The Celestial Masters

During my university studies of Chinese history, I became particularly interested in the history of the Celestial Masters, a Daoist school. They emerged in Sichuan province during the 2nd century and transformed Daoism from a philisophy into a religion. After about 600 CE, the Celestial Masters disappeared, and re-emerged about three hundred years later in current-day Jianxi province, with their headquarters at at mountain called Longhushan. I have always wanted to visit their headquarters, but there was no information in my travel book on Longhushan. Internet research did confirm that there was a temple at Longhushan open for tourism, as well as some karst peaks. Since Longhushan was not in my guidebook, I figured I would be the only non-Chinese tourist there. But, in China, Longhushan is actually quite famous. Everyone whom I asked about it, all said that they knew about it. For the weeklong October holiday, I decided to go.

Yingtan, the biggest city near the mountain, is like any other Chinese city, filled with bathroom-tile buildings and other architectural horrors. That was no surprise. After finding a hotel, I took a shuttle to the mountain. The lady at the hotel warned me in Chinese that the Celestial Master temple was in a different spot than the mountain, but since I didn't really understand her, decided to go to the mountain anyway. I was given the option upon arriving of either taking boat cruise among the karst peaks for an exorbitant amount, or climbing one of the peaks. I took the latter option. The scenery was lovely, but I was dissapointed at how poorly reconstructed the temples on the mountain were. They had both been built of concrete, and were very poorly maintained. After the roughly hourlong hike, I bought a map of the area to see where the main temple was. Because it was too far, I ended up hiring a motorcycle to take me to the temple due to lack of other transport options! The temple itself was in an area that was being rapidly developed for tourist. Old-style buildings were being rebuilt and two new temples still hadn't been painted. The Celestial Master temple was a huge dissapointment. As far as I could tell, only a tiny part of it was still old. That part was nice. The main pavillion was made of concrete and just looked plain tacky. I think a bit of concrete is ok in temple construction, but only the columns and walls. The rest should be wood! Especially the roof supports. I can see why the current Celestial Master lives in Taiwan. If he returned to see his home temple he would be ashamed!