May Day!

May 1st is International Labor Day, a holiday celebrated in many countries that have a history of labor movements. In China, it is a rather large holiday full of fireworks and parades. My University was closed for 3 days around the holiday, and many businesses and offices were off yesterday too. To celebrate the holiday, a few friends and I went to 法门寺 Famen Temple, a temple outside of Xi'an. I was invited by friends of the Chinese organizers of our little outing and didn't really know much about the temple, other than that it was supposed to be historic. Upon arriving at the temple, I was surprised by the entirely brand new temple. In typical Chinese fashion, there is a huge pavillion at the entrance, complete with water fountains and stone elephants:

From there, we walked down the long pathway leading up to the main temple. Along the way, there were various bodhisattva statutes, which our Chinese friends had to pray at. EVERY one. So it took us about an hour and a half just to walk to the main temple. It was a beautiful day though, and we all enjoyed the sunshine (some of us a little too much- I'm pretty sunburned now...).

Of course we had to take silly Chinese tourist photos...

And imitate all the bodhisattvas

attempting to not get totally sunburned (and failing)

BEST PARASOL EVER

We finally arrived at the temple (yes, the large gold diamond-thing that looks like it should be used to communicate with aliens). 

Then we explored the inside of temple, although apparently we missed the major attraction of the whole temple. I finally figured out the story of the temple yesterday, after we had already come back. Apparently the provincial government was trying to build something and accidentally discovered that beneath this really old temple was an entire basement of buried treasure, complete with one of buddha's fingers now on display in the main room of the modern temple. They then built this entire temple complex in 2009, and made the basement of the main temple area into a museum with all the ancient artifacts they found. Unfortunately  no one told us about this awesome museum, and there were NO signs so we actually didn't see the temple. We also didn't see the really old pagoda housed on the side of temple complex, which again had no markings or signage. Typical China, always messing up their best tourist sites with weird, kitchy, new development around the actual site. And then not telling you anything about it...

Despite missing the major sites, it was still a great day in the sun with friends! And while I was expecting a historical site, I enjoyed seeing this modern buddhist temple, which was pretty unique from what I've seen in China. Definitely worth a visit for anyone passing through Xi'an!