Busy few days
Peta and Danielle arrived from Brisbane via Bangkok on Thursday afternoon and I treked out to the airport which is further away than Foshan incidently (seriously!) and escorted them "home". I booked them in at the hotel across the road from the Ramada, where RB and I are staying, so that we could easily see each other and hangout. Their hotel had a good price and a manager who spoke some english. Thursday night we all went for a foot massage to get the circulation going. Both the girls really enjoyed it
I could see on Friday morning that the girls, well Petie in particular, were a little freaked out by the language barrier just as I was when I arrived. After an online session of learning Mandarin they felt okay about it all and took off to see the "famous" GZ Zoo ;) . For dinner we took them to one of the local restaurants that does pizza and pasta. The chef at Newland aka Nui Lan does an awesome pizza base that I think I will actually miss when I leave here. Eating there also gives us a chance to eat some salad and potatoes and keep up our vegies.
Initially I'd thought we could do another trip to the countryside of Guangdong to see the small town of Zhaoqing, known for its excellent limestone crag landscape, on Saturday but the weather wasn't much good so we stayed in Guangzhou. We took off to see some more local sights kicking off at the Guangzhou Museum of Art. For a place that was built in 2000 it sure wasn't the flashiest building. RB suggested that maybe the design had looked good on paper but no one had given any thought to the materials because it was already looking a bit tired. I was a bit disspointed with this place as many of the exhibition halls were closed, but we all found some exhibitions we liked as we wandered around. We all liked the special "East meets West" exhibition which gave us a great education on western influences in Chinese culture including clocks, ceramic glazes, the establishment of universities, clothes fashions for weddings (white dresses!), the adoption of western medical treatments, telephones, market bazzars (which started in France!), and many other things. The exhibition also showed many artifacts from times when GZ was an ancient trading port.
I couldn't find the terracotta soldiers in the museum that the Lonely Planet guide promised, but I did like the exhibition of political cartoonist Liao Bing Xiong's work. Apparently he was exiled from China in 1958, but now he is celebrated!
Our next stop sounded like somewhere mildly interesting in the guidebook but proved itself to be fascinating. The Museum of the Nan-Yue King in Western Han Dynasty is devoted to an archaelogical find across the road from the Yuexiu Park (see earlier posts). In 1983 an excavation being done on a hill top for an apartment complex unearthed an ancient King's tomb dating back to around 100BC. The tomb had suffered some structural and environmental damage over time, but when it was found all its contents were intact with nothing stolen or destroyed. The Museum lets you walk inside the series of chambers inside the small tomb, and then has a very well documented exhibition on site of everything found inside. The museum is a credit to local authorities for perserving everything on site and documenting the dig.
As well as the dead King there were also 4 concubines, 7 chefs, some guards, a musician and some eunechs buried in the tomb too. Artifacts were saw from the tomb covered so many different things ranging from the jade shroud the king was wearing made from almost 2300 pieces sewn together, to musical instruments, weapons, bronze mirrors, jade items, seals, bronze pots, urns, jade goblets, a pearl-filled pillow for the King, ink capsules, foods, wine and water vats and more. Over 1000 objects were found in the tomb. This place really rocked!
By Sunday RB needed to escape from the sensation that he was the Mother Hen, rounding up the chicks (so we girls take a little organising! :P) so he did his own thing and we did ours. In a Spring downpour we found the local metro stop (>30 min walk from the hotel) and got ourselves to the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall. I had visions of a set of pavillions like those we had seen in Liang's Garden (Foshan), but the Chen Family temple was much much grander! Upon entry the first thing that struck us was how huge the place was. It was a similar set up to the "house" in Foshan with 3 rooms to a row and 3 rows of buildings but the central pavillions were absolutely huge and the rows separated by beautiful big open courtyards with trees, sculptures and huge fish bowls. Despite buzzing with overseas and Chinese tourists the place felt very calming. It featured beautiful ridge tiles on the roof, massive intricately carved screens and two giant colourful warriors painted on the front door.
