Next stop, YUE Temple.. which is a temple dedicated to the famous Chinese loyal general, Yue Fei.
Too bad out of so many places indicated on the sign, we could only go to two of the.. in fact, we only went to one of them.. hahaha;)
Yue Wang Miao's entrance..
These four words mean something like intensely passionate.. I would think it is inspired by a
famous poem thought to be written by General Yue Fei himself called Man Jiang Hong... (which means "The Red River" if you loosely translate to chinese). I learnt this poem when I was in secondary school and can still remember a few verses... in fact, actually most chinese poems can be sung as they have tunes written for them too.. I can even SING it! :) hahaha
"怒发冲冠，凭栏处，潇潇雨歇。抬望眼，. 仰天长啸，. 壮怀激烈。 三十功名尘与土，. 八千里路云和月。 莫等闲，. 白了少年头，. 空悲切..." Ok, that is as much as I remember... after 20 years:) hahaha
Another defining moment for me for this trip was when I stepped into the temple and saw the huge Yue Fei statue there.. and then when I looked up and saw the words, "还我河山" (which means return me my mountains and rivers (homeland)), I somehow could feel the intense passion and love of country that he had and I was so touched I just wanted to cry... and I did... and I couldnt really stop feeling wanting to cry till I got out of this place for good...
Some wall paintings depicting Yue Fei at war...
In the legend, Yue Fei's mother sent him to war and in order to remind him to stay faithful and loyal to the country always and not turn his focus to other things, she tattooed four words on his back.. they are "精忠报国" which translated loosely means something like "be greatly loyal in gratitude of your country". Apparently, legend has it that the last word is short of one stroke as she wanted him to come safe and sound before adding the last stroke on...
Sadly, Yue Fei never made it back...
Max told me he also wanted to cry when he saw Yue Fei...
And so why did Yue Fei not make it back?
It is because of these two "贱人" (bitches), Qin Hui and his wife... apparently, they were plotting something and it required the emporer sending Yue Fei back from the war instead of attacking the enemy and winning... so they poisoned the emporer's ears... And the stupid emporer listened to them and sent many gold medals to Yue Fei as a stern warning to get him to go back to the capital.. despite Yue Fei feeling that it was not the best move, as he was loyal servant to the emporer, he went back...
The moment he reached the capital, Qin had him imprisoned and charged him for treason! But they did not have any proof of his treason... after two months of imprisoning Yue Fei, there was alot of unrest as lots of people love and supported General Yue... so Hui's bitch of a wife suggested that they just collaborate with the judge and behead Yue Fei first before reporting to the emperor....
Or at least that is the legend that I remember lah.. so hor, these two bronze statues are no longer originals.. over many hundreds and thousands of years, many have spat and hit on these statues and the very first set of them are so badly destroyed they have to be removed and replaced with these. As they are considered artifacts now, they are currently being preserved so there is a sign there that ask you to please do not spit on it but we still do see spit on it...
Then an amazing thing happened.. while our tour guide was trying to tell us the story of Yue Fei and these two treacherous beings, two old women came and carassed the statues and rubbed their hands all over them and then rubbed their own faces and PRAYED to the statues.. the tour guide was in shock and asked them, "Aunty.. what is wrong with you?"
Me and Max wonder if they were the descendants of the Qin family..
On a side note, the tour guide had to tell the story of you char kway.. I am so surprised cos I assumed everyone knew tat story but some pple really looked as if it was the first time they heard it.. and in case you havent heard it.. I will retell it one more time..
Apparently, after Yue Fei died.. the people who loved him really hated Qin Hui who caused his death.. someone used flour to make a figurine of Qin Hui and says he is so horrible he should be fried in boiling oil and so that was what they did to the flour made figurine and that, itself is the origin of how you zhar kway came about...
These are the other two trecherous people who caused Yue Fei's death.. on the left.. the horrible judge who gave the WRONG judgement and on the right, the man who gave false testimony that caused Yue Fei's death...
Interestingly, these four statues are kneeling, right in front of Yue Fei's tomb... I guess if Yue Fei's spirit is still around, he should be more than appeased...
Yue Fei's tomb.. when I saw his tomb.. I also want to cry so I quickly gave a silent bow before I did...
