Tulli Times: Buddhist Temple & Qing Ping Market

Yesterday morning we visited the Buddhist Temple in Guangzhou. There's a few, but our guide, Helen, chose this one as it's famous for it's Six Banyon Trees. It was beautiful and peaceful. And barring the one obvious and most important difference between Buddhism and Christianity, their are similarities between the faiths. The Buddhists are big into incense and they light three sticks and offer those up representing three lives -- past, present and future.

There are 108 Buddhas altogether with one big Buddha whose over it all. Out of the 108 Buddhas, there is only one female Buddha.

There are male and female monks -- they live at seperate temples. Becoming a monk is a personal choice; and even children can decide to become monks and go and live at the temple for training and education. Monks live on donations only... lay people make monetary and food contributions on which the monks rely entirely. In preparation for Chinese New Year, volunteers and lay people were everywhere cleaning the temple, airing out cushions, scrubbing the floors. Due to all the work going on, there were no services but there were plenty of folks there lighting incense and praying individually.

Afterwards, we walked through the Qing Ping market which is just across the water from Shamian Island where we are staying. It's an open air market with hundreds of vendors selling all kinds of stuff... from mushrooms, to herbs, to medicinal teas to mushrooms, to live animals... for adoption purposes only!

Those are deer tendons... complete with toes still intact!

It was really neat to see... a bit confusing because there is stall after stall after stall with each vendor selling the same thing, but apparently they all do a significant amount of business as all Chinese pharmacies buy here as well as buyers from other parts of China. Mia wanted to buy a puppy so bad... thank goodness customs won't allow it as I think that was the only thing that saved us!

Late yesterday afternoon, I took an excursion with Suzy and Cathy. We took a cab to an electronics mart where we racked up on games and dvds. We took the subway back to Carrefour for luggage to bring all our treasures home on Friday. Then jumped back on the subway and headed to the hotel. It was neat to see and be a part of the "real China" without a guide. Needless to say, the three of stuck out in the crowd!

For dinner, the four Tulli's ate at the Italian restaurant La Dolce Vita on the island. It was surprisingly delicious! Emma ate her first Italian spaghetti -- LOVED it AND mastered a fork all in the same meal!