Overly knowledgeable but not-quite fluent, our guide's rapid-fire delivery of historic tidbits, Mandarin pronouns, and trivia information had sent my brain into fact overload on more than one occasion. Adding to my confusion was the utter foreignness of his accent to my Western ear; his pronunciation of some English words sounded quite like other words in our language, albeit with altogether different meanings. I scurried through the Forbidden City on the first day of our trip with a mental note to check his story about the Dragon Lady and her husband's mistress who she fed to a whale, as it sounded eerily familiar to the fate of Jonah (of Biblical fame), until he showed us what he was talking about. Dragon Lady stuffed her husband's mistress down a well, which was still unfortunate, but made a lot more sense.
Even though I don't remember doing so, I must have jotted down "Pharmacy Buddha" as we were peering through the glass at the menagerie of fat, happy, squinty-eyed religious icons on display. He kept referencing the "Pharmacy Buddha", so there must have been some significance to that particular incarnation of the famous deity, but try as I might, I couldn't find any connection between what I was hearing and what I was seeing. None of the figurines was holding a pill bottle or a mortar and pestle or anything, so then I began to wonder whether the ancient Chinese made Buddhas the same way we make Barbies. Barbie-- who, according to Mattel, has had 125 careers and counting-- is a Jane of all trades. So if there is a Pharmacy Buddha, is there not also a Park Ranger Buddha, a Helicopter Pilot Buddha, a Veterinarian Buddha?
A Google search of the phrase turned up quite a few interesting results, but none that even came close to corroborating our guide's story. So what was the significance of the Pharmacy Buddha? Unless one of my religiously diverse friends (with an ear for loosely related cognates) cares to venture a guess, I suppose I'll never know.
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