The night before, Ace was bugging me about the chinese yoyo again.. I went online to read up how to practice it and told him some basics and he wanted to practice but we forced him to go sleep early again...
His dad was up watching soccer and turned out tat he did not have a good rest cos Ace was all over his side of the bed.. either pushing him tot he edge OR lying on this tummy.. we say Ace "H" daddy... (cos his legs were on my back.. forming a letter H). Max grumbled all morning but my son tidah apa... Ace was just amused... Now leh, Max understands how I feel cos our current arrangement is tat i sleep between Max and Ace and I always get very disturbed sleep as a result of Ace's antics when he is asleep.. hahaha
Anyway, Ace is the only one who had very good sleep.. I just fainted cos the accumulative lack of sleep was kicking in... He woke up early in the morning tried to practice his chinese yo yo...
Not bad hor:)And then we heard bad news.. that our god daughter was vomiting last night and so because of this, we had initially booked a car to take the two families to Tong Li and we have no choice but to go on our own and maybe meet them for dinner if my god daughter is feeling better... what a bummer...
Ace was quite disappointed he did not get to go on the trip with Phoebe... But well, I know that for a parent, having a sick child is very worrying.. so even if the parents tried to come along with us, they wouldnt enjoy the trip at all.. so I guess it was probably for the best that we just went along on our own...
In the car...
Saw alot of canola fields again.. so pretty right?:)
We finally reached Tongli Water village and there were many posters saying that it is a thousand year old village. Having been to Lijiang.. Max and me were not much impressed..
Our friend told us there is a sex museum here but because no one to take care of Ace for us, we had to give it a skip..
While we were here, we had an experience of what it is like to have GUAN XI (connections) in China. Through our friends, we were connected to a policeman who is on duty here. When we arrived, we were supposed to call him and he greeted us very warmly when we said we were President Jiang's friends (actually I also dunno who tat president jiang is)..
Not only did he get us free entry into the village, he gave us free entry into the various points in the village that required payment.. he initially even wanted to get us a free tour guide but as it was super peak season for them, they were out of tourguides.. (no kidding, while we were waiting for our free pass.. we saw DROVES of tourists going in!!!)
When we asked for the map, we were told we had to pay and he quickly fought with Max to pay for the map.. the girl at the counter even asked if we were his relatives.. But of course, I think he is by nature a jolly and kind fellow I think.. based on my short interaction with him.. But really have guanxi and no guanxi is very different in China!:)
Ace started to whine as he felt that this place was boring... and maybe he was warm as well.. Max tried his best to entertain him...
And indeed, even for us, the place was a tad boring... all the chinese looking buildings is sort of like been there, done tat.. maybe I am not cutural enough.. I just find it interesting that some of these buildings have STONE doors:)
Add to the fact tat there were droves of people around... I tell you.. even the most beautiful scenery will turn out to be UGLY because just seeing all the tourists you feel super pek chek already! And they are everywhere and they all is very loud and bueh zi dong type...
Our driver told us later that we picked the wrong day to come. We shouldnt have visited this place on a weekend but should have done it on a weekday.. I tend to agree cos my weekday visit to Lijiang was so pleasant even though there were people as well...
And then we saw a filming crew also as silly as us... hahaha.. trying to film in the village where crowds are everywhere.. check out the tonnes of pple by the side.. the poor girl was supposed to look very got qi zhi in her flowy outfit.. and it was dam cold lor.. so she had to wait for the people to be DRIVEN OUT of sight before the director can start filming..
check out the crowd!!
Finally part of the crowd gone!
That is her trying to look her very best while performing.. I din take video but hor, for all this aesthetic picture has shown you.. you wun feel peaceful or beautiful if you heard the loud talking of the crowd around the area...
That is me saying "WTF.. why they chose Saturday to film here?"
Very difficult for me to wait till the crowd clear ot take this photo but my son was not looking into the camera!!
Even the cat there also xian with the super crowd...
We walked to this parade square area and there were some people performing...
Proof tat Goh Chok Tong also visited Tong Li before:)
I think Tongli is somewhat like venice.. it is linked by this river and so people get to different parts of it either via walking or by boats...
Then we came to this part of the town with some fish and there was an old uncle selling fish food. To entertain Ace, Max bought some fish food for Ace to feed the fish!:)
And boy, were those fish HUNGRY! They really CHEONG for food lor:)
This is the place where we fed the fishes..
