Replanting Chinese Style
Chinese seem to do everything in huge numbers...it's amazing how many trees have been planted...in every nook & cranny...on the roadsides, in the medians, all around the factories, up & down the mountains. Why don't we do that in USA??
Forbidden City
26 emperors enjoyed a huge chuck of land in the middle of Beijing filled with ornate pagodas & massive halls and a beautiful garden. My favorite was the marble boat! Those emperors sure knew how to pamper themselves! It was by far the most populated tourist site we've been to with about 90% Chinese...but also we saw more Caucasians than we've seen anywhere else!
Lama Temple
The smell of insense was everywhere as many worshipers were waving handfulls of burning sticks turning to face each of the directions & then knelling in front of the Buddha. There were many side halls with graphic statues of hell, ancestors & more Buddhas. One Buddha was built in 1748 from one single trunk of white sandal wood and stood 26 meters tall!
Fresh Fish
So they we were, eating at a fairly nice Beijing restaurant...Rog spotted a fish net leaning on a tree right in front of the window & wondered why it would be there. Several nice cars were driving by...and then a bike with a tank stopped in front of the window. A man in a suit who appeared to be the restaurant owner, went outside and soon a basket of fish had been pulled from the tank, weighed & then seemed to disappear. After we finished eating, we went outside & looked around. Mystery solved. The fish had been dumped into a fish tank that was right under the restaurant... now we knew what the net was for and how they kept fish fresh! So here in the most modern of Chinese cities...we saw what we saw in the most ancient of Chinese cities!!
Mom
A surreal feeling surrounded me as I read the email in the lobby of a Beijing hotel about my Mom dying. I knew I had to go home. I said a quick prayer that I could get home quickly and withing 20 minutes we were getting into a cab that was litterally on the sidewalk in front of our hotel. Somehow the cab driver must have known we were in a hurry--though we had no way of telling him...he drove like a maniac passing everything on the right, left & even on the margin. Rog asked me to quit praying so hard. Two hours later, we were on a plane...thanks to the counter clerk & strangers that let us use their phones & computers. After we settled in...I started to chuckle as I realized that Mom had always been one to just hang up on you when she was done with a phone conversation...never wasting time to say good bye...and once again...she didn't say goodbye. Before I left for China I had teased her saying "Don't you die while I'm in China." She had answered, "Don't you make me promise you that!" And I knew, she was eager to get to Heaven and I would not have wanted her to wait any longer than she had already waited. Just 30 hours after I read the email...we were home.
