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Published: August 14th 2009
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I slept in late today. It felt so good, especially after the mentally exhausting past few days. Did some laundry and booked my train ticket to Chongqing. Then I braved the gloomy weather and went out for a bit of sightseeing.
I took the bus to the Tomb of Wang Jian, a former Chinese emperor. It's about 1100 years old and is the only mausoleum with an ABOVE ground tomb chamber. The grounds were lovely but inside the tomb chamber it was a bit eerie. It's amazing that it was built so long ago (the Tang Dynasty) and is so vast and emmense. I'll bet that if I coughed it would have echoed. The tomb was rainbow shaped and a few stories tall. The coffin (5 of them, one inside the other) would have been in the middle of a coffin platform. The platform was about as big as 2 mid-sized US cars. On it were depictions of dancers and singers and muscley men. In the back was a statue showing the Emperor's likeness and a spot where the box containing the official jade seal was found.
I wandered the ground and found an old well. The building with
the artifacts was closed.
I left the grounds, got a bite to eat, before taking another bus to the bookstore to buy a book for my 3 train rides this next week. My two to and from Chongqing are both 3 hours and my return to Guangzhou is 30 hours. I can only write in my journal and look at scenery for so long. I managed to find one that looks quite interesting for only Y33, which is a steal since most English books are over Y100.
I then left the bookstore--before it started raining--got lost due to a mistake with the map, and then got caught in a downpour without an umbrella. I wandered trying to find the street I needed to take the bus back to my hostel to no avail. I couldn't get a cab, either, because they were all taken. By this time I was soaked and looked a bit like I had fallen into the well and climbed back out. Some nice Chinese tourists took pity on me, kicked the boys out from under their umbrella and herded me in. I eventually managed to get a cab with a very kind cab driver--not only was he sympathic to my drenchedness, he didn't care that the money I gave him was soggy.
On a bright note, I did have something unusual happen this morning. I was eating my late breakfast and enjoying my coffee with a camera crew came in with the owner of the hostel. They were taking photos of the hostel, I'm guessing for advertisement purposes. They asked if they could photograph me. Next thing I know, I'm being moved over a chair and being told by the camera man that when he sees a beautiful woman he has to get her photo. I replied that he was photographing a tired woman. He laughed, as I intended. Then a not-pretty guy walked in and almost ruined the shot, panicked and apologized, making me laugh, causing the photographer to redirect his camera back at me, taking more photos.
I should have asked for a free refill.
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