If you asked Ace about it, his favourite time spent in China will be feeding fish!:)
We found out that the locals were all staying here in the village and they made a living selling things to the tourists... Apparently, salted egg is a local delicacy.. they even have double yolked ones..
Deef fried crabs!
There was also an area where people have those tikam stalls where they have games for you to play...
As usual, cannot take pics when see beautiful flowers...
We went to this place called Black Pearl Tower and tot it is a super big tower.. turned out it is just a place belonging to some rich person and he was given a black tower decorated with pearl for his contributions..
The only place Ace liked was the kitchen cos he could pretend to cook.. I told Ace this is how the kitchen looks like int he past and he was amused.. even I am very amused at the lack of facilities to do cooking:) They actually have a seperate room tat acts as the MAIN KITCHEN but that is for the family to eat or something...
Then we were recommended to come to this temple.. I din hear carefully wat was being said but apparently Chinese have got 100 family names.. some of them were given to them by the emporer.. some given as reward.. some came about based on where they stayed.. and the ancestors of all these people is this one person.. dunno hi sname.. we walked in to a group being taught how to pray to the ancestor of all chinese people.. as a mark of respect, we bowed and prayed too..
But the moment they handed out incense, we walked out.. I even overheard a local walking out and saying 'These people are scammers!" You see, whenever you travel in China, do not anyhow go into a temple.. even if you do go in, do not pray or offer incense... BECAUSE IT COSTS MONEY! Can vary from 300-1200 RMB per incense.. it will be more expensive if the incense has been blessed by the abbot...
In Lijiang, we learnt our lesson with 200 RMB:) (that was all we had in our pockets that day) hahahaha... So now we know...
Then we went into this room with 24 paintings.. there is a chinese saying tat says "24 xiao" and apparently, it refers to THE TWENTY-FOUR PARAGONS OF FILIAL PIETY.. and each of these picture depicts one paragon of fillial piety. If you are interested in what they are, you can check out
this link...
Did I forget to tell you my name means "beautiful like a garden"? hahahaha
After the fish feeding, Ace's mood took a turn for the btter.. and it was furthur made better by an ice cream!:)
After that, we went to this place which is like an art exhibition. Apparently in China, there are many pine stones.. these special stones have got very special patterns in them due to the way they are being formed and the patterns very often look like fossils of flowers or leaves!
A rich chinese businessman made it his hobby to collect them and his collection is now on display for free here...
Nice hor?:P
This picture is titled "arabic man'.. HAHAHAHA
And we found these two art pieces with SPIDERS in them.. I suspect that they are NOT part of the exhibition but were there as a result of the people being too lazy to clean and maintain these artworks..
We found a really nice garden outside and so I got Max to pose amongst the trees... He came up with the "wang tian" pose himself though.. wahahaha:)
We saw this ah pek selling tikam to tourists. He used the carum board and puts two red caram pieces and ask you to shoot the one inside.. if the one inside falls into the pocket. you win a cigarette... such a simple game but we saw someone try a few times and FAILED! hahahaha..
After they walked away, the ah pek grumbled to us and said he already warned the person not to place the aim in that direction cos if you place it there, surely you will hit the red piece on the outside instead of the one inside.. hahahaha.. He asked Max if he wanted to try but why would we need a packet of cigarettes right? So we smiled and walked away...
The next place we went to was also an exhibition of some wooden sculptures made my national treasure artists.. I am amazed at how a piece of drift wood can become such a piece of beauty with the artist's imagination and work!:)
This is a 200 year old tree.. Compared to the village, still considered very young:)
I was trying to explain to Ace this is how people locked their doors at night in the past in China..
More boats....
Ace started becoming grumpy again cos I figured he was hungry. Along the river stretch, there were many farm houses and locals tat doubled up as restaurants... but Ace hated Smelly Fried Toufu and since it was the famous dish here, almost every table had it and so we couldnt eat there as well cos even if we did not order the dish, someone nearby WOULD! Plus it looked kind of dingy and dirty and my son only likes HIGH CLASS places.. and so we also worried about where to get lunch...
I tried to prep talk Ace about how sulking will not help and if he gets his act together, we can quickly search for nicer places to eat.. but tat only made him sulkier.. i guess a hungry boy is an angry boy..
To find out how we resolved this challenge... tune in for the next post:)
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