Then it is off to our next station.. in order to get there, we have to walk to our bus.. as we walked past these booths, our tour guide told us that the government actually provided free rental of bicycles as a service... as long as you paid a deposit of 200rmb, you could ride the bicycle around for a full day.. as long as you return it within 24 hours, it is free:)
More sights we caught as we walked towards our bus.. nice hor.. still got reflection in the pond one leh...
Then we got on the bus and travelled to the next stop which is the silk textile place and also the tea plantation.. this is a Long Jing Tea plantation....
Hangzhou silk exhibition centre tat only sells their stuff to tour groups from China.. or so they say..
Max and Ace also trying to help to make silk.. hahaha
The silk road....
That is the machine for spinning the yarn from the silk worms..
Silk coccoons...
Old lady demonstrating how to unravel the silk cocoon.. the silk strands are immensely strong... and apparently, silk coccons are filled with amino acids and so these old ladies who work here have their hands constantly dipped in water filled with amino acids and as a result, they have extremely young-looking hands... I was slightly tempted to buy their series of silk cocoon skincare only to remember that this is China.. it is better NOT to do that...
Now they are demonstrating how they make a blanket.. they use the silk that is not yet spun and then they use four women to pull in all four directions to thin it out and over lap till they have enough thickness to make a blanket...
Now they let us try to do that...
Ace got to do it too:)
On top of it must use blanket cover.. silk ones:) these are their four most popular designs...
We din have much interest in silk as it was neither useful for Singapore weather (where we dun sleep in aircon) or Dubai weather where there is aircon but no real need for a new blanket...).. so we walked to the food section to buy food;) wahahahahaa... After buying food to bring back to Dubai.. we tried to look for lunch.. alas, they dun serve vegetarian food! Heng ah.. i bought a bag of little cakes for ace to eat in case there is no lunch or in case he is hungry so Ace at the little cakes for lunch and since we were outside a lotus root powder bar, we went to buy a bowl to try lah:)
It is just a purplish looking glue/starch... ace says it looks like mucus:) hahaha.. doesnt have much taste also but apparently good for people with digestive issues or menses issues.. and good for the skin too.. But if you ask me, I would rather drink lotus root and peanut soup!:P
In the supermarket, one of the hot item that is produced by a very famous restaurant here called Tin Wai Tian.. their speciality is Beggar's Chicken.. which is chicken with tonnes of herbs and yummy things stuffed inside that is roasted while wrapped in a lotus leaf.. guess whose invention it was..
I will give you a clue.. he is a monk... and he is "crazy".. Yes, it is
Ji Gong, the crazy monk;) Apparently one day he was hungry and decided to find something to eat.. he manage to catch a chicken and he decided to roast it.. not knowing what to wrap it with, he just simply used a lotus leaf to do so as he was near a pond.. he used his fav wine to marinate the chicken and stuffed it up and wrapped it up and roasted in and the smell was heavenly..
Anyway, in the supermart hor they have the air sealed version of the chicken you can buy home to heat up and eat if you want. our tour guide said there was a buy who bought and opened it up to eat on the plane. a fellow passenger offered 100 rmb for it and his reply was, "If I sold to you, I wouldn't be able to eat it... take your money back and go buy your own in the supermarket..." hahahha
After that, we went to this place called Song City.. which is a totally man made tourist place with buildings built in the fashion of the song dynasty...
This is Song City's doorway..
As we did not have much time here, we remembered that Ganma Karen told us about the Strange Road inside and we immediately headed for that direction...
Walking into this room is like walking into the now defunct Tang Dynasty lah... everywhere just looked like some sort of backdrop for filming! hahahahahahaha
And hor, this place is not totally built yet.. I think only 70% built.. the rest all building in progress lor! And they already open to public and it is so DAM CROWDED!
We walked into the parade square and a nice smell filled the air.. i looked around and found this black baby... it is a traditional pop corn maker!
Walked past the temple for people to pray for marriage... din bother to go in since I am already married:) wahahahahaha
Saw someone dressed up as some empress or something...
Reached our destination!
First room is a room filled with paintings.. Max looks like he is sitting on a chair right.. in fact he is just pretending to sit on the air.. everything you see other than Max is just a painting!
