Lin shi bao fo jiao

Today I spent more time exploring the campus of Tongji. Early in the morning one can find practitioners of qi gong and other arts starting their day. I say "the" campus but Tongji actually has several campuses, and I've been at its historic one. And there's a lot of construction and renovation going on here.

The renovations gave me an opportunity to watch workers erecting bamboo scaffolding from the very start. And the workers seemed fascinated at my interest, giving me smiles and "thumbs up" at times. And also "posing" playfully (in one of the photos, the worker with "leg in air" isn't falling ... he's just having some fun with me).

My exploration lasted until the sky turned dark, so I made it back to the Guest House before the heavy winds and rain came. This gave me an opportunity to prepare for meetings next week and to relect a little.

Having heard about the booming Shanghai economy I'm a little surprised that so much is done "the hard way." With so many doing things in a labor-intensive manner (including just getting around) it's obvious that there's a lot of struggle here just to make it. The Mongolian student who helped me find my way to the Guest House had commented when we met that he viewed education as the way out, the way to success.

When talking later about Tibetan Buddhism, he mentioned an apparently common Chinese phrase I found interesting: "lin shi bao fo jiao" or, literally, temporarily hugging a leg of a statue. The example he gave was of a student unprepared for an exam, imploring heaven for help during a time of crisis ... temporarily.