I was roused by gongs at about 4:30, and snoozed until my alarm went off at 4:45. Jeremy and I got up, and walked outside, it was still dark out. The sky was totally clear, and there was an amazing view of the milky way, I got cold after a couple minutes and went back inside to put on a jacket.
We went into the main ceremony room as the morning class was starting. The same nuns were there as last night, along with the villagers who had sponsored yesterday’s ceremony. THey were again blessed, in much the same ceremony, some aspects were different, a bowl of rice was presented to the buddha and then the nuns used some ornamental chopstick/hand things to scoop and bless some of the rice. The whole thing lasted another hour and a half, with consistent chanting. (we were standing still for the first hour, and then kowtowing repeatedly for the last half hour). I kept thinking about the talk I listened to from the ‘brain machine’ gadget, which flashes lights and claims to make you meditate, the little electronic device I made over the summer. In that talk the guy said that one of the main things you find in a lot of old chanting and rituals are this ability to ‘entrain’ brain waves, that is offer a steady external beat of about 10HZ that the brain is able to synchronize to and induces a form of meditation. I definitely felt that effect, and noticed a lot of similarities to what the brain machine did.
Me and jeremy were the only two who got up at 4:45 for the ‘class’ even the teachers didn’t make it up that early, but a few more people were awake afterwards at 6:30 for breakfast. Breakfast was mostly porridge with beans, with some additional greens to add flavor, and was quite acceptable. We were free until 10am, so after breakfast I retreated to my room for a bit.
I meant to do some math homework, but ended up napping until 8, when I decided to get out and do something. I walked up from the temple, on a different path that we’d taken yesterday. Up a set of stairs, not very far at all was another temple, this one built right into a rock face, with advertisements of a cave on the signposts pointing towards it. I poked around for a while, and didn’t see anything beyond the expected, so I headed back down.
I went into the village, walked pretty much the whole length again, observing the morning activities. Lots of policemen around since today is the beginning of the national holiday week, so we were warned that there will be tons of tourists for the rest of the trip. I picked up a couple liang of tea (a decently sized bag) for $40 kuai. It’s been hand picked by the monks or nuns of the area.
I came back to the temple at about 9:15 and hung around until the meeting at 10. We grabbed our stuff and walked down to the bus. Without any further ado we headed back down the road.
we got about half way down the road, and stopped at another temple that we had passed on the way up. It had the signature orange walls, and we were told that it was actually a buddhist university. It was slightly bigger than the nunnary we had been staying at, but wasn’t that large. Prof. Wang was able to talk a master into showing us around, but first we got to go to their morning ceremony, which was more standing and listening to chanting, though luckily for only 15 minutes and not another hour and a half. They showed us their old original wooden house that they were quite proud of, and gave us several signed books that one of their members had written. We finished up, went back to the bus, and continued on our way down the ridge.
The teachers wanted to stop at the bottom for lunch but it was only 11, and nobody was hungry, so we decided to delay until we got to huangshan (lit. yellow mountain, one of the 5 great mountains in china.) I slept for most of the bus ride over, which was a nice break, the road was an expressway and so fairly smooth and wide enough the driver wasn’t constantly honking. We arrived at the city that seemed to be a gateway to the mountain, and stopped for lunch, along with picking up a local tour guide for this portion of the trip.
Lunch was fine, it was a somewhat small restaurant, and we had fried noodles, fried rice, vegetarian and meat soups, more eggplant (che-zi, i think it’s spelled) which I’m again happy to say far exceeds the american version, and other various greens.
After lunch we piled back into the bus to drive to a nearby village. I forget the name of the place, but it was a traditional chinese village, it has unesco heritage status, it’s ‘one of the 10 most charming villages in china’, and it has an 80 kuai / person entrance fee to visit.
It’s also the place where at least some of ‘crouching tiger hidden dragon’ was filmed. I’m sure that would be interesting if I’d seen the movie.
The village was nice, I had fun walking along some of the back alleys, the main streets where as expected completely lined by shops, and not really into the heritage thing as much as the getting your money thing. The village was special because it had devised a system to bring water from the river that ran around three sides of it and divert it in small streams next to each alley. That way people could have water for eating and cleaning clothes without having to go up to the river, it sounded like there was some sort of time system, where some parts of the day people would only take water, and so it would be ok to drink, and others they would wash clothes or throw used water back into the streams.
We walked around for about an hour and a half (3 until 4:30), and then came back to the bus. I took a bunch of pictures but didn’t buy anything. The bus took us back to the town we’d eaten lunch at to a hotel. We were told that it was a new three star hotel, so it ought to be pretty comfortable, still no internet though.
I talked with Prof. wang about tomorrow, and asked if I would be able to explore by myself, since having guide led tours always is somewhat tiresome to me. She gave me several different answers (this happened throughout the day), I believe that she wants me to sign a liability release and it might be ok, or otherwise I’ll just go on the group that is going longer tomorrow, and hope there aren’t too many other people. (The distance tomorrow is either 27 or 20 km, depending on if we take a cable car up or walk up). The mountain is about 1600 metres, it’s about 7km up, and then their path is about 20km up among the peaks of up and down. There are two cable cars / gondolas from the map I saw, one on each side, and my understanding is that everyone will be taking a gondola down. I’m more interested in spending more time at the top, rather than wasting two hours climbing up, so we’ll see how it works out.
After unpacking I went out to a grocery store to buy some snacks and water for tomorrow. It wasn’t particularly expensive, and gave me a chance to see the area around the hotel. All the construction is new and most buildings aren’t occupied. A few blocks down looks to be a bit more complete, and the restaurants and stores start up. I returned and at 7 a group of us went out for dinner. We walked a few blocks and found a likely looking restaurant. We got eggplant (at my insistance), greens with garlic, Two noodle soups (one tofu, one egg), a cucumber with pork dish, and eggs with tomato. It was a good time, the staff were nice, as were the guys at the next table over. It came out to only 86, a bit over $10 kuai per person. As we were walking out there was a crash between a scooter and a bus in front of us, luckily the guy was walking around, but his bike looked pretty dinged up.
Came back to the hotel, showered, and am planning for an early evening, since no matter what happens tomorrow it looks to be a workout.