This is a flat painting lor even though it looks like a room...
Ace also looks like he is sitting down right? Nope, he just leaning against the wall standing up:)
And I look like I traveled back in time ot have dinner with xi shi.. hahahhah I am so amazed by how 3 D the buddha on the left looks like.. when i was there hor, the buddha was painted in the corner of the room so it is like half of it on one wall and other half of it was on the perpendicular wall next to it..
I am not sure how we are supposed to maneuver this photo so just anyhow pose...
Look, ma.. no body!
Now you know the secret.. hahaha.. it is just mirrors!
Did I ever tell you that Spiderman is my long lost grandfather?
I was in fact just leaning on a wall... hehehe.. not really lying on the floor! You din think I would do there in CHINA where everyone SPITS and PEEs and POOPs all over and the locals themselves will also refuse to sit on the floor...
Spidergirl again..
I think my son is super strong!:)
Nirvana already...
This room I tell you ah.. is very interesting.. the pics dun show it but this room is a very slanted room.. the moment i went inside, my senses went haywire! I started to feel dizzy and it was as if I cannot walk properly and I kept feeling like the room was moving all the time..
To climb up these steps and ladder was really difficult for me even though it looks simple here!
Then there is the mirror room...
Hahaha.. big monk and little monk doing their kungfu thing...
Why does max and Ace look like they are the same size??????
We went to queue up for the ghost house and Ace refused to go in... but i was glad we didnt go in cos they kept saying tat if you are less than a certain height and have high blood pressure or mental illness, it is better not to go.. so I think it might be super scary. I am glad we missed this...
Saw someone making weapons an Ace posed with the weapons... PS: He was only willing to go close after I verified tat these are fake weapons tat will not hurt people...
Then we saw this super huge buddha statue.. of cos must go and see lah:)
As you go up the stairway towards the buddha, there are statues of the 18 arhats and this is one of them.. but I dun remember which one.. they all got their own names one...
There are also some smaller buddha statues on the left.. I guess is some sort of decoration..
More arhats..
My fav mi le buddha:)
Doesnt my hubby look like
Shakyamuni buddha?:P wahahaha
Max insisted tat i take this photo cos he is so intrigued by the veins in the hands of the buddha statue...
This is Max's favourite.. the Overseas arhat in charge of taking care of the voyages and the sea..
I remember this one.. this is Happiness Arhat..
This is Ace's favourite. the arhat who tamed the tiger...
Saw someone making Malt sugar. But alas din wanna buy any in case Ace ate MORE sweets!
Puppet show theatre but we were here for too short a time. No time to watch them at all:(
This two father and son very funny.. one looking drunk by the huge wine jar, the other one doing drunken kungfu....
This one is a theatre program tat works around the story of a girl throwing a flower ball to find a husband.. we also no time to watch... Apparently the "husband" is chosen from the crowd as she throws the flower ball down.. and the lucky one will have mock wedding with her and be hubby for the day:) hahaha
Justice bao.. waiting for someone who is willing to pay to take pics with him...
Too bad Justice Bao, i can only take pics OF you. cos tat one dun need to pay:)
Can you think of anyone whose heads you would like to put through this? hahaha. tat is what Justice Bao uses to behead evil people...
Wei... wu..... wei.... wu.....
Saw this girl playing the porcelain flute outside the shop.. dressed like this.. she makes the music sound extra nice and the music make her look extra pretty;)
If you pay, you can have 8 strong men carry you in a wedding sedan:)
Opera, anyone?:)
Saw the statue of Li Qingzhao! it is a poet I read about when i was in secondary school! My chinese lit teacher would be happy to know i at least still remember a thing or two i learnt;)
That is Su Dongpo... famous poet who is known for his intelligence as well... too bad while in Hangzhou, I did not get to eat the famous Dongpo Meat:)
I am amazed at how my camera made this place look so pretty.. I tried not to take pics of all the ugly parts so all the hidden construction waste you cant see in the pic.. if you can see hor, the actual place looks nothing like this to the naked eye!
Anyway, it was time to go.. goodbye, Song City...
Next, onward to the tea plantation and more...
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