Baisha Frescoes

Baisha is a small and sleepy village just outside of Lijiang with no claim to fame except in this old temple are a roomful of Buddhist frescoes. The temple is old and quite beautiful. It seemed to have an elegant and nonchalant air to it. It's never been restored or touched up which made it quite precious. I quite like this temple. It doesn't see many visitors either. The tourists from Southern China and Hong Kong are more interested in the shopping in Lijiang.

I wasn't suppose to take any pictures and as usual I don't listen. I set my camera to non flash and clicked. I was going to do it again when the guard came in and told me not to take any pictures. It was a small room in an old temple with frescoes painted on all its walls. This was the main one and they are all in a very bad state of decay because during the march of the red army, the young communist cadres started to wipe out these images but they didn't do a good job and this is what remained. It is unusual to see old Buddhist frescoes this far south in China. Most of the frescoes are in the deserts in the North west on the silk road. The famous ones are those in the caves in DunHuang where there are thousands of caves but most of these have been destroyed again by the communist cadres, some 40,000 pieces have been looted by a British explorer called Aurel Stein. His looting has been dubbed, 'the original Chinese takeaway'. All these are stashed in a vault at the British museum. I read somewhere that some are at the British Library. Three years ago I went to the British library to look for them but didn't see any. These are very delicate pieces and there is a project underway to digitalised them so the whole world can view them.

http://books.google.com/books?id=I3oOzXYmlaMC&lpg=PP1&dq=auriel%20stein&pg=PA27

That morning in Lijiang I told my Naxi taxi driver that I wanted to go to Baisha, a little village just outside of Lijiang. I described what I wanted to see, she couldn't really understand me but she brought me anyway. I read about the Baisha frescoes and I wanted to see them. Now it has really whetted my apetite for more frescoes, so pretty soon, I'll be on my way to Dunhuang and the North west of China looking for more Buddhist frescoes.