Quanzhou -- giving up numbering days

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Hello everybody. Sorry it's been a few days. We had to move hotels, and the Internet jack in my room doesn't work, so I'm piggybacking off Girouard at this point. For the field trip this week, we went to Quanzhou, the city once called Zaytun (where the word "satin" comes from) and a major stop on the silk road. We took a bus built for much shorter Chinese people again, so all the staff's knees were hurting by the time we got there, but Lin seemed to find it amusing



Our first stop was the birthplace of Lao Tzu, and also a site that celebrates the cross-pollination of Confucianism and Taoism. It was really interesting to see the way that the Chinese integrate such a variety of religions. That theme also continued later in the day when we visited a Muslim tomb to find Buddhists burning incense. This is a picture of Confucius having tea with Lao Tzu. The sun was hard behind the statue, so I couldn't get them both in, but you get the idea.



Just up the mountain is an enormous statue of Lao Tzu, where it's supposed to be good luck to climb up and rub the nose. Unfortunately, hundreds of years of that tends to make stone noses rub off, so they don't allow that any more and we settled for a group picture.



Next stop was the Quanzhou museum, which was a pretty typical history museum with dioramas and artifacts, so I don't have much in the way of pictures to share from inside. Outside, the lawn was dotted with these statues. The Chinese students had trouble figuring out why we thought tadpoles were so funny. I guess you can draw your own conclusions.



We were released for the afternoon into a shopping district surrounding the second-oldest Buddhist temple in China. Because Quanzhou is a major site for shoe manufacturing, our initial plan was to shop for shoes which are really cheap there. Unfortunately, they seemed never to have seen anybody with feet the size of mine, and nobody had any shoes to fit me. Still a neat little alley, though.



The moist theme of our trip continued as torrential rains swept in. Girouard had to buy yet another umbrella. I think he's broken or lost three at this point. It was blowing and raining so hard, we took shelter at one of the little shops since our umbrellas weren't doing much good.



Finally, we went into the temple to check out the pagodas. There are two like this on the grounds, and they are apparently the only remaining examples of this type made completely of stone, with no wood or concrete.



One last community service note for Bruce and Jenny. We've been trying to get a "mom picture" of Girouard all week, where he doesn't have a goofy grin and isn't making funny gestures. You wouldn't believe how tough that is. I think I finally pulled off a picture of him looking like the kind of boy Mom could be proud of, so here it is:


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