Thursday, November 19, 2009

12 Vauclusian Springs/12 Dragon Falls, Tong'an

Impressive name, right? Even the native-English-speaking writer of our guide book had to look up "vauclusian." (though I cannot find it in any dictionary, bound or online!) It supposedly means "a spring rising up a deep, steeply-inclined, water-filled passage into a small surface pool" (quoted from Magic Xiamen, William Brown, also quoted from an unnamed source in the book!). So, this sounded interesting and was said to be located "near Film City," see previous post. We hoped the driver would be able to find this place since we wanted to see some more sites while we had the chance and also were ready for something natural after all the Chinese replicas. Well, apparently, "near" is a relative term since we got a bit lost and had to ask directions three times before we finally arrived at the waterfall park. As in many locations around the world, the powers that be were not content to just let nature be the main attraction. Hence, the first photo of a huge, stone gate that is being erected, replacing the smaller, painted gate where we entered and paid our buck or two entrance fee.
This appears to be a new path, nice and wide, and all to ourselves! Amanda and Gene forged ahead to get a closer look at the new statue that is over-looking the new gate. A bit of culture that we did not expect to see at a waterfall site. Notice the long shadows of late afternoon. Still quite warm but not so crazy-hot like the summer months. This early October day felt like a middle-of-the-summer Michigan day!
We made it to the giant statue and I wish I could tell you something about it. Alas, I cannot read Chinese characteres, so the pictures will have to suffice. This guy (I don't think it's a Buddah, but may be Confusious?) must've been pretty great because the statue was immense!
Here's the perspective shot--Gene is 6'2", to give you an idea of the size. Kind of puts Albertus Van Raalte's statue in Centennial Park to shame...but that's a free park, so we won't complain.
On with the hike. Another wide path and view of the top of the mountain. Looked pretty daunting to me but none of us knew what to expect or when we'd reach the waterfall, so we just ambled along. By the way, the driver, Mr. Chen, joined us on our trek. This was pretty exciting because he usually just stays with the van and reads or naps or something. We feel a bit guilty about that and were glad that he seemed to be enjoying this outing, though we had to judge by his body language since at this point we still only knew about 3 words of Chinese, none of them terribly useful.
We came upon the first of the shallow pools after climbing some steep, uneven, concrete stairs and promptly took a rest. We inadvertently shooed away a young couple from the area. It was pretty, but we thought this couldn't be all there was to see since the guide book said the falls were 1 km long (along with not speaking or reading Chinese, I also do not speak or understand kilometers, kilograms or celcius!!).
So we climbed more stairs. Liz did not enjoy this very much but she was a trooper and mostly kept up with the group.
Aha! More falls and more pools and tons of rock. I did not get a good picture of it, but there was also a small temple on a rock outcrop overlook, along with a metal basket contraption along the handrail. We watched as people placed lit ropes of firecrackers of the loud-noise-making variety into the basket. Then we retreated as the smoke choked us and the firecrackers deafened us! The noise echoed across the rocks and down the mountain and hopefully pleased the gods because it did not please us! Sort of ruined the peaceful scene, actually. There was also a hut of sorts for burning pretend money, sending the smoke upward towards the gods (obviously I don't know much about these traditions and I mean no disrespect, I just didn't like all that noise and smoke!)
More beautiful rocks and falls. We came across a few more groups of people and, as is typical here, observed the women teetering up the stairs in 3-inch heels. I was getting pretty woozy in my walking shoes so I don't know how they did it, but it explains the nicely shaped calves they all seem to have.
A bit closer to the peak...this was about as far as we went. We surmised from the map that there was quite a bit more trail up ahead and Gene said he would've liked to go all the way, but the rest of us were not game for that and we knew it was going to be getting dark before too long. I found out later that some teachers from the international school had gone camping up there and shared a camping area of sorts with some local campers, snakes and rats. No, thank you! (I'm sure the people were fine, but not the creatures.)

