Today was an absolutely dreadful day. It was cold, it was rainy, my period has started, the person who was going to come to Tianshui to visit the Maijishan Grottoes with me has had his flight cancelled, and Bingling Temple was a complete waste of time.

I've known since shortly before Qingcheng that this Bingling Temple isn't the one of the same name that just got made a UNESCO World Heritage Site but I was okay with that. Most of my experiences with properly developed tourism sites have rarely risen above mediocre and have never managed to hit downright magical.

Also, even if this wasn't going to the Amazing Famous Grotto site I thought it was during the planning stages, I knew (because I'd previously noticed them on the cliff above the temple just downhill) that this area ought to also have three or four small grottoes that a persistent me with a full day's time on her hands should have no problems with visiting.

It only cost 10y to get in but, even though it was an afterthought with no one actually manning the ticket window, it was a very commercial feeling 10y.

This Bingling Temple (which is located in Bingling Temple Village) was built between 1995 and 2004 "on the site of the Qing Dynasty Bingling Temple" but you have to go downhill to the smaller, drabber affair to realize that this is not so much because the Cultural Revolution destroyed the original Bingling Temple as is implied but not directly stated as it because they wanted a bigger temple.

It's certainly big. And grand. And full of art that you either can't get a good look at because they've put locked gates across the entrance to every building or because no one seems to believe in basic maintenance and it's falling apart¹.

Other than some Tibetan Buddhist stuff I've been to in Beijing (of all places), this is the most Tibetan a temple I've ever been to with stupa instead of pagodas and prayer wheels beneath giant quotes from Xi Jinping.

I spend substantially less time than I would have liked to have spent but there's no point in taking photos of half obscured distant objects and there's no way to actually look at anything inside the buildings.

I spend even less time at the original Bingling. Basically just long enough to get repeatedly shouted at by a woman who has taken to heart the idea that anyone doing anything you don't like and which you don't have any valid reason to ask them to stop can be asked to stop doing it on account of the pandemic.

In this case: photography.

I'm not supposed to be taking pictures indoor, outdoor, or of her because there's a pandemic and who knows what godsawful germs my camera might be sending her direction. She and the docent of the North Grottoes should get together some time and commiserate about the evils of cameras.

I fail to find any obvious paths from inside the temple that should or could lead up to the grottoes from below and there's also no point in asking her.

Back on the outside, I look up thinking that maybe I can trace the path down the mountainside but I mostly just come to the conclusion (based on the faded paint, cracked roof tiles, and torn lanterns) that no one has been up there in quite some time and that, even if I do find a path, it might be more dangerous than I'm willing to attempt.

So I go back to the hotel. Fail to negotiate much off my room price (despite them only being 108 booked online if anything would let me book online in this province), hand wash some of my shorts, and spend the rest of the day napping or working.

¹ While some recent readings on Buddhist theories of impermanence in the earthly realm seem to be implicated in this attitude, so too is being just plain lazy.