RE: Interiors of Chinese Temples in Saigon 🇻🇳 Closeup Photo Walk with 50mm
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Beautiful pictures! I particularly like the one with the man on the bench. I know that you're technically in a temple, but it really seems to show a side of their life that is simply interesting because it is different from what I see every day. I work in southern Germany and pretty much everywhere I go I see the same architecture that barely differs from one village to another. And of course, Dominique looks particularly dashing!
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Danke schoen!
They can have a peculiar life in Chinese temples in Southeast Asia. Elderly temple caretakers are often there and they can do many things there.
I guess, many Chinese temples are tiny museums with supernatural artifacts. Mostly empty, people pray rarely but, on some dates, there is a crowd there. So temple caretakers can cook something small in these "museums", wash and dry clothes, work, keep pets, etc - just a few meters away from the altars. Dashing Dominique, for example, peed on the floor in front of me. (They will clean, of course). In Asia, people live in more crowded houses and rooms so... if someone brings a sewing machine into a temple to do some sewing work along with caring about the temple... why not? (I saw that in a Chinese temple in Thailand).
For me this world is a mystery, I even don't understand how religion works in Chinese communities; every religion entwines another. Probably, if Europeans, Western and Eastern, didn't invent the concept of heresy, it was this way in Europe too. Just a guess.
Very interesting. A lot of people and even I would've considered that strange, to do personal work in a temple or more of a "public" place, but who am I to judge? If it makes sense to them, and they don't bother anyone, what's the harm in it?
By saying "strange", I didn't mean it is wrong. Moreover, those strange things are one of the reasons I travel.
That's my personal perception based on my native cultural and travel backgrounds, and it's not strange to express it on the blog.
Of course, that's not what I meant, just that something being different from what we do might be considered strange. But, if anything, sharing all this in a blog, for others to see, is a great thing - not everyone can travel, so getting a taste of other people's culture and daily life through blog posts is one way to experience the world.