So last weekend in China we started with school on Saturday, Saturday night took an overnight train to Da Li and went to too many places, it was kind of ridiculous, it was like the tour guide was in a competition with other tour guides to see how many different places they could fit in one day.So we started by arriving in Da Li at 6 am and waited outside a restaurant for a half hour till it opened. Ha. Da Li itself is gorgeous, the buildings are beautiful then scenery is beautiful there is water on one side(giant lake) and mountains on the other… felt like home. Almost. Anyways, the first place we went to was actually really cool, its called Chonsheng temple and it has the three pagodas. Here we are at the entrance to it.
The three pagodas from a distance
We took a little electric tour car up to the main temple and inside one of the adjacent buildings were these 6 meter tall statutes of four Buddhist monks, there is way more meaning than that, I feel uncomfortable for the degree I am understating the sacredness.
We toured a couple more temple buildings then went to the foot of the pagodas
After that we hurried to the bus and took a 20 minute drive to a shopping area and spent 15 minutes there then hurried to a boat dock(station) where we waited for half hour to board a boat. Hurry up and wait theme, I may or may not have thought of Mom at this point. Anyways I don’t have any great photos to show of the 3 and a half hour boat ride around a giant lake. It was just that, there were a couple islands we went to but altogether it wasn’t a highlight. Then we went to butterfly sanctuary place, where it has a superclear pool of water and the lake of lovers
I feel like we went to another place after that but I forgot. The finale of this day starting at 530 AM was the 4 hour bus ride through developing farmland and dirt roads with no suspension. Sounds terrible,the ride was. But the scenery was absolutely beautiful. Rice paddies, fields ofcrops, mountains, and construction. The amount of development that is going onin China right now is incomprehensible, we drove through what I thought was themiddle of nowhere then all of the sudden I see a giant Airport already builtand an 4 lane each way highway being built. This entire time I’ve been in ChinaI don’t think ive once had a view where construction wasn’t taking place. Wethen arrive in Li Jiang, and go to sleep .next day…
The next day we went to the Naxi ethnic group center and saw a huge performance, the show included over 200 actors, it was huge, and the stage was outdoors so we received rain ponchos to keep from getting wet, It rained like a Washington mid-winter day…unrelenting.
We went up a gondola to see snow mountain but it was to foggy,there was a bit of a break.. this is not snow mountain
After that we went to a ethnic village where there was a silk embroidery school. They make pictures one silk thread at a time, my camera won’t do these any justice.
They were unreal, there were even pieces where it was one picture on one side and then another picture on the other.
Sorry for the long post, this weekend was jammed packed.Right now though I am getting to go to sleep before my last day of full classes, it has gone by so fast, Classes have been stressful and challenging, but I have become so much more proficient in Chinese. I am so, so grateful that I was able to take advantage of this opportunity, and would like to thank my family for helping make this happen.
So all I have left to do is a day of classes, take a final,fly to Beijing and spend a day/ night there with 2 other classmates and no teacher...then find my way back to the airport, then get on a plane and boom!Back in Washington. I have an amazing collection of sign pictures. I leave you with this one.
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