By Order of the Government......

This stone is over 200 years old - but roughly translated it says that it is "Forbidden" to commit suicide on this island. Wonder what the punishment is .....

Here is the link to our photos of Putuoshan

The 1000 Steps

This is a picture of the thousand steps that lead up from one temple to another. We cheated and took the cable car up and walked down. But we saw quite a few women (and 1 guy) climbing a step or two and then going down on their knees then getting back up to repeat the process after climbing another step or two. We assumed they were planning on doing the whole 1000 steps in this fashion. I sure hope they got their prayers answered.

Rub It for Good Luck

There are many versions of Guan Yin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guan_Yin but the one at Putuoshan seems very popular with the fishermen and business people who visit, pray, burn incense and rub parts of the incense burners for good fortune.

Putuoshan & Quan Yin

The island is sort of like a very large Buddhist convention center - with many temples, monks and nuns. It basically was to honor Quan Yin....

The Cliff-Notes version of the story is in the 9th century a monk from Japan was moving a Quan Yin (goddess of mercy) statue from one mountain on mainland China to Japan – when a storm stranded him and the statue on Putuo Shan. Supposedly, the goddess spoke to him in a dream and told him to build a temple on Putuo Shan for him (at the time Quan Yin was a male Buddha but over time has sort of changed genders). Lots of monks and nuns live and study in the many temples on the mountain and this is a very popular pilgrimage place for the Chinese who are hoping for prosperity or safety.

Here is a longer version and more official ... http://www.chinadiscover.net/china-tour/zhejiangguide/zhejiang-putuo-history.htm

XiTang - Early Saturday Morning

Besides filming Chinese Soap Operas in XiTang they also filmed the opening scene to Mission Impossible III. The humorous thing was that on a couple of canal corners and in many of the shops and restaurants there were huge photos of Tom and then girlfriend Katie standing with the owners. I think they only spent one or two days here but from the photos it looks like they ate many meals and snacks here.

Side Note: Traveling in China is an adventure in itself. We rode a bus to get to the bus station (there are about 3 big bus stations in Hangzhou) you usually buy the ticket right then – no planning ahead unless it is a holiday but then you can only buy 10 days in a advance. There are so many busses leaving to every city imaginable you never have to wait more than 20 minutes to get on the next one. When we got to one city then we bought tickets for another bus to go to XiTang. The town is literally only about 1 hour drive away from the school if you had a car – but without a car it was about 4 hours total traveling.

Pictures of Tom and Town - are here

XiTang

We got up early the next morning and took some nice early morning pictures before the hoards of tourists came by. We visited all their museums – they had a fan museum, a button factory museum, a roof tile museum, and a wood carving museum where a bunch of animals were carved from roots of really big trees.

Notice -Even the men do their own laundry. Not a laundramat in site.

XiTang

Penny and I rode a couple of buses there on a Friday afternoon and got to see the lights on the canals. We took the obligatory boat ride and lit a paper boat/flower candle (for a wish) and put it in the canal. We stayed in a very small hotel located in the old section of the water town and it had the hardest beds yet – which seemed impossible to be harder than the ones I have already tried in my other China travel adventures. The owner of the hotel actually walked the mile to the bus stop to pick us up and walk us back to his hotel. The “squatty potty” bathroom was the size of a small shower and also WAS the shower! No towels but the owner actually went down the street and bought us two new dish sized towels when we asked for some. Since all the hotel rooms are built inside these very old buildings I should have been really happy that we had indoor toilets.

Our Boat Is Named The PUKE

Cynthia told me what the Chinese characters meant but I quickly forgot because I couldn’t get the pinyin name out of my head. Yes this boat was named “PUKE”, but thank goodness the boat ride did not encourage any of those reactions.

Putuoshan & Zhoushan

I got Kris and Jim to take a couple of my classes so Cynthia and I could take a little side trip. Tuesday afternoon we hoped on a bus and then another bus and a ferry to Zhoushan City, which is an island with a very large harbor and many fishing vessels. We sort of walked around the town the first night, walking by 60 tents that were really outdoor seafood restaurants set up by the bay. Each one had about 4 dinning tables and one table with lots of seafood set out for you to pick your meal from. They had everything from horseshoe crabs, hammerhead sharks to lobster and many, many other types of fresh seafood that I didn’t recognize. I figured I would take a picture the next morning on the way to the boat that would take us to Putuoshan but none of the restaurants were there, but there was a person sitting in each completely empty tent “saving their place” for that nights meal. The next afternoon we saw some of the tables, chairs and gas grills being brought in on bicycles for the next night meals. Talk about fast food.

