A Visit To Fushan

On Tuesday we went to Fushan which is about 45 minutes west of Guangzhou.  Before I begin I have to emphasize what excellent drivers the Chinese are here.  I am completely serious.  Place anyone of our U.S. NASCAR drivers on the streets of China and they will be blubbering like a baby within the first two minutes.  The rule of the road is No Holds Barred.  Signals....Haaaaaa, not needed here.  Just careen into the lane you want to enter and let others figure out your intentions.   To picture exactly what it is like.  Imagine I-95 in a traffic jam. Now add one million motorcycles, two million bicyclists, and 4 million pedestrians.  Now picture them weaving in and out of each others lane at 50 MPH.  That about sums up the Ben-Hurian driving experience. Our driver was excellent and brought us through the ordeal in one piece.  I tipped him well needless to say.

Driving really gives you an excellent picture of life in China.  Primarily the vast population.  It is as if all of the open land was cleared for towering apartment complexes all densely fit together.  However the streets are lined with beautiful landscaping.  A really neat mix of two different worlds.

Our first stop was the memorial shrine to Huang Fei Hung, one of China's most famous martial artists and doctors.  This was a beautiful temple that we paid about 20 Yuan or 2.00 U.S. dollars to enter.  Elderly people over 60 are allowed to enter it for free.  Inside is a maze of stone hallways filled with golden statues and intricately carved wooden scenes of China's culture. Further back inside the temple is the school that Huang Fei Hung operated.  Because it was raining the martial arts demonstration was cancelled but our tour guide managed to get three young martial artists to perform for us.  It was fascinating.  

The next stop was an Arts and Crafts center that sold traditional Chinese crafts.  They had rooms full of Chinese landscape ink paintings, paper cut pictures, ceramic artwork, and jade. From the quality of the work you could tell that hours and hours were spent creating these pieces of art.  We bought a few items and moved along to the next stop on the tour. 

Next was a garden complex that was in the former home of a well known local figure.  This person must have been very wealthy because of the beautiful stateliness of the complex. Entering through the main gate we came upon a shrine that many locals come to to pray for a male child.  

Further back the structure is broken up into long hallways and adjoining rooms that the family used to live in.  The entire structure is made of stone and brick, capped with ceramic tile shingles running in columns down from the roof.  The garden was beautiful.  A long walkway circled around the gardens which had a central pond about 2 acres in area in its center. Thousands of Koi goldfish swam in the pond with two geese making their presence known with their honking.  There were also about 200 bonsai style trees to look at throughout the garden. Some of them must have been at least 150 years old.

After that we headed out for lunch at a local hotel/restaurant.  We let the tour guide pick our food.  All of it was good.

Lastly we headed out for the large pottery complex in Fushan.  It is really best to describe this as an old working village whose existence is for the running of the two large kilns.  These are not the kilns used in your college pottery elective but massive super structures built up the slope of a hill.  The length of both kilns is probably about 65 yards long and about 10 feet in height by 10 feet wide.  Apparently these kilns have been running none stop for the last 500 years.

Inside the working village are shops selling all manner of items related to pottery.  We bought a few beautifully made figurines.  While we were walking through the village we heard clear voices singing.  The sounds echoed nicely throughout the stone village.  We walked towards them and came upon a group of older folks sitting around a table playing a card game.  Behind them was a lady and man singing karaoke style, traditional Chinese opera.  It was really moving.

After that we were pretty much worn out and asked our tour guide to take us home.   Our ride back home was uneventful and we gladly tipped our guide and driver for an excellent day.  We will have lots of wonderful memories to share with Leia.

On Wednesday we will see Leia.  Tomorrow we plan on just relaxing.