Foreign Teachers' Cultural Trip (April 19)

Today we make up for Saturday's postponement of our Foreign Teachers' Cultural Trip. We have two vehicles to travel to our sites.

Jia Jiang Thousand Buddha Carving Cliffs

Ms. Enliven showed up at 0900 with the cars and gathered her foreigners quickly and efficiently. We were on our way within minutes of her arrival. Sunee suggested that we go to the Jia Jiang Thousand Buddhas site first and then the Ten Fu Tea Museum. Good idea!

Here is the bridge across the river which flows past our destination. From this point we had about another thirty minutes or so before our destination.

Along the way and especially across the river, scenes like this were everywhere. Sichuan is considered to be the "breadbasket" of China. Everywhere there is land, the Chinese in Sichuan makes use of it. What veggies they produce!

Our destination had two entrances. After going through the first, one walks through a fairly older street with some neat old Chinese houses. Along the way, I snapped this picture of Chinese chess match. Who is winning? Not a clue!

A beautiful old red door worth a picture.

This is the second entrance to the actual carved buddhas and where one must buy a 7 Yuan ticket to get in.

Here Sunee looks over some paper for Chinese calligraphy and watercolor

This is the history of these carved buddhas, carved on a rock surface at the entrance.

In we go to see the thousand carved buddhas.

One of the four lion guards at the entrance. One on each side times both sides. Beautifully carved and very picturesque.

I snuck this picture in while Dave was not watching. We have been doing a lot of poses to get exactly this effect. Good job, Dave, of not posing.

Here is the gang of eleven marching to the gates of the tourist site. Impressive lot, aren't we?

Zoe buys the tickets so we can go see our buddhas.

An impressive photo of the redness all over this place. It is a beautiful site.

Map of the Thousand Carved Buddha site.

A beautiful view across the river from the site. We decided not to go over there because there is nothing to see. Good plan!

A couple of foreign photographers trying to get the most from their visit.

Since this was the second time Sunee and I had visited, I only took a few pictures of the actual buddhas. I had most of them on my hard drive. You can pretty much get the idea from this picture what the buddhas look like.

Beautiful view of the paper museum in the middle of the site. I love taking this picture as it reminds me that I am truly in China.

Zoe explains the meaning of these sculptures. It says "five old men."

Zoe could not quite make out who these buddhas represented. Great shot, isn't it?

I just can never take enough pictures of the paper museum. Here is one with a small creek running beside it. Love the red amongst the green.

And this is the guy who is supposed to have invented paper. I will have to go do some research as to what his name is. Somewhere I read that the Arabs actually invented paper. Who knows? This is a good picture of the Chinese inventor anyway.

Got John to pose by my favorite red Chinese wall. Always a good place for pictures.

I tracked this guy for about ten minutes before he finally arrived in an area that would make a good picture. Such hard work it takes to get pictures for this blog. Worth it, though, don't you think?

Here are our three hostesses, all fellow teachers in the Foreign Language Department. No wait, Mia, the one in the center is in the Computer Department. She is one of my students in the teachers' training course I am teaching on Monday and Wednesday night. She is truly a joy to be around - cute as a button.

Now there are "SIX OLD MEN."

Let me assure you that his picture of John was not posed. He had no idea I was taking the picture. Notice the very Sichuan veggies being grown everywhere. 'Tis a great picture, isn't it? John was totally focused on the beauty of the area. Can you blame him?

We followed a path up the mountain and came to an old Buddhist Temple. It was obviously very old as Tom points out the construction that proves it.

Lots of Buddhas around. Unfortunately some had been damaged by humans and other by the weather.

Sunee, Zoe and Enliven discuss the merits of the tourist sites and they walk along the carved buddha images.

Posed! Nice try, Dave.

Zoe and Mia take a break from herding the foreigners around the site.

Posed again! Dave never gives up trying to match my great unposed picture above.

At a little past 1300 we shared a lunch inside the area, along the first street we walked through. Not bad with plenty of good solid Sichuan food to eat. We now head to the Ten Fu Tea Museum which is about half an hour or so away.

Panorama view of the Thousand Buddha Cliff area.

Ten Fu Tea Museum

We took a one lane back road to get to the Tea Museum and got stuck for about twenty minutes until the oncoming cars could squeeze by. As we waited I found this water buffalo relaxing in the shade next to his "mud pond."

Welcome to Ten Fu Tea Museum. We start our visit off with a tea tasting around a hug beautiful wooden table. Our sales ladies looked after our tea needs professionally.

This is one of their puerh teas we tasted. Actually, this puerh was the only one we tasted and we tasted it several times as we tasted some of the snacks for sale in their tea market place. Relaxing and fun but . . . Sunee and I had been here before.

Tasting tea, our three hostesses continued to have a good time. Notice the expression on Zoe's face. She automatically knows when a camera is pointed in her direction. Please, Zoe, never change. You are an absolute doll.

More tasting and snacking. Pleasant but only the one puerh was served.

Here Ivan tries out his newly acquired professional sniffing technique. Wonder what he smells?

Obviously the puerh is filling Ms. Mia with a lot of "qi." We all knew how she felt - dreaming.

Here Tom toasts the puerh to our health.

Sunee tastes the puerh. She thinks puerh tastes like Chinese medicine.

It is time to shop and so . . . Sunee shops.

Entrance to the Ten Fu Tea Museum.

We all go check out the "show" tea plantation in the back. A bit boring but we felt we should since we had tasted a lot of their puerh. Here Ms. Mia does a "downward bunny" to show her appreciation to the tea.

Friends.

Sunee and Zoe decide not to got into the museum again, so that left the rest of us. Here we look over are planned visit to the museum, devising the best options to see all the stuff in the museum. Actually, this is just a model of the Ten Fu Tea grounds. Dave thought it looked more like a war map, prepping for another operation on the enemy.

Ten Fu Tea Museum information.

Now how do I go about getting my face on this manikin. Should I give it a try?

Ms. Enliven acts as our translator and tries to explain all the exhibits. Nevermind that all of them were also in English. Good practice for her, though.

Any one for some tea?

Doesn't this hat make Ms. Enliven look sooo cute?

Here Ms. Enlive points out where the Gap Guys are from. Here translations were really accurate as we could check them against the supplied English.

Tea Map of the World. I liked it a lot.

A beautiful Russian samovar. I am the only one who knew what it was called. Are you impressed?

Sometimes I think John can actually read the Chinese he seems to be focused on all the time. Here he focuses on some of the Chinese displays of teapots.

As we made our way through the museum, Sunee and Zoe relax in the Tea Horse room and enjoy some tea. It was another good day and we all had a great time. Sunee even bought a few tea snacks from the sales area.