18 Layers of Departments

The DongYue Miao temple is located near the heart of Beijing.  And although the cars are honking and there’s people crossing the street when they aren’t supposed to when you walk into the temple, the noise seems to cease.

It’s a bit funny though because the temple is famous for depicting the 18 layers of hell.  Rimmed around the temple courtyard are 76 ‘exhibits,’ adorned with over 300 wooden statues.  In the exhibits, there are statues that display the various departments and also explain aspects of religious Daoism.  It is important to note here that in religious Daoism, good deeds are met with happiness and good luck, and bad deeds are met with misfortune.  The number of good deeds and bad deeds determine what people are reincarnated as in the next life (this could include humans, animals, or demons).  Most of the statues are quite normal; country folk, women with babies, and people obviously of the wealthy class, but some of them are quite gruesome.  

These statues include, but are not limited to blue and red demons with spiked heads, and persons who may or may not be missing guts or limbs.  There were also many statues in the courtyard as well as two horse statues.  I thought they were kind of random, but actually turned out to have real significance (it was believed that whoever touched them would have good fortune).  Spending an hour and a half at one temple was really interesting, and there is one thing for sure that I now know about religious Daoism; there are an infinite number of departments. Everything under the sun is covered.  Reading about all the departments made me plum tired.  I honestly felt like I was reading about the United State legal system; the number of departments just kept going and going and going.  Allow me to demonstrate.  For example, there’s a department for writing good and bad deeds down, and a department for deciding if people are going to go to hell or heaven.  Then there’s a department for reviewing the decision and yet another department for stamping and approving the deed.  Then, the person’s fate is irrevocably decided.  These people were probably waiting for years on end before they finally found out that they only did enough good deeds to be reincarnated into a squirrel.  Hate it when that happens…  Overall though, the system very well organized and extremely thorough process.  And it was extremely interesting.  But seriously, I couldn’t even keep track of all the departments there were so many.