Not All Turtles Are Alike

August 13, 2019

On my second full day in Xiamen, Kelly, Yiding, and I visited the South Putuo Temple, originally built during the Tang Dynasty, destroyed during the Ming Dynasty, and rebuilt during the Qing Dynasty. Before plunging into the hordes of tourists, we took a little stroll around the pond in front to look at fish and turtles. To our consternation, we found a monstrous giant turtle in the midst of the pond’s other inhabitants – likely a rather ill-considered release by a rogue animal lover.

The people who released the huge turtle into the pond were not the only people to make a huge mistake at the South Putuo Temple. After walking through the temple and taking in its sights, we happened upon a pathway leading up a hill behind it. Many people were climbing up and down, so we figured we might as well try it out for a few paces and then return. However, though we clambered and clambered, the view of the surrounding area became only marginally better, nudging us on. We happened upon a collection of hundreds and hundreds of small, either broken or run-down religious statues in a cave of sorts, only partly protected from the elements. It looked like a dignified dump for holy objects that people were too afraid to throw away.

Pagoda at South Putuo Temple

Front view of the pagoda

Elephant statue at the entrance to South Putuo Temple

The inner courtyard of South Putuo Temple

A pagoda inside South Putuo Temple

Upper courtyard of South Putuo Temple

Pathway up the hill

View from the hill, with South Putuo Temple in the bottom right corner

A weathered rock

Blue-tailed skink lizard

A grave of a local priest in the likeness of a stupa

Planning our next steps

At some point – and much later than we should have – we resolved to let the cost sink and climbed back down again without reaching whatever was at the highest point (the entrance to the botanical garden, we were told). Kelly wanted to take me to Xiamen University, once a haunt of the famous Chinese author Lu Xun, yet upon our arrival at the gate, we were told that visits were only by reservation. Kelly had taken her mum’s alumna ID in case we ran into a situation like this, but for whatever reason, the guard chose to disbelieve that Kelly was truly the daughter of the person on the ID and asked for her mother’s national identification card, which Kelly obviously did not have.

After unsuccessfully trying to call a cab using a mobile application – a long story of Kelly getting increasingly frustrated with a very obtuse lost driver over the phone – we hailed a taxi off the street and went to eat some dim sum. Yiding bought a whole plate of chicken feet, which, given the tastes of the rest of the party, he had to finish all by himself.

Our last activity of the day was walking along Zhongshan pedestrian road, a locale known for its Western-style buildings and shops. By pure luck, we walked into a side road and happened across a protestant church built in the 1840s, in other words right after the First Opium War and Xiamen’s designation as a Treaty Port. In the evening, Kelly’s parents made us a giant dinner of many dishes. There was no way we could finish, but Kelly’s uncle and Yiding came to help consume some of the drink I would have felt guilty to leave.