. When there was nothing else, there were always three dates. (Except for the robbery department, where fingerprint marks in the layer of dust left evidence of the dates' theft.)

I was surprised to discover that the Department of Controlling Bullying and Cheating had not been honored with one single prayer tag, and had only a lonely three little dates. Personally, if I had had a kilo of dates I would have given all of them to that department. I would have given ten kilos of dates to that department. I would have bought twenty kilos of dates at the marked up cheat-the-foreigner price and poured them out on the feet of the deities in charge.

I was also a little surprised that the Department of Flying Birds was not better tended, as having pet birds is still very, very common among the old men of Beijing. They have pretty little cages decorated with eye-catching toys, they take them for daily walks and dotingly shield their cages with specially-made covers in the rain, but none of them see the need to make offerings to the concerned deities. The birds must be doing well.

A few other people did wander through, some devotees, some tourists but I found the place to be blissfully low-key and sparsely visited. And for any little or non-Chinese speaking people, most of the explanatory plaques were translated quite well; in this country, that means, intelligibly.

In the end, I spent the better part of the afternoon (unmolested) enjoying the at times gruesome, and at times whimsical depictions of the problems and joys of life as we know it, wondering if this wasn't better than Inner Mongolia.