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Two kilometres due south of Chen Jia lies Hualin Si (daily 8am-5pm; free), an interesting temple tucked away in the maze of alleyways between Changshou Lu and Xiajiu Lu. It's most fun getting there by weaving your way through the older backstreets from either Zhongshan Lu or Liuersan Lu, but quicker to take the alley north next to the Guangzhou restaurant on Xiajiu Lu - bus #31 and the metro come as close as Changshou Lu. There's a carefully contrived jade market outside Hualin's entrance, worth a quick browse even though most pieces are expensive and probably fake. The temple forecourt stands behind an auspiciously red-painted gateway, with the main hall immediately to the right. Founded as a modest nunnery by the Brahman prince Bodhidharma in 527, Hualin is doubly sacred as the first place that he set foot on Chinese soil and is also known as Xila Chudi (First Arrival from the West). Bodhidharma's Chan teachings really caught on in the the seventeenth century and the temple was hugely expanded in 1654, the main hall's interior reshaped as the character tian - a box with a cross in it - with five hundred arhat sculptures ranged along the aisles. Trashed during the Cultural Revolution, the sculptures have recently been replaced, the halls are undergoing elaborate redecoration, and during festivals you'll be crushed, deafened and blinded by the crowds and incense smoke.
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