One last view down the mountain. I wish the pictures had captured the beauty better. It was a worthwhile trip, though tiring, and we're glad we were able to visit some nice local places during our mid-Autumn vacation.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Film City, Tong 'an

This is dated material, but thought I'd share a little more about our October "staycation." One day we took the company up on their offer of a driver (we usually just have him take Gene to and from work and other special occasions like airport runs). We also asked a young co-worker, Wendy, to join us both for fun and to help us with the language! We first went to a place called Film City in the village of Tong'an which is about a half hour drive from here. We were able to get discounted tickets since there was a promotion for "golden week." They didn't cost much to begin with (about $4 per adult) but we always like discounts anyway. Here we are at the main gate of the park, dwarfed by the massive traditional structure. We had a lovely, summer-like day and were glad to see that there were very few other people--we don't enjoy crowds and they can be very hard to avoid in this densely populated country!
Long-distance view of the replica of the Imperial Palace (Forbidden City) in Beijing. It was massive, though still a scale-model of the original. Supposedly many Chinese movies are filmed here when it's either inconvenient or undesired to go to the actual historical locations. No films were being shot on this day, though.
We had to cross over a large pedestrian bridge to get to the site of the palaces, complete with long rows of the red Chinese flag. This was early in the day, so Amanda was still up for some running!
We took turns with the other tourists posing in the pedicab. We have yet to see any of these here, but saw plenty in Hawaii! Maybe other cities in China still use these, too.
Right next to this huge outdoor film studio, we saw men fishing in a very tradtional way. Not sure what they're catching in their baskets and nets, could be frogs or turtles or fish or who-knows-what (I've seen lots of "interesting" seafood in the outdoor markets, so I try not to assume too much. Just yesterday, I saw cages with pigeons in them and they were not meant to be used for carrying messages! I tried to explane to my Chinese companion that those birds are considered rats with wings in the US and she thought it was pretty gross too.) Notice the triangular straw hats...they're not just from the movies, people actually still use them.
Burning in the hot sun on the replica Great Wall. I'm pretty sure the real wall is a bit wider than this one...but it was still fun to try it out.
This is one of the guard towers at the far end of the "Great Wall." There were quite a few brass (?) statues of ancient-looking soldiers, cannons and huge horses that didn't photograph well. They were also hot to the touch and we couldn't spend too much time up there as we were getting too warm.
This is a very long path, a replica of the Summer Palace path and garden. The ceiling was very ornate and we liked the benches all along the sides for resting. We, however, declined to take naps as some locals did. Sleeping in public is fairly common here, and not just for those who have nowhere else to go. We've seen a number of park-sleepers, most notably the guy who was using an empty water bottle as a pillow! We've discovered that there is a bit of a "siesta" culture here in which the lunch hour is also used as a resting time. Gene's co-workers all use the first half hour to eat and the second half hour to sleep at their desks! I'm pretty sure I'd sleep for two hours, drool all over the desk and end up fired if I were to ever try this!
The front of the Forbidden City, complete with huge Mao poster. Now we've sort of "been there," with the photo to prove it, just in case we never get to the real place! Haha, there would be at least 20,000 others in the photo if this was the real place!
Snow? In southern China? No, just a really odd and sort of creepy indoor winter replication. This is actually white sand and they keep the place very dark. It was like a huge warehouse with a few fake trees and white walls and white sand on the floor.
The girls pretending to be cold in front of the not-very-convincing ice cave. Notice the large seam/crack...I can't imagine that filming in here would look at all real, but maybe they have talented camera operators and finishing crew who know how to make it work.
Since we were a bit off the beaten path, we were more of an anomaly than usual, being a white family and all. We got even more stares than we typically do (our theory is that foreign business men have become pretty common, but families are still out of the norm). Our girls were asked repeatedly to pose for pictures--so we turned the tables and took pictures of the photographers. Some people are offended by repeated requests for pictures but we were in no hurry and the girls are still flattered to be asked, so we didn't mind. Thankfully no one was aggressive and our kids are old enough to not be freaked out by it all. I talked to an Australian woman recently whose darling, two year old white-blond daughter is approached many times each day and was reminded that it is not always a great experience to look so different from everyone else.
After our several-hour tour of ancient Beijing, we set off for a mountain/waterfall park that was listed in our Xiamen tour book...more on that coming soon.