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.