BEIJING: Standing in the courtyard of the Temple of Heaven with the rain pouring down on my hastily acquired flimsy umbrella, the crowds of tourists viewed through sheets of water appeared to me like receding ghosts. On either side of the circular hall of prayer for good harvests - washed clean to reveal a brilliant blue - stood the hall of the Earthly Mount and the Imperial Vault of Heaven. Each of them stood on a square yard, the square representing Earth and the circle, Heaven.
Why did Shakespeare come to mind? "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/ than are dreamt of in your philosophy". This was Hamlet's response to his friend who expres-sed bewilderment over seeing his father's ghost. The rain-drenched people one could see, mirage-like, were no ghosts. But all were here in the temple built and venerated by the Ming and Ching dynasties, admiring the thought and effort that went into creating the hallowed spaces heavy with symbolism and numerology.
Chinese wisdom spans a gamut of philosophies from I Ching, Confucius and Buddhism, to Neo and New Confucianism, Maoism and communist-style capi-talism. But popular culture tends to take refuge in the more user friendly, simplistic fortune cookie-generated "Confucius says..." pearls of wisdom. As they say, humour, like oxygen, can lift your spirits even in the most trying of circumstances specially when it is loaded with practical tips.
In Imperial China's Temple of Heaven complex, the architectural design symbolises the connection between Heaven and Earth. The Temple of Heaven was a place for emperors to pray for good harvests. The emperor, "son of Heaven", also prayed here for atonement of his people's sins. The temple complex is encircled by two consecutive walls. The outer wall has a taller, semi-circular northern end, representing Heaven, and the shorter, rectangular southern end represents the Earth.
Incidentally, the numeral nine, so special in Indic culture - in navaratri, navagriha, navadaniya, navaratna, navarasa and so on - has a unique place in Chinese tradition, too. The Forbidden City, for instance, has exactly 9,999.5 rooms - deliberately falling short of the 10,000 rooms in the Jade Emperor's Heavenly palace, stressing the need for humility and acceptance of human limitations. The number nine, the highest value single digit, also represents the emperor. The numeral is woven into the design of the Earthly Mount in the temple complex, a round plate surrounded by a ring of nine smaller plates, and another 18 plates and so on, amounting to nine rings with the outermost having 81 plates (9X9). The deep blue roof tiles that cover the temple buildings denote Heaven and the theme is the need for Earth to reach out to make that connection.
The rain having abated, we walked out of the Temple of Heaven towards the parking lot, and saw seven stones displayed on the grass, fenced off for security. We were informed that each of the seven stones - contrary to myth that they are meteorites - represents the seven peaks of the Taishan mountains, where traditional Heaven worship was offered in ancient times.
There was no sign here, however, of a Shangri-La or Shambala. But the hotel was yet a good one hour's drive away, and there was ample time to take refuge in an imagination that offered generous glimpses of neither Heaven nor Earth but of what lay beyond...