Temple Life in 6 Shots

There is precious little to distinguish one Chinese city from the next. Vertical slabs of concrete reach for a grey sky; the avenues, though broad, are always clogged with traffic; monstrous department stores and fastfood chains spew out scores of happy consumers; the sound of pedestrians hawking their lungs out is never far away; and even the parks are a tumult of shouts, smells and shoves. The only place to escape the hubbub is a Buddhist or Taoist temple. These are often located in the unlikeliest places—among leering apartment blocks or on top of a mountain overlooking the sprawling city below. Enter and you'll find yourself alone at last, alone amid a whirl of colours where the silence is only deepened by the sound of a quietly chanting monk.

Yin is silence, yang is noise

Courtyard of a small Taoist temple

Guardian lion protecting a temple

Main gate of Dafo Si in Zhangye

The scarier the better

Prayer flags and Chinese Wall