The Chen Clan Hall also housed the Guangdong Museum of Folk Art inside its walls. Peta, Danielle and I enjoyed the exhibits of top quality jade, wood and stone carving, embroidery, ceramics, papercuts, furniture, and much more in the many rooms of the Halls. There were also a few tourist souvenir shops tucked away, and Pete practiced asking for a discount before buying anything, just as I had done before securing their hotel room :)
Our next stops were two temples that were close by. Upon arriving at the Guangxiao Temple a man tried to signal to us that it was 5 Yuan to enter. I wasn't buying that when I saw him leave the donations box to go sit and chat with his other cleaner mates while we dug around for 15 Yuan. While he had his back turned I ran through the entrance and Pete and Dan hurried after me sticking 2 Yuan in the box to ensure good karma! Guangxiao Temple is one of the oldest in Guangzhou, founded in 4th century AD. It featured many temples and halls within the complex and we got quite a thrill to see some many Buddhist monks walking around the place.
Before the light started to fail (grey sky and foggy air from the moisture don't make for great photographic lighting) we walked the back streets to get to the Liurong Temple. I had a bit of trouble finding it until I could see the nine-storey high octagonal Hua Ta aka Pagoda towering over the fence. The place looked closed but as we peered through the exit gate the guard ushered us in. Yaaay! We had a little walk around, admired the beautiful Pagoda which actually has 17 storeys and can be climbed during opening hours (for an addition fee to the entry fee), and checked out the main temple. This temple complex was established in AD 479 and was small but lovely with its Banyan trees and pagoda. We got a real treat watching everyone prepare for a Buddhist ceremony. There were monks galore and after 15 minutes or so we got to hear them singing as the ceremony got underway in the main temple. This temple took my breath away when I saw the 3 absolutely huge gleaming gold seated Buddhas inside. The girls will probably be sick of temples by the time they finish their trip, but I find each other has something unique about it, so I always enjoy visiting them, especially ones where people are actively worshipping as in the two we saw that day.
Today (Monday) the girls have left for Hong Kong. We visited the train station last night to suss out the system for buying tickets there, and where the train leaves from. They shouldn't have had any problems as unlike the Guangzhou train station we departed from for Foshan, the Guangzhou-Kowloon section of the Guangzhou East train station has English translations for many signs.
RB is going to take some annual leave next week, as his replacement from the Ericsson office in Melbourne flies in to begin his 2 month stay, so we will get to do some tourist travel ourselves. We'll be visiting Hong Kong and Macau (where I am keen to see the Portuguese influence) from next weekend until Thursday 6 April when we fly out of Guangzhou for Melbourne. Five days, 2 cities, much to see! How exciting!
I could see on Friday morning that the girls, well Petie in particular, were a little freaked out by the language barrier just as I was when I arrived. After an online session of learning Mandarin they felt okay about it all and took off to see the "famous" GZ Zoo ;) . For dinner we took them to one of the local restaurants that does pizza and pasta. The chef at Newland aka Nui Lan does an awesome pizza base that I think I will actually miss when I leave here. Eating there also gives us a chance to eat some salad and potatoes and keep up our vegies.
Initially I'd thought we could do another trip to the countryside of Guangdong to see the small town of Zhaoqing, known for its excellent limestone crag landscape, on Saturday but the weather wasn't much good so we stayed in Guangzhou. We took off to see some more local sights kicking off at the Guangzhou Museum of Art. For a place that was built in 2000 it sure wasn't the flashiest building. RB suggested that maybe the design had looked good on paper but no one had given any thought to the materials because it was already looking a bit tired. I was a bit disspointed with this place as many of the exhibition halls were closed, but we all found some exhibitions we liked as we wandered around. We all liked the special "East meets West" exhibition which gave us a great education on western influences in Chinese culture including clocks, ceramic glazes, the establishment of universities, clothes fashions for weddings (white dresses!), the adoption of western medical treatments, telephones, market bazzars (which started in France!), and many other things. The exhibition also showed many artifacts from times when GZ was an ancient trading port.
I couldn't find the terracotta soldiers in the museum that the Lonely Planet guide promised, but I did like the exhibition of political cartoonist Liao Bing Xiong's work. Apparently he was exiled from China in 1958, but now he is celebrated!
Our next stop sounded like somewhere mildly interesting in the guidebook but proved itself to be fascinating. The Museum of the Nan-Yue King in Western Han Dynasty is devoted to an archaelogical find across the road from the Yuexiu Park (see earlier posts). In 1983 an excavation being done on a hill top for an apartment complex unearthed an ancient King's tomb dating back to around 100BC. The tomb had suffered some structural and environmental damage over time, but when it was found all its contents were intact with nothing stolen or destroyed. The Museum lets you walk inside the series of chambers inside the small tomb, and then has a very well documented exhibition on site of everything found inside. The museum is a credit to local authorities for perserving everything on site and documenting the dig.