XiTang

XiTang is a little ancient water town sort of half way between Hangzhou and Shanghai. It has lots of well preserved Tang and Qing dynasty buildings (really old - 700 to 1300 yrs- side note: the students can rattle off the order of the dynasties like our kids rattle off the alphabet). Besides having lots of ancient buildings and waterways another thing they are noted for is that lots of Chinese soap operas and movies are filmed here. Most of their soap operas are either set in ancient time periods or have a military theme to them. When I get a massage, the TV is always on so I sort of enjoy watching the soups set in ancient time periods because of the neat costumes – especially since I can’t understand a word they say.

Wenzi

Cranky – that is how I woke up this morning because I didn’t sleep very much last night. I was fighting with the wenzi most of the night. Wenzi are mosquitos! Tiny and annoying. When I made my bed this morning I counted 5 carcasses but I can’t claim victory because I have about 10 bites. Score one for the wenzi. I can’t figure out how they are getting in. I live on the 6th floor and have screens on my windows. They look very small so maybe they are very young – could they be getting in thru the plumbing drains? At least once or twice a day the water cuts off in the building and generally you will hear the pipes sucking air. So any of you builder/plumber/water inspector people that might be reading this blog…. is it possible for those little annoying bugs to be breeding in my pipes and then visiting me for their first meal at night?

Side Note: Picture above is of the thousands of paper cranes made by the ZUFE students to honor the victims of the Wenchuan earthquake. We have had 3 days of mourning where at 2:28 pm everyday the students would stand and bow their heads and remain silent for 3 minutes. The numbers of dead, injured and homeless are almost too big for me to comprehend. Help if you can.

Twister

Most of the kids watch the TV show Friends here. If you think about it, the show really does give some insights on young American culture. Well one of the students mentioned the game Twister that they had seen on it. I decided that it would be neat to play with the kids here, so now I owe Gail a big one – she went to Wal-mart and picked up the game (can’t find it anywhere here even though it is made in China) and mailed it to me. We played it this week in class. We played boys vs boys and girls vs girls. The guys here are not hung up on appearing macho so it worked great except that they cooperate and support their classmates so well that is was against their nature to make it hard for their opponent. That made for some long turns. I made the students spin and call the commands I was laughing too hard.

For my students I put all the Twister Pictures up on the internet here …..
http://picasaweb.google.com/katiea48/TwisterAndZUFEAtNight

Weddings in China

There is a surprisingly large park squeezed inbetween a couple of the colleges north of my campus. Mostly on Sundays you will see a line of black fancy cars with their hoods decorated with flowers, teddy bears and dolls parked at the entrance to this park (or any other park). The Sunday of the May 1st holday, which is considered lucky, I walked thru the park where at least 30 weddings were taking place. They like to have their ceremonies on days that have been predicted as lucky for the couple (not any date that has a 4) in it. Anyway, most of brides and grooms were in the picture taking mode. I saw 6 wedding couples in paddle boats, and many more being posed in different locations. Most of the wedding guests were in jeans. They are definitely not boring stuffy affairs.

My students said that most brides rent their wedding dresses. They also said that there were 1 or 2 brides maids and 1 groomsman but I saw no evidence of the typically unflattering matching bridesmaids dresses strolling around the park (lucky them). Some of their “wedding day” photos are taken months before the wedding. Some of the pre-wedding photos will even have the bride and groom in romantic costumes, which might be displayed on a large poster on the day of the wedding. I have noticed many wedding processions going down the streets with a van in front with the back doors open taking a video of the procession and traffic. I was taking lots of pictures of as many couples as I could as I walked thru the park and weirdly at the same time, my picture was being taken by their photographer.

The casually dressed wedding guests are generally expected to give the bride and groom a red envelope containing at least 600 or 800 Yuan. I am not sure about the ceremony part of the day but one of the Chinese men at the last English corner said that today’s Chinese weddings were more like a theater production with all the videos and businesses involved. Maybe I will get to go to one and see the whole thing and not just the photo taking part.

If you are still interested in MODERN Chinese Weddings – I found this on the internet and it explains things way better than I did.
http://www.gluckman.com/ChinaWed2004.html
If you are interested in traditional Chinese Weddings check this web site out http://www.chcp.org/wedding.html

Earthquake in China

It happened a little bit west of Chengdu (where Cynthia and I went at the beginning of April to see the Leshan Buddha) about 1000 miles due west of where I am located in Hangzhou (1400 miles by rail). A few people here felt some little vibrations but I was oblivious to the whole thing. I get most of my news of the quake from the china daily web site http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ and from whatever Gail tells me on Skype from the American side. Very sad.

You can make the map a little bigger by clicking on it (for people like me that need it bigger to see all the fine print without my Walmart cheater glasses)