Let me start off by saying that Jerry told us a lot of stories, and gave us a LOT of information, but I don't know how much of it "stuck" with me as I write this in the evening -- my legs and feet sore from all the walking we did. I plan on reading about these places more at some point -- the touring was so much like a lightning fast crash-course in Chinese history and culture. It was really too much to take in in just one day.
The picture is fairly self-explanatory. The gentleman in the center of the photo is Jerry. He's 26 years old, and the third of four children, all boys. The reason his family had 4 boys is they had them before the one-child policy went into effect.
We saw quite a few pandas, and some really up close thanks to a combination of plexiglass and a zoom lens. ;)
After the panda house, we went to the Summer Palace. The Emperor Qianlong had the palace built for his mother's 60th birthday in 1750. Two stone lions flank either side of the entrance gate. We were told one was always male and one female to represent the Emperor and the Empress. Jerry asked us which was which. One person guessed correctly, but it was just a guess on their part, they weren't sure how you could tell which was which.
This one is the female, the Empress. You can tell because under her paw is a playing cub, symbolizing the wish for happy, healthy children.
This one is the male, for the emperor. The ball under his paw was a symbol of power and domination over everything since all of the power rested with the emperor.
There was just so much to take pictures of! Like this stone, which is called the "God of Longevity" because it supposedly looks like an old man holding a peach and it is considered good luck and a fortunate thing to live a long life.
It is also good fortune to have your photo taken in front of the stone of the god of longevity...so even though mom and I are camera shy, we had our picture taken with it.
This is the famous marble boat. It was build at the west end of Kunming lake by the dowager empress Cixi...and built with money meant for the Chinese navy.
An interesting tidbit... Jerry said that Cixi (pronounced like "Sushi") was not a beautiful woman...but she was very charming. She also was very powerful...which is why she is also known by another name: Dragon Lady Cixi. But still, after going on and on about how unattractive she was... you would think Jerry might realize how it might not seem as a compliment to hold a picture postcard of Cixi next to someone and tell her "Looks like her sister!" (Which he honestly did do to mom.) To which mom replied "You wanna be fired?"
At dinner tonight, mom got some of her own back, and lived up to her new nickname "Dragon mom"... we had to fill out a comment card for our dinner and mom put Jerry's name, phone # and email address! (lol)
At the end of our summer palace tour, we took a dragon boat back because it exited close to a gate where the bus driver could pick us up...the other option was to walk the long corridor (I forget how many meters it was) to a different gate where the driver could also pick us up,but it seemed very far and our group knew we'd be doing a lot more walking that day and the next..so we opted for the boat.
Our last stop was the Temple of Heaven. China, being a largely agrarian society (and it still is in some areas, even though it is also quite modern) it was the Emperor's duty to pray for good harvests.
I took way more pictures than I blogged here, but its taken about 30 minutes to write all of this!! Next up tommorrow: more touring: The Great Wall, the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square!
4 comments:
I'm tired just thinking about all the touring you did and have coming up ... Plus, you HAVE to be jetlagged!! O__o
As for Jerry's comment to your mom ... being a different culture and everything ... perhaps it's best to think of it this way: Cixi was a charming lady ... your mom is a charming lady ... leave it at that. :O))
I love seeing part of your tour.
It’ll be very cool to share these pictures with Georgia when she’s older and you’ve had a chance to read up more on the history of the places.
Adorable panda pictures! :-D
Huh! That’s so cool, how to tell which was female and which male. Very neat!
Maybe it’s the angle? But I definitely don’t see a person in there… Hopefully the God of Longevity blessed you though, especially since you don’t like having your picture taken but did it anyway. (I can understand that, so I know how much it takes to force yourself to do it.)
That marble boat is AWESOME! *snickers* Yeah, not too bright of Jerry there. *grins*
The boat ride must have been neat and I would have gone that route even without the prospect of the long walk. ;-)
Very cool pictures! And I agree with Ange. She should take it as a compliment. =) I love the pictures of the pandas and how exciting to learn all that Chinese history!
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