On Saturday we went on a little trip with our host. We visited a Buddhist temple about a one hour drive away from Guangshan city – the Jingju Monastery.
The drive was a little adventure in itself, but I will explain Chinese driving habits at a later time.
This is how the outside looks and below is a picture inside the first wall. There was a religious ceremony going on, so we didn’t go inside. I’m not sure we would be allowed to go in at all, but I don’t really know. There were a lot of Chinese characters carved into the stone walls, which I obviously didn’t understand, but there were also two translation to English, which surprisingly I also didn’t really understand. Maybe they used Google Translate. Nope, that’s blocked in China.
Part of it was under heavy construction. We climbed the hill behind it, which was my favourite part. I took the forest picture during the 5 or so minute climb. On the hill there was also a huge temple under construction, but it looked abandoned.
Afterwards we went to a nearby hotel to have tea and dinner. It was the famous Xinyang Maojian tea and I enjoyed it a lot. The preparation was a little bit different than what I am used to (steep in 3 minutes, throw the leaves away and drink). They poured warm water in empty glasses, poured it out again, put the tea in (a LOT of tea), pour in hot water, pour the water out again, then pour in new hot water, and serve. We had to be careful not to drink any tea leaves. After the tea water got sufficiently depleted, they poured us some more on the same leaves. I think mine got filled like 5 times. It was very good.
This was the first thing I did in China, aside running errands. It was definitely something new, and if all our trips are going to be like that, I suspect I will have a lot to write about.