As vegetarians, my family only has a few options when we want to dine out in a Chinese restaurant. On my cousin’s birthday, we found a good excuse to try a new vegetarian restaurant that opened up nearby. The food was amazing, but what we really remember from that dinner was yet to happen.
On the way out, the restaurant manager approached my uncle and asked him if he would like to see the temple. My uncle was confused about which temple she was talking about, but he was fascinated by foreign cultures so he agreed anyway. The manager pulled aside our family and led us out of the restaurant and into an apartment building directly adjacent to the restaurant. All of us began looking at each other skeptically, with our parents still oblivious to the fact that this temple was strangely located on the second floor of a quiet building and the obvious language barrier between us and the manager. The elevators doors opened and we walked through a maze of hallways to finally be led into a small ballroom with three massive structures of the Lord Buddha.
The manager was now accompanied by another man and they both came in and out of the ballroom with notebooks and even changed into formal attire. At this point, even our parents realized that they had no idea what was going on. Our parents started negotiating with no idea what they were negotiating for, they signed up for programs they didn’t even know the name of and eventually even became members to a Buddhist temple they had just walked into. My cousins and I were told to sit in a partitioned room where we could look into the ballroom through a glass window.
Our parents were guided through a ceremony that involved continuous kneeling and bowing and culminated in them receiving a membership card to the Flushing Buddhist Temple! The entire time we were laughing, not because of the temple, but how we went through the entire situation because of a language barrier. They didn’t even know they became members until they received ID cards with their names on them!
It was so late that I texted my cousin saying “next time we’re getting take out!”
