City Tour

On Saturday we took the normal city tour you can take in most cities around the world. Not so normal here. Their are no Gray Line type bus tours, even though they exist in Beijing and Hong Kong. We had a heck of a time finding any tour. After three days of searching and asking our Foreign Affairs expert, we finally found a tour out of the local Marriott hotel. A 10 passenger van and an English speaking independent contractor led us to the sites.

First, we visited the Nanyue Kingdom Tomb Museum. The museum is unique. It is built around the site of King Wen's tomb which was discovered in 1983 when a local contractor was attempting to build an apartment house on the site. King Wen was emperor of the Southern region around 120 BC, during the Han dynasty. The tomb was buried under 60 feet of soil and there is evidence that the tomb has been flooded three times. The tomb is 35' x 39'. Besides all the goods excavated from the tomb, one actually gets to walk though the tomb. The rooms are relatively spacious and the ceiling is 7' or 8' high. Fortunately or unfortunately this is the one area where China believes in the sanctity of copy write laws, no photography is allowed.

Next we went back to Yuexiu Park. This time we actually saw the Five Ram Statue!

The two gentlemen in black are from Argentina. They just arrived in Guangzhou for the 101st Canton Trade Fair. The trade fair is so big, the city added 1,000 new taxicabs for the show.

The last highlight for the morning was the 1,000 year old Six Banyan Temple. The Buddhist temple had many versions of Buddha. Please excuse my ignorance, I did not know there are different Buddha's with specialized areas for helping people. Here are some pictures of the Buddha's and of people praying. The wooden Buddha is the oldest one at the Temple.

For lunch they took us to a place that we had purposely avoided, the Brazil Steakhouse. It is not the best example of Brazil or China, but gauchos with Chinese faces is amusing. Only the 2nd meal we had in China with fork and knife.

In the afternoon, we visited two exceptional sites. The Chen Clan Academy and the Hualin Temple.

The Chen Clan Academy was started by the Chen family in the 1900's. It's mission was to train individuals (members of the Clan) for the exam to become government workers. To be a government worker meant high prestige and high income. The Academy closed down with the Communist takeover. It is now a Museum for Folk Art. Our guide, Sylvia, is a design student, so she was very good at explaining the exhibits.

(Picture on left is a roof decoration.)
(Below is a bird tapestry.)

Below is peacock needle point. All the art pictures are only a portion of the artist's work. Hopefully I have made a respectful choice and the artist will approve.

To the right is a sand painting. Everything done with grains of sand. My picture does not show the delicateness of Johnson's work. Finally, we have Marsha interacting with some sculptures. Guess which of the women are 30 years old.

The final meaningful stop of the day was Hualin Temple. A Taoist Temple known for it's five hundred golden Buddhist saints. {From a photography viewpoint, the Temple is a disaster. It has very limited fluorescent lighting, my shots are hand held with exposure times between 1/3 and 1/2 of a second. Finally a shot of Sylvia trying to answer one of Marsha's questions.