Seeing the sites of northern Guangdong

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Great fun the last few weeks traveling around during Spring Festival (Lunar New Year). A few days after I returned from XiuShui, I was treated by the Tao family to a fancy dinner whose sole purpose was for me to get acquainted with them and their college-age daughter Rose (Tao Ying). Mr. and Mrs. Tao are highly placed government officials. They had asked their friend Mr. Zhang, dean of the Foreign Language Department, to connect them with an English-speaking teacher who wanted to see the sites of Shaoguan. Their plan was to have Rose act as tour guide, and practice her English in the process. Rose was eager to do this, and so was I -- a great plan all the way around. I went to the dinner with my Shaoguan map and sightseeing wish-list in hand. Rose is a bright, energetic and capable young woman, and she and I clicked right off. A business major at an English-speaking university in Guangzhou, her oral English is quite good. She was interested in going to all the places I mentioned, so we quickly mapped out a 4-day itinerary. She and the other young people who went along, Amy (14-year-old whose English was not strong) and Lanke (freshman at a university in Shanghai majoring in English), were delightful travel companions.

In brief, Day One we spent seeing the Shaoguan City Museum, which has a beautiful collection of ancient ceramics, dating from the Bronze Age, through to the Tang, Song and Ming Dynasties (around 1640 AD). Also an exhibit of beautiful oil paintings by a modern and masterful Chinese artist, and a room full of wonderful ancient calligraphy and water colors. I took a lot of pictures of the ceramics, so if you're interested in seeing these, just let me know. There was another room of photographs of Communist Party luminaries (one of Chiang Kaishek) and views of 19th century Shaoguan which contained the death mask of Hui Neng, the 6th Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, who died in 713 AD and whose ashes are buried in Nan Hua Temple (outside of Shaoguan). To see this was a stunning surprise as Hui Neng (pronounced Way Nung) is revered by Buddhists as one of the most important of the early Chinese shifus (master teachers). His Platform Sutra is considered among the most articulate enunciations of Buddhism ever written. After lunch, we went hiking up the steep hill in the city park. Day Two we went to Danxia Shan National Park, a cultural heritage site of red sandstone mountains 30 miles north of Shaoguan. Gorgeous scenery and amazing rock formations. The photo of Yangyuan (as in the Daoist categories of Yin and Yang, Yang for the male) is on every tourist map of Danxia, and inspired the Danxia Sex Museum in the village below the park. We didn't have time to go to Yinyuan, it's complement, which is miles away. Day Three Mr. and Mrs. Tao drove us to Maba, to the Maba Man Museum and Cave, where an ancestor of homo sapiens lived over 130,000 years ago. The caves are huge, dry and spacious -- hundreds of people could have lived inside comfortably. Day Four a friend of the family, Mr. He, drove us to Eastern Guangdong to a Hakka historic village near the town of Shixing. The Hakka (Kejia in Mandarin) are an interesting minority. Though Han Chinese, because they were migrants who came into Guangdong Prv. to escape the Mongolian onslaught, they are called Hakka, which means "guest people". But this all happened over 600 years ago, yet they were treated as outsiders and a minority by the locals for centuries. Talk about making it hard for newcomers!! For protection, their villages were built to be fortresses, enclosed to withstand attacks from hostile neighbors. Today, the Zhen clan, whose ancestors built the fortress, still live in a group of houses that spread around it. They maintain the fortress as a tourist attraction, complete with entrance fee and a guide.

Each day of our travels, I was treated to a sumptuous Chinese style lunch of 8-10 courses. After our lunch on the last day, Mr. He insisted on buying me a supply of the specialty peanut and tarot snacks for which Shixing is famous. I've been munching on the tarot chips as I write this. Yummy!

Thanks, as always, for reading. I hope you enjoy the photos!

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Comments

[Jennifer]

Question
Hi Jo Anne, I am thrilled to see this. A link to your blog was posted on Shaoguan Parents - a group for families that have adopted children from Shaoguan SWI, who now live all over the world. We adopted our daughter, Lela, (Shao Fu Qin) in 1/05 but were not able to visist then (Lunar new year and really bad weather) Most of us have only been to the city briefly if at all and it is exciting to see where our children came from. We did visited Shaoguan in 9/07 while we were in China adopting our second daughter, but only on a day trip to Lela's orphanage, so saw very little of the region. May I have your permission to use some of your copy and images in Lela's lifebook? It is a history of her life before her adoption (what I know) and her cultural background for her private use. Jennifer Wilson-Pines

[Jo B]

About your interest in Shaoguan
Hi Mrs. Wilson-Pines: I was delighted to read your comments and glad to know this is of interest. Shaoguan is a wonderful city, with much beauty and wonderful people. Please go ahead and use any of my past or future blogs for your daughter's life book. As I am still learning my way around this blog, I'm not sure if my comments here will make it to you, but this seems to be the only method of responding. Please write back to confirm receipt of this response. Best wishes, Jo Anne

[Jennifer Wilson-Pines]

Thank you
Hi Jo Anne, Thank you! It's very hard to come by good information about smaller cities in China. Your day to day experience actually living there has so much rich detail. THere are 2 orphanages in Shaoguan. Lela's was a SWI's (Social Welfare Institutions) which also houses elderly. The other is just for children. Unfortunately, they are often the destination of a second or third girl, (like the family you saw) though not as much now as a few years ago, with the rise in income. Also many minority groups are allowed more than one child. There is more domestic adoption of healthy infants and the orphanages have mostly special needs children now.

[Nick]

Comment from S. California
Excellent photography...I enjoyed browsing through the photos. Will return to see the rest of them soon.