BEYOND THE WALL

It has taken this long to provide an update on my trip to China because I have not had good internet access. I arrived in Shanghai on New Years Eve. My couch surfing hosts, consisting of a mother, father, 12 year old son, an auntie and my friend Tiger, picked me up at the airport and we went to their home in Ningbo about three hours away. I settled in, met the family and went to bed. In the following days, I visited a 1700 old library with 80,000 books, Walmart, street vendors, a grocery store and ate and ate and ate. I have had turtle, shrimp, eel, pig intestines, various fish, shell fish, fish testicles, bamboo, green vegetables, squash and many more, all cooked in a wok. No ovens here! They eat for 1-2 hours at a time, and it is all double dipping. In the evenings I would listen to beautiful piano music on a Yamaha Grand Piano by a 12 year old boy and his dad. I then went to a nearby city of Cixi and stayed in a very ritzy hotel. In the next few days I met lots of people and spent a couple of nights with a family of two docters and their daughter. We went to Wei Li Temple and saw beautiful ancient architecture with many buddahs and monks. I also went to the remains of a very old porcelain china factory. It was flooded with water, along with the village when a damn was built to provide drinking water. I met a buddhist family and they were preparing to perform a ceremony to return fisn and rabbits, bought at the street market, to their natural habitats as an act of kindness often done in their culture. They invited me to accompany them. The father hailed a boat from the opposite shore. Soon we were on the boat throwing rice into the resevoir. We carefully picked up each fish and placed them into the water while the mom waved customary flags and the dad chanted and sang. On the opposite shore the rabbits were released into the wild and a similar ceremony held. I am now preparing to go to Tongling, my host's home village for the spring festival. It is the Chinese New Year celebration that takes place over a couple of weeks. This year it is the year of the Dragon. We will prepare food and decorations. I also have had foot massages, hair wash and massage and a beutiful red winter coat was hand made for me because I am the biggest human in China! I will be back in a couple of weeks and hopefully get a connection to write again. By the way, fireworks go off every day at any time of day. They are part of many ceremonies here in preparation for the new year.