Blogs from Zhejiang, China, Asia - page 3

This morning I suddenly realized that I was no longer the same person as when I began this journey in Ningbo. My China experience was beyond expectation, despite this not being my first visit to the country or city. In fact, every visit to China offers a new journey, a new experience, a new feeling. This time my journey led me to Tianyi Pavilion and its surrounding gardens. If you don’t know about the Tianyi Pavilion, you should do some research. The first private library in China, the oldest standing library in Asia， one of the world’s three most treasured historic libraries. As an outsider to Chinese culture， this was my first time to be truly humbled, to truly appreciate the value of history as I viewed where history itself was... read more

Today my friends and I visited a remarkable temple in Ningbo, China; Ashoka Temple. Ningbo is full of historic Buddhist buildings, the Ashoka Temple is perhaps the most well-known and respected. DAY 1 The Ashoka Temple preserves over 1700 years of Chinese history. A Chinese friend insisted we visit this temple. His grandmother visited countless times to give prayer and burn incense among the ancient monuments and cultural relics. DAY 2 The second day of the visit we went to Seven Pagoda Temple, which is the largest preserved temple in urban Ningbo and a very famous temple in Zhejiang. Every day hundreds if not thousands of people visit the Buddhist temples in Ningbo. You can sense the spiritual atmosphere that has preserved these places and the spiritual integrity of Ningbo.... read more

5th Jul: Time to leave the city and head to the beach for some r&r. Off the coast of Ningbo, there are lots of islands varying in size. Putuoshan is the most famous one, and is visited by lots of Chinese people. The owner of the guesthouse I stayed at in Qingdao had driven down to Putuoshan to watch the sunrise. I do hope I get there one day, but for this trip we were heading to one of the smaller islands nearby. We had hired a small coach to take us, so the trip should have only taken a couple of hours, however some of our party were very late to the meeting point, meaning we sat around waiting for over an hour. This caused the coach driver to get very mad. When they eventually ... read more

Geo: 29.88, 121.55This morning, we went to our hotel for breakfast, what a line up of food! So much to choose from. We were getting picked up at 9am for another factory visit, and Clint's excited about this visit too!! As this is a business trip, our visits remain private. We did get fed lunch tho, and later we were taken back to our hotel. We had from 3.30pm to about 8pm to find things to do, so we went back to the man who sold us Dumplings for lunch to take his children some chocolates and biscuits from Australia! The children were so happy! After, we walked to the train station as we thought we would save time by buying tickets today instead of tomorrow. From here we caught the subway, this was an adventure, ... read more

27th Oct: I arrived in Hangzhou in the afternoon and took the subway to my hostel. The hostel is in a great location, just off the major shopping street. At the junction leading to my hostel, there was a stall selling stinky tofu. Oh boy, it stank so bad. It reminded me of being in Suzhou and having the smell cling to my clothes. I spent a while wandering around Hefang Street. It is old school Chinese and filled with shops and little stalls in the middle of the street. There were lots of things to buy. It was a shopper's paradise. I liked the old buildings. It is a really pretty area, but there were about a million people about as Hangzhou is a very popular place with domestic tourists. I also took a wander ... read more