Buddha and Hotpot

I had given up. I tried to wait out Blogger and see if they would get the glitch fixed, so that I could publish pictures on the blog. I told myself that if they didn't have it fixed by Wednesday I would publish here and use Photobucket to show my photos. I even created an account. I logged on today and Blogger was playing nice! Apparently they fear me...Blogger punks.

Anyway, here is a link to my long-overdue site visit pictures on Photobucket.

Now, for the new stuff.

We have had an eventful week. First, on Friday, our host parents took us out to see some sites in Chengdu. We had a fine time and were able to see some of the best the city has to offer. We went to a riverside tea house and played Fight the Landlord (a Chinese card game) for a few hours. On occasion, while you are sitting, a person will come by and offer to clean out your ears, right there on the spot with a little brush and other scary implements. One came by me and kept insisting that she wanted to clean my ears. After I told her no a few more times she left. I guess my ears just looked extra dirty! I asked my host mom about it and she cryptically replied, "Some men like to have their ears cleaned." Her tone suggested that it was not appropriate, so I dropped the issue.

What do the following things have in common?
Cows
Ducks
Chickens
Pigs

If your answer was that they are all animals whose innards I have eaten, you are correct!

After the tea house we went to hotpot. Hotpot is a special dinner in China. There is large metal bowl placed in the middle of the table. In the bowl is boiling water and an array of spices (very, very hot spices) and flavorings. You order your food and it is served to you raw. You place it in the boiling water to cook/marinate/infuse-with-spicy-death until you feel that it is safe to eat. Then you take it out and dip it in a combination of sesame oil, chili oil, vinegar, and garlic to cool it down (and get it even spicier) before you eat it. You can have it without spice too and our family was kind enough to have a combination hotpot with no spices.

On came the food! Lamb! (good) Potatoes! (good) Lotus root! (good) Tofu! (good) Cow stomach! (what?) Pig brains! (WHAT?!?) Duck esophagus! (Come on!) Chicken stomach! (They have stomachs?) Duck blood! (Why?!?)

It was a culinary adventure to say the least. I was game though. Much like the hotpot, I too, was feeling spicy. My favorite was the cow stomach. It had these grey bumps all over it (Maybe Mrs. Blakely knows what they are,) but it was good. The duck esophagus was a bit stringy and my least favorite. The brains were okay. They were a bit mushy. They may have been overcooked.

The next day several of us boarded a bus and went to the city of Leshan, which is the site of the world's largest Buddha statue. It is 223 feet tall and began in 713 AD. To give you some perspective to how great an accomplishment this is, consider that this is several decades before the reign of Charlemagne in Europe, and Christopher Columbus was -738 years old. The Buddha was carved out of a cliffside where three rivers converge to protect vessels from harm. The photos I put here don't do it much justice. It is an amazing spectacle to behold and I would recommend that anyone who comes to China should see it.

At the site of the statue we were also able to see the burial catacombs of the wealthy citizens of the Qin Dynasty (221 BC - 206 BC). Burying people in the cliffside was a fad during the dynasty. Many people were buried with replicas of their rooms to help them further in the afterlife. Historians were giddy because they were able to get a partial snapshot of Qin dynasty life by looking at the relics left in the tombs.

We walked further, over an intricately designed footbridge, to a path that led us up a mountain. We hiked to the top where we found a Buddhist monastery. There we saw monks working and and people praying. We were encouraged to respectfully look around the buildings and grounds. There were several temples, gardens, classrooms and a hall that contained statues of hundreds of prominent Buddhist monks. It was one of the things that I don't think I'll ever forget.

We are doing fairly well and we are gearing up to leave for site soon. We are constantly fed new information on how to survive and stay warm during the winter in China. With all of the heat it is hard to believe it will ever get cold but I am sure it will. We try to have fun during the off times. Our latest pasttime is playing stickball on the third story roof of a building here at the college. We came across a bamboo stick and some tennis balls. Combine that with a linoleum rooftop with just enough coal dust sprinkled on it to make it feel like you are playing baseball on an ice rink and voila! Instant fun! It becomes a cross-cultural extravaganza when someone hits the ball over the edge. All of us crowd to the edge and yell down to passersby to throw our ball back. When they are successful we give them an ovation. You haven't lived until you have played roof stickball.

Take care ya' nerds.

P.S. If you prefer the Photobucket way of posting pictures I can do that instead. I can post more pics but the captions will be short. Let me know which way you prefer.

Picture 1: Steve and I next to the Leshan Buddha. There is a staircase that winds down the cliff. You can tell how tall it is by comparison with us.

Picture 2: The Buddha from lap level.

Picture 3: Some relics in the Qin Dynasty catacombs

Picture 4: The bridge over the river which leads to the monastery.

Picture 5: The monastery grounds.

Picture 6: Inside the monastery, this is the bodhisattva. The arms represent the bodhisattva's ability and willingness to help other people.

The Blogger punks messed up again so the last two photos along with the rest in this post are at this link.