As well as the dead King there were also 4 concubines, 7 chefs, some guards, a musician and some eunechs buried in the tomb too. Artifacts were saw from the tomb covered so many different things ranging from the jade shroud the king was wearing made from almost 2300 pieces sewn together, to musical instruments, weapons, bronze mirrors, jade items, seals, bronze pots, urns, jade goblets, a pearl-filled pillow for the King, ink capsules, foods, wine and water vats and more. Over 1000 objects were found in the tomb. This place really rocked!
By Sunday RB needed to escape from the sensation that he was the Mother Hen, rounding up the chicks (so we girls take a little organising! :P) so he did his own thing and we did ours. In a Spring downpour we found the local metro stop (>30 min walk from the hotel) and got ourselves to the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall. I had visions of a set of pavillions like those we had seen in Liang's Garden (Foshan), but the Chen Family temple was much much grander! Upon entry the first thing that struck us was how huge the place was. It was a similar set up to the "house" in Foshan with 3 rooms to a row and 3 rows of buildings but the central pavillions were absolutely huge and the rows separated by beautiful big open courtyards with trees, sculptures and huge fish bowls. Despite buzzing with overseas and Chinese tourists the place felt very calming. It featured beautiful ridge tiles on the roof, massive intricately carved screens and two giant colourful warriors painted on the front door.
The Chen Clan Hall also housed the Guangdong Museum of Folk Art inside its walls. Peta, Danielle and I enjoyed the exhibits of top quality jade, wood and stone carving, embroidery, ceramics, papercuts, furniture, and much more in the many rooms of the Halls. There were also a few tourist souvenir shops tucked away, and Pete practiced asking for a discount before buying anything, just as I had done before securing their hotel room :)
Our next stops were two temples that were close by. Upon arriving at the Guangxiao Temple a man tried to signal to us that it was 5 Yuan to enter. I wasn't buying that when I saw him leave the donations box to go sit and chat with his other cleaner mates while we dug around for 15 Yuan. While he had his back turned I ran through the entrance and Pete and Dan hurried after me sticking 2 Yuan in the box to ensure good karma! Guangxiao Temple is one of the oldest in Guangzhou, founded in 4th century AD. It featured many temples and halls within the complex and we got quite a thrill to see some many Buddhist monks walking around the place.
Before the light started to fail (grey sky and foggy air from the moisture don't make for great photographic lighting) we walked the back streets to get to the Liurong Temple. I had a bit of trouble finding it until I could see the nine-storey high octagonal Hua Ta aka Pagoda towering over the fence. The place looked closed but as we peered through the exit gate the guard ushered us in. Yaaay! We had a little walk around, admired the beautiful Pagoda which actually has 17 storeys and can be climbed during opening hours (for an addition fee to the entry fee), and checked out the main temple. This temple complex was established in AD 479 and was small but lovely with its Banyan trees and pagoda. We got a real treat watching everyone prepare for a Buddhist ceremony. There were monks galore and after 15 minutes or so we got to hear them singing as the ceremony got underway in the main temple. This temple took my breath away when I saw the 3 absolutely huge gleaming gold seated Buddhas inside. The girls will probably be sick of temples by the time they finish their trip, but I find each other has something unique about it, so I always enjoy visiting them, especially ones where people are actively worshipping as in the two we saw that day.
Today (Monday) the girls have left for Hong Kong. We visited the train station last night to suss out the system for buying tickets there, and where the train leaves from. They shouldn't have had any problems as unlike the Guangzhou train station we departed from for Foshan, the Guangzhou-Kowloon section of the Guangzhou East train station has English translations for many signs.
RB is going to take some annual leave next week, as his replacement from the Ericsson office in Melbourne flies in to begin his 2 month stay, so we will get to do some tourist travel ourselves. We'll be visiting Hong Kong and Macau (where I am keen to see the Portuguese influence) from next weekend until Thursday 6 April when we fly out of Guangzhou for Melbourne. Five days, 2 cities, much to see! How exciting!
posted by Polecat at 11:43 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home