One fascinating feature is the 780 meter long corridor, or outdoor walkway which has paintings all along the way depicting the Chinese historical events and places. At the end of walkway we took pictures of a huge marble boat that was the empress’s “porch” of sorts to look at the lake. The base was entirely made from marble, but the upper portions were made from wood. It never was intended as a boat to float on the lake, it was only an observation deck for the empress.
The gardens were the private gardens and residence of the emperor of the Ching Dynasty, CiXi. When he died his widow was very powerful and controlled 2 young “puppet’ emperors. She was known as “the control power behind the curtain” for 48 years. She was the dowager empress.
We headed to our bus and “bought’ Gucci purses on the street for 5.00 – what a riot!
Katie’s Note – Notice that Margie didn’t say HOW MANY Gucci purses she bought…
After our buffet Chinese lunch we visited the pearl factory to learn about “seeding” of the fresh water oysters and the cultivation of pearls. It is amazing that 15 – 25 pearls will grow inside of one oyster. We looked at pearls here, but the prices are better a Lisa’s Pearls – so Katie advised us to wait until Shanghai to by pearls.
The afternoon was free for us. Jan, Linda and Laura went to a near-by department store and Katie and I had an adventure taking a taxi to find the new Harley-Davidson store. She bought T-shirts for her sister and friends for Christmas. Thank goodness the cab waited and then took us to the Silk market which is a huge 5 story fake goods market. I had a ball bartering for lots of silk goodies, etc. I found great Christmas presents for Don and Jason!
Katie’s Note – Harley-Davidson has only one store in all of China, and it was located at the FAR edge of town. I was very disappointed to find that even this official HD store had fakes. Only 2 of the 4 shirts I bought had the real HD label in them. Even worse they didn’t take credit cards so it wiped both Margie and I out of the majority of our cash. Guess what the first store I saw after entering the Silk Market building was…. Yep, a fake Harley-Davidson booth!
When we returned to the hotel Katie, Laura and I walked back down to our Internet café to check email. We nearly died from the cigarette smoke, but our mission was accomplished and we made our meager contact with home.
Jan’s friend’s son (Jay Clifton) and his friend Sherry met us in the hotel for drinks. He is working here. They exchanged gifts for and from home, and after a quick drink in our hotel we all headed out walking to find a good restaurant for dinner. Sherry speaks fluent Chinese, Korean and English, so we let her do all the talking for us. We had a private dining room and she ordered for us.
Katie’s Note – We ended up going to the same Sichuan restaurant we had been on the first night but with Sherry’s help we got the hot sauce on the side so that we could regulate the amount of heart burn we wanted that night.
We had a Chinese beer, tea, roasted corn, a pickled salad, pickled mushrooms, a pork dish (not very good – filled with little bones and tough – Katie’s Note – most meat dishes have bones), little spring rolls, potatoes that looked like noodles, the same sweet potato-sesame seed – fig dish, plus rice and fresh watermelon, grapes and bananas for dessert. A very nice dinner and a great visit with these two very nice young people.
