Wednesday Afternoon in GuangZhou

In the afternoon after our Dim Sum, we went to see the Chen Family Temple. There are about 100 common names in China. Chen is one of them. It is a lot like Smith or Brown in the US. In China, there are about 130 million people with the surname Chen. Theoretically they are all related. That would be like 60% of the people in the US having the same last name. China has over 1.5 billion people...it makes our population pretty much a rounding error in any calculation.

The temple was built with donations from people with the last name Chen. I'm not sure, but I think the temple was originally built in the early 1800's (but I'm not certain). The detail on the woodwork is breath taking. Much of this was carved from single pieces of wood. The outside detail is all ceramic. The GuangDong province (GuangZhou area) is known for ceramics. The building has courtyards in side that are beautifully planted. There is one day a year (April 11th I believe) where everyone goes to pay respect to their ancestors. Everyone in China is cremated. It is believed that the spirit of your ancestors lives on. On this day, they become visible and you can actually talk and interact with them. There was a part of the temple that was built up with floor to ceiling stepped shelves. This is where portraits and artifacts from ancestors would be kept. In front was a huge table upon which people would leave offerings of a feast for their ancestors (fruit and the like). Simon was showing how all these shelves are bear and they are not in use. During the cultural revolution (which lasted about 10 years), the Red Army came and smashed all of the artifacts and ancestral information in the temple. They destroyed anything that had to do with the old China...it is just devastating. There were no written records so this history is lost forever.

There were many displays of art work in the temple. Of particular note were the bone and ivory carvings. The ship depicted here won awards. The detail is incredible. It is almost impossible to believe that a human being carved such intricate detail into these works of art. This ship, the "dragon ship" has doors and windows that open and close, and there is detailed carvings on each. The people on the ship have unique faces. These are not carved from one piece of bone, however many of the others pieces were.

I had to get in another sign for my translation connection. See the picture. The card describing the art work stated "the Painting of Going to Street on Tomb Sweeping Day." I did not know what to make of this...look at the art work that accompanies it. Ok, first this is not a painting. Maybe they put the wrong card here? Second, what does it mean Going to Street (the Doobie Brother's tune "takin' it to the Streets" immediately popped into my head. Is the street wall street? Any old street? Ok, maybe the crowd of people gather in the street. But what about "Tomb Sweeping Day?" This sounded, well, macabre. So, figured I better go get Simon.

Simon read it, got a puzzled look on his face, then smiled and said this translation is wrong. I don't know what that means in English. Remember I talked about April 11th when everyone goes to visit their ancestors? Well, that's what this carving is about...its all the people going to the street on their way to the temple (tomb) to worship their ancestors. Mystery solved, and one more addition to my sign collection.

The wood carving's were huge and surrounded large open doorways. Simon told us

that they were from one piece of wood...which if so, is absolutely fantastic. It had to have been one massive tree. And speaking of trees, Banyan trees are really popular here. They grow to be hundreds of years old and their roots hang down from the branches (we have had a few pictures throughout the blog...we showed you a really big one on Gu Lan Yu island, and one there was 500 years old). They are very pretty and majestic.

As we were leaving the temple, there was a line of limousines and fancy cars outside. Turns out a US dignitary was there. We think it waThe s the head of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernake. Or, it was the Secretary of the Treasury. I am embarrassed to say, I don't recall who is currently the US Secretary of the Treasury. (So I wouldn't recognize him if I saw him). You'll notice a picture of two Chinese guys, one on the other one's shoulders, hanging some lettuce outside a store front. That was the grand opening of the store that day. Those guys were there to do a dragon dance. But they couldn't, the police said that had to stop because of the dignitary's arrival. So, we didn't get to see the dance. But what they were doing, is hanging lettuce which is a symbol for money (you know, in the US we refer to it as "cabbage, " "the green"). The dragon will dance around and then eat the lettuce for good luck. It means you capture and keep the money... a good fortune for the store owner.

We headed out from the temple to go to what appeared to be a big shopping mall. It was sort of like the Merchandise Mart in Chicago, Jewelers row and Macy's all combined. There were tons of little shops where you could by jewelery, pearls, clothes, jade, you name it. Simon took us around to a few stores where he had relationships and let us shop. In the pictures you can see that Linda was down to some serious business. I won't spoil the surprise on some of the things we bought because I know the girls will want to share them with you. But suffice it to say we looked at some beautiful traditional Chinese clothes, some pearls, jade and DVDs. I'm a little worried about the DVDs, they came in a BlueRay disk box, but they are not BlueRay, and they were really cheap (like $2US a piece). This are recently released movies. The thought of piracy has crossed my mind...I guess we'll find out at US customs.

The girl in the turquoise top, standing next to the girl in the black top behind the counter, is making a pearl neclace. You can't see her hands moving in this still picture, but she is actually make a knot between each pearl. You would not believe how fast they do this. She tranfered each pearl to a new strand and inbetween each she formed a knot doing this at lighening speed. I figured that one strand would have taken me about two and half weeks. She did it in about 3 minutes.

This evening after a long, enjoyable day of sight seeing and shopping in this wonderful city, we are going to order in Papa John's pizza. You have no idea how good that is going to taste.

Tomorrow we have the morning open to explore Shaiman Island (that is the little island district the hotel is on...it is very quaint with older buildings (about 150 years old), beautiful gardens and peaceful streets. In the afternoon, we are going to ride the subway with Simon to see more of the city from a residents perspective. Tonight we are doing a dinner cruise on the Pearl River.