Day 8: Buddhist Temple & The Yangtze River

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With a good night’s rest under my belt I am ready to roll! Another Chinese breakfast, where the food seems a little too heavy for a morning meal- stir fry, rice, soup, on and on- topped off with some Chinese yoghurt (mmm) and oranges (perfect, tiny oranges where the peel falls right off).

We then visited a museum depicting the art history of the local area. It combined artistic displays, dioramas of scenes of daily life in the villages long ago, different types of music, and beautiful outdoor vistas. Unfortunately, the admission tickets we received and nearly all the writing was in Mandarin so I do not know what the museum was called. However, it is in an area rarely frequented by travelers and I don’t think I saw another Caucasian all day. I feel lucky to have been able to experience interior China and not just the tourist-y cities. Visiting only Beijing or Shanghai to experience China would be like visiting Disney World to experience the United States.

The museum is at the foot of a hill. Up this hill sits an old style pagoda, unique to southern China. This pagoda is part of a Buddhist temple. Before visiting the temple we stopped at a roadside vendor to buy candles and incense to burn at the temple. Inside the gate is a typical layout of buildings connected with outdoor gardens and pools. Each building contains an alter and a figure of Buddha or other religious figure. After visiting each temple we went to light candles; from these candles we lit our bundles of incense to put within an enclosed area containing a mound of ashes. Although a beautiful sight, we weren’t able to photograph this area of prayer.

Each area- even each city- in China has their own local cuisine or dishes that are special to that locale. Here, they make a sort of “calzone” which is a sweet bread with sesame seeds where the inside is filled with greens (& honey?) and served warm. Our hunt began for this special food. Our driver pulled up alongside several vendors asking each if they had this food or knew where we could get it. We finally pulled into an alley lined with street vendors selling everything from cooked food to raw vegetables to shoes. I definitely stuck out like a sore thumb here but no one seemed to mind. The put our "calzone" (I really wish I knew what it was called!) into the microwave to warm it (my motto: only eat hot food) and handed them to us in a plastic bag. Tasty, but very rich- I had a few bites and let Liang take over the rest.

Semi-wild dogs and cats are rampant here, living off of scraps. We saw a kitten (who had a collar and thus an owner) at one of the stalls by a scrap disposal bin eating the meat off a bone. It makes me a little sad to see this, but the animals still seem happy. This reminds me of something I read on another blog yesterday- “poverty does not equal despair”. Profound and so true.

After lunch at the resort, we clamored back into the bus to see the Yangtze river, the longest river in Asia (though 30 miles shorter then the Mississippi). The size of the river and number of large boats on it was amazing. Though we spent only a short time here it will remain in my memory.

Dinner tonight was not a formal one (yay!) but was in one of the restaurants at the resort, where we sat in groups in several booths. This was an Asian fusion restaurant where they cooked the food at our table on a small cooktop. First meat made into lettuce wraps, then a huge plate of vegetables (many of them different types of mushrooms, mmmm- mom you would love it, haha), a soup, and then noodles. By the end I was stuffed (not uncommon on this trip!), but still kept room to try a very unique dessert. They take blocks of sticky rice and heat them over coals until they puff up with the middle filled with air. Then they break them open like a boat, add what looked like white chocolate, vanilla ice cream and pieces of fruit and told us to eat it in one bite. Liang ate only half of his at a time and told me I could eat mine all at once. Not so. With sticky rice you chew and chew, and chew some more, and nothing happens to it. I felt like such a little piggy but it was tasty!

We waddled our way back to the villa, where we filled the two hot springs and even turned on the sauna to enjoy our last night at the resort. We will probably never stay at such an amazing place ever again so we wanted to take advantage of every minute! I’ve captured a video of the villa and anyone who is interested can send me an email and I can send a link. While we were taking the video, Liang left the upstairs spring running and his mom found it overflowing on the floor- ugh, men. At least the whole room is the same tile as the pool making it pretty water-resistant. What a relaxing experience (the hot spring, not the overflow) and my skin is now oh-so-soft. Maybe we should convert one of our bedrooms into a hot spring. We’d have to import the water but I should look into that 😊

Now its time to rest up for our trip into Shanghai tomorrow!

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Photos

Temple Pool
Pool to Free Animals