{"id":1623,"date":"2010-01-07T17:22:03","date_gmt":"2010-01-07T22:22:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.froginawell.net\/china\/?p=1623"},"modified":"2014-08-30T13:37:16","modified_gmt":"2014-08-30T13:37:16","slug":"oh-hell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/2010\/01\/oh-hell\/","title":{"rendered":"Oh Hell"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" title=\"demon\" src=\"http:\/\/hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net\/hs152.snc3\/17950_1269321647201_1054642969_805416_495456_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"203\" height=\"132\" \/>It occurred to me that some of our readers may also have occasion to teach about Chinese conceptions of the afterlife, and specifically <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Diyu\">Chinese Hell<\/a>. I got some pictures of Hell while I was in Xian, specifically at the Daxingshan Temple. Like a lot of sites it Xian it has a very old history, but much of what is there now is quite recent. Also like many mainland temples it is pretty eclectic in its Buddhism, with Tibetan-style prayer wheels..<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"wheels\" src=\"http:\/\/hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net\/hs152.snc3\/17950_1269267405845_1054642969_805216_3935280_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"284\" height=\"213\" \/><\/p>\n<p>and a pond full of animals that have benevolently not been eaten<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"frogs\" src=\"http:\/\/photos-h.ak.fbcdn.net\/hphotos-ak-snc3\/hs152.snc3\/17950_1269267325843_1054642969_805214_7044156_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"273\" height=\"204\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Lots of mainland temples seem to assume that you received very little religious instruction and thus you will need to learn about it here. Thus they have a nice Hell room, that illustrates the punishments that you can expect if you misbehave. My apologies for the picture quality, as it was kind of dark, my camera and skills were poor, and I was reluctant to disturb the occasional worshiper.<\/p>\n<p>Like Dante&#8217;s version, the Chinese Hell has specific punishments for specific sins.<\/p>\n<p>Kidnappers are sawed in half.<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"saw\" src=\"http:\/\/photos-a.ak.fbcdn.net\/hphotos-ak-snc1\/hs214.snc1\/8117_1214159508182_1054642969_650851_7651172_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"604\" height=\"453\" \/><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I think these are rapists and sex offenders being boiled in oil<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"oil\" src=\"http:\/\/hphotos-snc1.fbcdn.net\/hs214.snc1\/8117_1214159308177_1054642969_650846_4325244_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"604\" height=\"453\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I think it is greedy people who are ground up<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"grinding\" src=\"http:\/\/hphotos-snc1.fbcdn.net\/hs234.snc1\/8117_1214159388179_1054642969_650848_1340694_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"604\" height=\"453\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The wok<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"wok\" src=\"http:\/\/hphotos-snc1.fbcdn.net\/hs214.snc1\/8117_1214159228175_1054642969_650844_3498138_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"604\" height=\"453\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The whole place is of course presided over by the Kings of Hell<\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 604px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"yama\" src=\"http:\/\/farm4.static.flickr.com\/3002\/2646124978_30310f9f0c.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"604\" height=\"453\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">not my picture<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>and the Buddhas also look over the place<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"buddha\" src=\"http:\/\/hphotos-snc1.fbcdn.net\/hs234.snc1\/8117_1214159148173_1054642969_650842_6524663_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"453\" height=\"604\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Chinese Hell, is of course more like Purgatory. You go there, get punished for your sins and then move on. In this case you drink the broth of oblivion to make you forget both hell and your past life<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"broth\" src=\"http:\/\/hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net\/hs152.snc3\/17950_1269321327193_1054642969_805415_8031563_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"604\" height=\"453\" \/><\/p>\n<p>and then head back to be re-born<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"back to life\" src=\"http:\/\/hphotos-snc3.fbcdn.net\/hs152.snc3\/17950_1269307086837_1054642969_805386_5948284_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"453\" height=\"604\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I hope you have enjoyed this tour of Hell, and more importantly, that you will go beyond being titillated by cool pictures and actually take these lessons to heart.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"sign\" src=\"http:\/\/photos-b.ak.fbcdn.net\/hphotos-ak-snc3\/hs152.snc3\/17950_1269267365844_1054642969_805215_3513546_n.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"604\" height=\"453\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It occurred to me that some of our readers may also have occasion to teach about Chinese conceptions of the afterlife, and specifically Chinese Hell. I got some pictures of Hell while I was in Xian, specifically at the Daxingshan Temple. Like a lot of sites it Xian it has a very old history, but&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[165,119,83],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-china","category-english","category-visual-culture"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9yoH3-qb","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1623"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4638,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1623\/revisions\/4638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/froginawell.net\/frog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}