China, Part 2

OK, here's some more about China. This was a cool temple that we went to at Longqing Gorge just outside of Beijing. It was a pretty small temple, but it was very cool because it was up in the mountains. I really wanted to ring the gong, but that was our first day, so I didn't quite have the courage to. Don't worry, I got brave and rang one later though.

Here are April and Dane in the rowboats at Longqing Gorge.

The dumplings were really good. They were kind of like potstickers. While we were in China, our diet pretty much consisted of noodles, fried rice and dumplings. those were basically the only edible things on the menu.

I've never seen such giant incense sticks! And the huge urns they burn them in. These were pretty much at every temple we went to. And inside all the temples were giant Buddas. Of course we couldn't take pictures of them, but seriously they were huge.

These next few are from Behai and Hohai parks. I loved the parks in China. It was so much fun to people watch there. I just love that people actually go to parks to hang out and do whatever.

They had paddle boats you could take for a spin.

People were doing all sorts of fun things at the park. I loved it.

We went to a water town near Suzhou called Zhouzhaung (I think). It was really cool. The streets were canals just like in Venice and there were these cute little bridges everywhere. We had a bit of an adventure getting there. We hopped on this old, rickety bus and pointed to the name of the town and hoped we were going there. A cute little Chinese girl kind of adopted us and told us where to get off (using gestures of course). And she tried to help us figure out how to get back. We just pointed again and got on a bus and hoped for the best. And we made it safe and sound.

These water towns are like 3,000 years old. We got brave and tried some roasted pork leg for lunch at the water town. Once you cut through the huge layer of fat and actually got to the meat, it was pretty good. And we bartered for pearls and jade.

Tianemen Square. Now that was an interesting place. There were policemen everywhere. It is right across the street from the Forbidden City and in the middle of it there is this huge mausoleum for Mao (the ruler who brought communism into China). To go into the mausoleum you have to go through these security checks and you can't bring any bags or cameras or anything with you. Then you have to take off your hats/sunglasses/etc. and be really quiet. Then you go into the huge building and there is Mao preserved in a glass coffin. It was really creepy.

We also bought tons of souvenirs at the Silk Market in Beijing. It was really overwhelming to have people swarming you trying to sell you stuff, but it was kinda fun to barter with them. I even got a silk Chinese dress tailor made for me.

I've still got more to come, so stay tuned.