Tuesday in China

Buddhist Temple

Today we all had city tours. Cami, Lora, and I went first to visit a Buddhist temple. It had three courtyards each leading to an ornate pavilion with a different Buddha. One Buddha was as tall as the ceiling and others were very ornate with carved figures all around them. Each Buddha had fierce looking guards near him to protect him. People were buying incense and burning that and candles and bowing to Buddha. It was very interesting but very sad to think that they hoped for these golden statues to bless their lives

Lora and Cami in Buddhist Temple

We went from there to a porcelain store. Camis area is famous for making porcelain. It seemed so very expensive. We wanted Cami to have one piece for a keepsake. Our guide said she was a good bargainer so we finally ended up with one small vase, which cost $25.00. We went upstairs to see the very large vases, some of which cost in the thousands of dollars but were so beautiful. We then went to a street which sold musical instruments looking for a porcelain ocarina-type instrument Lora wanted to et. We went in many stores and saw different types of musical instruments. Our guide had minored in music at University and she played an instrument called a Gu zheng. It looked kind of like a rectangular harp lying horizontally on legs Fiona played a song for us and the the girls played a piano song for her. Later she stopped and got some sheet music for her song for the girls to play on piano. 'After many stores we found what Lora wanted, called a xun, pronounced schwin.

We then went to lunch at a tiny local restaurant just 3 or 4 tables wih plastic stools. We had cold bean soup because it was so hot, very common when it is so hot out. We also ate deep fried eggs, spicy noodles both rice and wheat, and a little bowl of dumplings we ate very little of because theere miniscule shrimp in it and Cami siaid the little eyes were too much for her even though shehas been very adventuresome so far. Always we eat wth chopsticks, which is challenging but we ontinue t get better. For the rest of our "citty tour" she took us shopping.

Lora & Cami with Fiona

Our guide is very young girl just out of college, ad to begin the day she said "we are all girls,, we can do anything we want - even our driver was a girl today which i have not seen before. We saw lots of pretty things...te girls here wear such soft and feminine clothes even fro every day Lora an cami got a q - see picures with bangs. The girls tried on fake bangs attached to headbands which I thought was very cute.