Changzhou

Well a couple of weeks ago, Jake's Flagship class had a fieldtrip to Changzhou. They are known for making combs there.

On the train bright and early

The Flagship Group...minus me b/c I was taking the picture.

Jake went to a lot of wining and dining by the government. They were there to do a newspaper interview. I stayed in the hotel with Sara and Clara the first day, and we ventured out to a park and walked around. There was a pretty cool statue there, but when I went to take a picture with my camera, my batteries were dead. Sara then said don't worry I have my camera, but she forgot to put the batteries back in her camera. So we don't have proof that we ventured out in a new city, but we did I promise.

The next day we went to a lot of community centers so the students could see what they were like and talk with some of the elderly people there. Jake said it was all "set-up" and "staged".
This sign said "Welcome American students from Nanjing University" and I was excited that it was in English, but then on our tour the switched it to Chinese, so I just got a picture with the Chinese.
Then we went out to lunch at a place translated to the "Drunken Millionaire". I think the man was a little disappointed that he ordered expensive wine and bought expensive cigarettes but we didn't join in. As you can tell the table was set really nice, but the food was really gross. Since we didn't drink, we got a nice glass of hot corn drink. It looked like an orange julius, but was corn. Then we had a lot of other weird things that I have no clue what they were but I just tasted it. And the craziest thing we ate that day was......PENGUIN. It was nice and blubbery and Jake almost threw it up. I still laugh thinking about his face when he was trying to swallow it. After this long lunch, I was ready to go back to our home and eat something normal.

Jake and I before we started eating all the weird stuff.

Clara, did so well, I was going nuts after 2+ hours of sitting at the table listening to a drunk chinese man. So I guess my attention span is less then a 1 year old.
Some really pretty gardens around where we ate
Jake by some giant statue...what a stud
Goodbye Changzhou

Qixia Buddhist Temple

On October 25, 2008 Jake and I went with the Flagship students on a Saturday outing. I know there are a ton of pictures, but this is kind of my journal with pictures. It was a pretty neat place. It is called Qixia Buddhist Temple.
This temple is on Qixia Mountain north-east of Nanjing. It was founded by the Buddhist monk Ming Sengshao during the Southern Qi dynasty, and is still an active place of worship. Qixia Temple has long been one of China's most important monasteries, and even today is one of the largest Buddhist seminaries in the country. The area where incense is burning, quite a strong smell.

A girl praying to each direction.
Jake and the elephant on the way into the temple.
(We like taking pictures of Jake by stone elephants apparently...)

The temple...Jake is off to the right

This is where you can toss coins into for good luck, nice shot Jake. It looks like he played basketball at one time.

Jake and I outside the temple.

The monks inside the temple.

Jake and I overlooking the courtyard.

Behind the temple is the Thousand Buddha Cliff (Qianfo Ya). Several small caves housing stone statues are carved into the hillside, the earliest of which dates from the Qi dynasty (AD 479-502), although there are others from succeeding dynasties through to the Ming.

Me and the big stone tower.

Some close-ups of the tower.

The rocks had a lot of buddhas carved out of them.

One side of the carved mountain.

Jake with the carvings.

I guess I wasn't supposed to take a picture of this Buddha, but it was huge and I didn't know that when I snapped this picture.

After seeing some of the sculpting, they gave us some time to hike around and see the area. I just thought this was really pretty looking.

Jake and I found a path up a mountain that had a lot more carvings.

I was sooooo tired walking up all the steps.

Don't worry I kept going, but my thighs were burning.

Jake is always such a good sport on the outings, he always carries the bag, which I load up with everything "just in case". This is about as high up as we could get.

The view at the top overlooking the city.

Me at the top totally tired and exhausted.

More pictures of the sculpting, a lot of these have the heads taken off because they were smashed in the Cultural Revolution.

More carvings from the mountain.

Our hike back down, we found a little shortcut.

Some artwork that lined one of the pathways. Everywhere you go people are always selling all sorts of jewelery, artwork, and just about anything you can think of.

Nanjing Massacre Museum

On October 18th, we went with our friends, The Lee's (Chad, Sara, and Clara), and visited the Nanjing Massacre museum. Here is a little history about it from my friend Sara's blog, hopefully she doesn't mind, but she described it so well.

This museum was built to commemorate and tell the tales of the gruesome Japanese attack of Nanjing, just prior to WWII. Knowing the Japanese were coming, the Chinese government told the Nanjing people to stay and fight, locked them in their city, and abandoned them. 1,000s of Chinese people died from being trampled, suffocated, or burned trying to follow the army through a tunnel leading to the last unlocked portion of the city gates. In about 6 weeks time, 300,000 Nanjing citizens and soldiers were mass or individually killed after being brutally raped/tortured by Japanese militia.

This memorial really made me reflect and be grateful to be born in a nation where we have so many freedoms. It was very humbling experience to see what others throughout the world have gone through.

Outside the museum they had a of sculptures, this is one of a woman holding her dead child

This bell had a lot of symbolism to it. Because there were 300,000(give or take) Chinese civilians killed, the number 300,000 appears all over the entire monument. It is written in every imaginable language in several places, and the number is also written randomly on walls, doorways, rocks, and other objects. This bell has three towers, representing the "3", and has five rings at the top, representing the five zeroes. Add those together and you get "300,000". The lines connecting the three towers(the bell his hanging from the middle of them) is a representation of the character for "people", and it is placed perpendicular to the ground, to represent falling. So the bell(which has "peace" written on it) represents the 300,000 fallen chinese people. At the start of the memorial

This symbolizes being buried alive

A walkway with people's footprints who had survived the massacre. It was built in the late 90's I believe, or roughly 50 years later. Several of the footprints were obviously "bound".

Names of people that they have identified that were killed

This area was the "graveyard". This land was literally a mass grave, and since most of the people buried here are unidentified, they decided it best not to excavate all the bodies.

This is a room where they have found many remains. Again, they started to excavate, but after failing to identify any of the bodies, they decided to leave the excavation site as it was, and protect it in this museum.

One of the many bodies they have excavated.Memorial to pay tribute to those who were killed
Statue at the end that statue symbolizes peace and hope

So at the end of the museum you go out into a courtyard. Sara, Clara and I were walking around and showing Clara the grass (you don't see much of it here). When we got over to the grass we noticed a bone lying there. I thought it looked like a human femur bone. Since this place has thousands of bodies buried here, I didn't think it was that crazy of a thought. Plus there were a lot of new trees planted and thought hey when they were digging for those they probably found a bone and just threw it aside. So we went and told Chad and Jake, and Chad went and got one of the security guards. He of course picked it right up and said that it was most likely a cow bone.....who knows though.