Six Banyan Temple

This temple site apparently dates back to the sixteenth century. It's got a pagoda, and this line-up of three Buddhas (my angle only captured two of them), and a bunch of incense burning stations.



My mom will accuse me of being too keqi, but I decided to bow and light some incense in honor of my maternal grandmother (whose 100th birthday would have been a couple of weeks ago) and my Cantonese ancestors, some of whom I suspect would have visited this temple at one point or another. I'm a little bummed that I have no idea who they were, unless Tai Popo came here as a child.



Then we went into the temple and the monk sang a prayer and blessed the three babies. There was a small amount of sprinkling each of us with water from a leaf dipped in a pot, so I'm not entirely sure whether or not we're now Buddhists. Nah, it's only that deivore religion that does the baptism thing.



Then Joyce decided to light some incense in honor of Juliet's biological parents. I cannot imagine what horrible choices they must have faced in giving up such a wonderful child (who they could not even have gotten to know--the report states that Juliet appeared to have been born the day she was found at the Xingye Woman and Children's Hospital). I hope they wanted the best for their child, and trusted that she would somehow end up cared for and loved.