There was unexpectedly a huge crowd there, even though it was a Thursday, was no longer "Golden Week", and was raining as well. But the crowd really wasn't a problem once we got inside.
You can see three of the stone guardians looming in the distance above the entryway.
The name of the place is variously called "East Salt Lake City" or "Oriental Salt Lake City". It has nothing to do with Utah's Salt Lake City, however. It just used to have some salt mines and a salty lake nearby.
The place is also sometimes called "TaoistLand", because the whole place is a showcase for Taoism. It was built at great expense by the government a few years ago, and has lots of traditional-looking beautiful buildings and spaces.
This roof had cool shingles made of overlapping flat stone.
There was lots of bamboo around.
One of our first stops was this big sphere that had a 4-D movie in it that described the creation of the world according to Taoism.
The whole place was done with special attention to feng shui (the practice of harmonizing an environment).
Eric tried out the water cannon while I defended myself.
And since I didn't necessarily know what I was looking at, but thought it was beautiful, I'll let some of these pictures speak for themselves.
This statue was formed with nothing but a bunch of rods sticking out of the wall. Very cool.
There was section that showcased a lot of really interesting minerals, like this huge geode.
For lunch we had a "hot pot." They bring out this pot with soup boiling in it. There's a spicy half and a mild half. They bring out various kinds of meat, mushrooms, etc., and you drop stuff in and let it cook and then pull it out, dip it in sauces you have chosen, and eat it. We were a little frightened of the "tripe" (cow stomach), but the beef and lamb were good.
There's charcoal right in the middle keeping the thing really hot the whole time.
It was really good, and a fun, social way to eat.
I thought the cleaning people looked cool with their pointy hats.
If I could read Chinese, I'd tell you who this was.
There was one room where you find your "sign" (I was born in the year of the ram) and put your hand on the wall, and then stuff lights up and tells you things (for those who can read them).
There were a lot of cool relief wood carvings.
I especially loved this carving, done out of a stump and partially painted for detail.
And these dudes were all like "Hi-YAH!"
This wall contained "blessings" that people had hung here.
People throw a coin into this statue's basin for good fortune.
Here is a view of where that statue is from below the waterfalls. What a beautiful scene.
There's a huge drum hung between two towers that each have a huge bell.
Thump!
"Flick!"
So that was a wonderful visit to Oriental Salt Lake City.
On our way to the train station, we stopped at the mall so that Eric could buy some children's books for his wife to read (she is learning Chinese). While we were there, I saw this establishment. I leaned over to Merlin and said, "You can ask for it by name!"
And here's the "Dating lips" restaurant (!).
By the time we finished at the mall, we were hurting for time, and traffic wasn't great, so when we got to the train station, one gal ran our passports over to Steve, who was already waiting in line for the tickets, and then we hurried in a panic to get through security and over to our gate.
Finally we got all the way through, and here we are jokingly saying, "What should we do with all this extra time we have now?" (we had 6 minutes).
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| Eric, the CEO and his wife, as we just barely make our train. |
We did indeed make it onto our train with a few minutes to spare.
We had a wonderful visit in Changzhou, and had great success in our meetings with the good people there. They were exceptional hosts and I consider them good friends.
In our final episode, we check out glitzy Shanghai!
Next Episode: Shanghai
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