Baoguang Si

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Ni hao as usual...

At the weekend, some of us laoshi made the trip to Xindu, a small town 11 miles east of Chengdu. We went there to say 'zaijian' to Barry, who is leaving back to his home in Australia - he's a friend and fellow teacher of OUR friends, who are teaching in Xindu.

But first of all a few of us visited Baoguang Si monastery (Monastery of Precious Light), 宝光寺 in Chinese. I've already explained in a previous blog how to get to Xindu, so I'm not going to repeat myself! However once you get to Xindu off the bus, just hop in one of the many taxis and say the name of the monastery (pronounce 'Bow-gwang Suh'), or give the taxi driver a scrap of paper with the Chinese characters on. It costs about 6 yuan to get there.

Baoguang Si is thought to date from the Han dynasty (24-220). The area consists of more than twenty buildings (a pagoda, five temples and sixteen courtyards), almost all of which were constructed in 1670, but I guess there have been several restorations since then. It was a rainy Saturday, so not the best conditions, but we had a wander round, saw some monks going about their business, including one who seemed very interested in us 'laowei'. The pagoda was very impressive, and a few small garden areas with yellow blossom trees growing brightened up the day.

That evening we (plus about 30 students) went to chuan chuan (a variation of huoguo, hot pot, on sticks). I grabbed a burger and chips from Dicos (Chinese version of McDonald's) cos I'm not the biggest fan of huoguo! It was a very social occasion though and I got to meet some new people and have a chat with them and practice my limited Chinese so it was good! After we'd finished we walked (miles, it seemed!) to KTV (karaoke) for the climax of the night....of course the students kinda took over the whole thing as they love it, but there were a few singalongs of 'I love you baby, and if it's quite alright....' etc etc! After midnight 5 of us managed to squeeze into a taxi and convince the driver to take us back into Chengdu for 100 RMB........so all in all it was a great day/night out!

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Photos

pagoda at Baoguang Si
it's quuuuuuite tall...

wish pond
i made a wish, I threw my penny but it didn't land in the pot! I wonder if it'll come true...

colours on the ceiling
i just liked the colours, on the inside of the ceiling, if you call it that, of a small resting place

gotta light some incense...
..with the animals of the zodiac on the rooftop

garden
..with a Chinglish sign in the background. It says 'the quite environment can usually wash the material life noisy'. Ah yes, of course, exactly. Shen me (what)?!