Advertisement
Published: February 26th 2012
Edit Blog Post
Start of the tour
This is the first courtyard inside the temple. Yesterday, (it's 3:20 AM Monday now) we had the day off to take in some of the local tourist stops. We first stopped at the Liurong temple or more in english Temple of the Six Banyan Trees. It was built over 1450 years ago. The pagoda there stands 57 meters high. I don't know for sure but it looked like it was leaning to one side a bit to me. I'm not sure if going up in it is an option if you're there just looking around, not that I was really ready to climb that many steps. The few pictures I was able to take don't do it justice since it was cloudy (again no sun here) so some of the pictures are a bit blurry but one thing I will mention. Those little orange fruits are real. They had those little trees all over the place. I heard someone say they were kumquats.
The weird thing to me about touring this place was it's an active Buddhist temple, there were people there doing their Sunday morning service (or whatever it's called) while all these people are walking around taking pictures. Kind of strange if you ask me.
Six bayan tree pagoda
I swear this thing is leaning. The next place we went to was the Old Chen House, also known as the Guangdong Folk Arts museum. The buildings here weren't quite as old, built somewhere around 1888. It's about 6,400 square meters of floor space, there's several buildings that interconnect. It started off as a place for the Chen family, which is one of the largest family names in China. The members of the family would gather to discuss business, worship their ancestors, various other family stuff. No one lived here other then the caretakers that kept the place up. According to the brochure it took them about 5 years to build it. When you can see the detailed craftsmanship in wood, stone, iron, and porcelain you wonder how they could have finished it that quick even today let alone back in the 1800's. Sometime around 1957 or 59 the Chen family donated it to the government so it could become a museum. Again, wishing I had by dslr camera and all day to take pictures.
Coming back we stopped by a local shop that sells jade and ivory crafts. They still have some ivory items but the craftsman have moved over to using other material
Details
Jocelyn telling the girls some of the details about the pagoda since ivory isn't as available like it was when people would kill elephants just to get their tusk. I thought I heard that they use camel bone as a common material now but not sure. Whatever they are using it's something to see the detail someone has put into the cravings.
So much for being a tourist, back to work when we returned to the hotel. Jenny had to gather up a lot of the girls papers and go to a group meeting in preparation for todays Consulate meeting. When CCAI tells you this isn't a touring trip but a business trip they mean it. :-)
We have to be in the lobby at 7:50 sharp this morning. The entire group will be going back to Shamian, some of us for our Consulate appointment, the others will be going back to the clinic to have the TB skin test checked. This will be one of the last pieces of paperwork we have to do here. The next thing will be getting everything in order for our flight back. I know Jenny, Jasmine and I are ready to come home. Rose and Lilly don't know what they're getting ready
Kumquat trees
My camera doesn't do this place justice. to experience since Rose has only been on a plane once and that was the flight from Nanchang to here. Lilly has never been on a plane. Nothing like having you're first flight take 22 hours and most of 2 days! Rough!
The girls had another taste of America last night since we ordered Papa John's pizza. Yep, a couple of plain old American pepperoni pizzas, delivered right to the room. However I don't think it was their first pizza not as quickly as they took to it. Our rep gave us a Papa John's flyer when we got here, for just in case we got tried of Chinese food. It was kind of interesting to order, their “call-center” is in Shanghai and you press 3 for english (thank you Papa John!). Two pizzas with delivery charge came to 236 RMB (about $38) and it was as hot as you would get severed in a restaurant and tasted just like one in the states. Not bad!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.068s; Tpl: 0.026s; cc: 5; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0348s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb