Hualin Temple 华林寺 – Guangzhou, China

        As a Christian, I do not go to temples to pray, but only to enjoy the magnificence of the architecture and learn the culture and history. Based on this reason, on the same day I visited Guangxiao temple, I and my brother also went to Hualin temple. Actually, the hot weather and the far distance between the MTR and the temple made me reluctant to visit that temple, yet we kept moving forward. Going there at that time was just to finish my “responsibility” for that day’s adventurous journey. We walked through Shang Xia Jiu Lu road for approximately 30 minutes until we could reach our destined place. Sweat was all over my body while I had to walk pushing through the crowd.

        When I reached the Hualin temple, it is much smaller than Guangxiao temple. The temple has a history of 1500 years and was constructed in the Southern Dynasty (420-581 AD) when an Indian monk visited the site. This eight-floor temple with black and azure colors is well known as the holy land of the international Buddhism and has become one of the five biggest Buddhist temples in Guangzhou with large team of monks.

The entrance gate of the Hualin temple with two red lanterns hanging on the roof

         The Hualin temple has two major halls, the Bodhidharma Hall and the Five-hundred Arhat Hall. Reconstructed in 1990s, the Bodhidharma Hall was built to honor Bodhidharma, the son of the former Indian Xiangzhi king who founded Mahayana in South India, as the 28th ancestor of western Buddhism and the first eastern Buddhism.  During the South Liang dynasty, Bodhidharma sailed over the marine silk road visiting the temple, then continued his journey to the west and established Zen of Chinese Buddhism there. The later generations considered the first place of his landing as the first landing of westerners for which reason the temple was formerly named XiLai, which means “visitor from the west”. However, during the Sunzhi period in 1654, it was renamed Hualin temple.

  

 

Bronze statue in the Bodhidharma Hall to which people throw money in request for financial prosperity

I do not know what this hall is called, but at the time I visited it, it was closed

        In the last year of Emperor Daoguang (1821 – 1861), Zhiyuan monk reconstructed the Bodhidharma hall and built five-hundred arhat hall. Finished in the first year of Xiangfeng period, the arhat hall has kept lifelike arhat statues with different poses, positions and moods. 

 

At the entrance of the Five-hundred Arhat Hall, there are two fierce-looking guardian statues standing sentinel as if they are protecting the hall from evil forces

Inside the Arhat Hall are five hundred Buddha statues with different positions and faces

Besides keeping five-hundred arhats, the hall has also preserved a statue of Marcopollo who sailed to China in the 13^th century and the King Asoka bronze pagoda weighing 750 kg placed in the center of the hall. During the Great Cultural Revolution in 1960s, the five hundred arhats were destroyed and the tower was lost.  In 1990s the hall was reconstructed and the temple was opened for public. 

        Hualin temple has a special place in the heart of Chinese Buddhists and plays an important role in developing Chinese Zen culture and Sino-culture exchange. 

Sources:
Personal experience and additional information from other online articles