Hey everyone,
So I’m pretty sure that most of you, if not all of you, have at some point stopped at a truck stop on the side of the highway. Gone to the bathroom, grabbed some food, gassed up and continued about your trip. Well they have those in China too, they’re just a lot smaller.
This was on our way to金华 JinHua. At this road stop Andrew and I bought swords. They were small swords though…longer than a dagger but shorter than a real sword. Why? Because I can now say that I bought a sword at a truck stop in China.
When we first arrived in JinHua I must admit I was less than impressed with what I was seeing…
But this was supposed to be an Ancient Village so I was gonna give it a shot. A little further up we saw this machine that you pedal by foot in order to clean the water. It worked on a sort of pulley system and then the dirty stuff fell down and the clean water came out somewhere. Obviously they still needed to boil the water (good God I hope) BUT this shows some ancient technology. Pretty cool .
There are a lot of pictures but not really a lot of stories to go along with them. When I have some comment to make I will mention it, but for the most part will simply be pictures and a quick explanation of what it is.
The preceding photo deserves a comment from me. I find stuff like this to be REALLY cool. Just like when you have buildings in Montreal that have the name of the building carved into it, this makes me smile. This YingYang symbol has been carved into the wood for hundreds, if not thousands of years. The sole purpose of this wood was beauty and tradition. Stuff like this just makes me realize how cool the world really is.
What’s really cool about these Ancient Cities is how narrow and how closely everything is built. It made me think and the reasons are because if they were concerned with safety, that is being attacked or invaded thousands of years ago when these things happened, having tight corners to fight in made choke points for the enemies and made it harder for them to attack. Really cool in my opinion. Later on you will see a really narrow alley, just large enough for one person to walk through at a time.
This kinda stuff, just like the Ancient carvings into the wood beams, is the reason I LOVE travelling. This stuff is so cool. This is an ancient map, carved into wood of the whole town. This map was located in the central building of the whole city, which presumably at one time, was a meeting ground, or a market or a communal space to meet with other people. Just so awesomely cool.
This was the traditional Chinese symbol for the Phoenix. The bird that died and was reborn. A symbol of eternity and the source of life. This was painted above the towns well. Where they would get their fresh water. A source of their life. Amazing.
This man was doing Ancient Calligraphy for a price. Had some really nice work for sale as you can see.
Just because it is an Ancient city, doesn’t mean a people don’t still live and work here. Here are some of the locals doing their laundry in the water.
That was really cool. On the way out there was a museum filled with Ancient artifacts from the city. Among them were tools used in cooking. Basically, while they weren’t exact measures like we have now (1/4 teaspoon, 1 tablespoon etc) they were all of varying sizes that people used when measuring out seasonings for cooking. Talk about getting down to basics, but really cool to see.
As mentioned in my last post, the Dragon boat festival is in a few days, so I will be posting photos from that soon as well as the photos from Children’s Day from June 6th.
All that is left from my May Holiday trip is the album of food. I ate some pretty Chinese stuff so it was really exciting for me and I hope you’ll enjoy it as well.
Justin
Thank you so much Justin for the beautiful pics reminds me of our trip to bring home Kelsey Jade Xiu Ying ….IT forever changes you seeing how we as humans live so differently in other parts of the world doesn’t it ? Just stay out of the rice paddies !!!!! See you soon !! enjoy the rest of your year in China ! Carol