Wenzhou, Jhejiang, China --- a beautiful naturey island surrounded by a non picturesque city called Jiangxinyu

On the way back from Xi'an, the home of the Terracotta Warriors,  I stopped in a city call Wenzhou, which is known for industry, great wealth and innovation. I went to a very naturey Island that was just beautiful: temples, small amusement park, lakes, trails lined with wonderful looking trees with great energy and well developed, intricate Chinese parks.

This Island is called Jangxinyu. I would exactly suggest visiting this Island unless you found yourself in Wenzhou, China. This is one of the spectacular, spacious, sprawling trees along the pathway that leads around the Island.

In the middle of the island there is a river/lake, and in the distance, you can see the city. The weather was chilly, rainy and not all that pleasant but bearable. 











There was an east and west pagoda. I tried to take cool pictures of them..

The Chinese style garden or just the garden, a fine mix between nature and man-made stuff. 

The one on the right looks like a
Japanese style Bonsai tree. The left is looking through a window on a wall that surrounds the garden.

It's a painting. I zoomed in on it. I was impressed. Wish I could paint like that!

Twisty looking tree branching out wide on the left. On the right, an old, odd shaped tree trunk that reminded of a beak of a buzzard.

On the way back home, the trains are impressively spacious and comfortable. 

Jiulong lake Ningbo, China: nature so close to the city....

This past weekend I got a chance to go to Jiulong lake about a 45 minute ride from my apartment. I stayed in a beautiful, luxurious, well-equipped hotel with all the facilities that you can imagine: pools (indoors and outdoors), racket ball court, gym, sauna and a hot tub and probably more.

I didn't get to most of it. The room and outdoor garden took most of my attention. The hotel is situated on one of the beautiful lakes in the area with mountains as a back drop.

The view from the hotel room. Excellent. The hotel room also had a bathtub that was situated just in front of the balcony inside the room in a sort of drop down living room making the room two levels

Additionally, admission tickets for the Jiulong lake scenic area are given to you by the hotel and handed to you upon check-in. The next morning after the breakfast buffet is when I went there.  The breakfast buffet wasn't too bad because I wasn't expecting too much, but they did have some western stuff which I gorged upon happily. It's hard to eat the Chinese food when western food is around, although I like Chinese food a lot.

After that, I headed out to the scenic area that I had tickets for and got on a fairy boat to an island in the middle of the lake. That little island had some monkeys on it, and there was a path leading around the island which took about 20 minutes to walk, nothing too much there but fresh air and placid scenery.

Then boarded the fairy back to the main area, bought tickets for a shuttle bus the went up the mountain to another touristy spot. Luckily I went on a Tuesday, so the crowds were thin. First was a fantastic walk up through bamboo trees. It looked almost like a fairy tale, something not real, with specs of light peaking through the trees.

The stairs in these areas are always built so solidly.






                      The stairs led up to an emerald pond which was picturesque, to say the least.

Following that I walked down another many flights of stairs leading to the exit beside small, very clear, cleaning looking streams. The day's temperature was extremely pleasant, and as you see in the picture, I am just wearing a t-shirt.

Great day!

Terracotta Warriors "Two farmers found some pottery when they were digging for a well."

I recently got back into marveling at the wondrous things that have been discovered all over the world in the past many many years. I thought for awhile that I didn't care, but what's the point of that? You might as well get into life!

The Terracotta Warriors are in Xi'an, China and west of Shanghai and Beijing. And, from where I am living, which is in Ningbo, China, a city about 2 hours south of Shanghai along the coast, it was about a 2.3 hour flight. The site of the warriors is out of the town, Xi'an, about 45 minutes by local bus. I didn't take the big tour. There were many advertised at the hostel I stayed at, the lowest starting at 90$ Can. They were all kind of expensive and took you to other sites that I personally thought didn't sound all that interesting or authentic. I just wanted the meat, just wanted to stare at the warriors and take it all in, marvel at what humans created for whatever reason.

I didn't find out too much information before I went. Basically, I asked a few people about what they thought about the warriors and that was enough: A king had them built, wanted to be buried with them, some of the faces were made to replicate some of the actual warriors. I wouldn't remember a lot information anyhow.

When I arrived, we got down from the bus. My expectations of the entrance to such a great site were not met. It just looked kind of like a slowly going out of business small market. I walked through that and had a look around and then came to another entrance where I bought my ticket. It wasn't cheap, like 120 rmb, which is about 24$ Can. It was packed with. people! I went over the spring holiday, around the Chinese new year. I was also expecting to see more foreigners, but there were so few, just me and another family of four, I think from France.

I bought the ticket and headed in the same direction as the crowd. Approaching the entrance there were many shops and restaurants. Many. I'm guessing years ago it wasn't like that at all but more low key.

I walked through the security gate/ entrance gate, like you would at an amazement park with turnstiles. Through the gates, there's a big map of the area. It shows that there will be three great big pavilions and gave the break down of what's in each. Basically it was that the Terracotta Warrior pavilion will be the most awesome, and the others will be there...

Then you walk through these slightly naturey paths to the area, through another set of turnstiles and you are there! Right in front of you is the first pavilion, and the others are to the right of it. I walked straight ahead and into the pavilion.





Wow! The pavilion is oval in shape. The whole building is the size of a large ice skating rink but no ice:) Where the ice would be is where the warriors were unearthed. And, like an ice rink there were barriers, so you couldn't walk on. The warriors were down like a floor, so you were looking down at them and about two thousand of them.

I read the information tableaus, and here is what I remember:
1. There were 2000 Terracotta warriors unearthed, but there is an estimated 6,000 still uncovered.
2. They were discovered by two farmers who were digging a well and found some pottery.
More information: apparently after the warriors are unearthed they begin to deteriorate at a much quicker speed. Originally they were colorful.

Back to when I walked into the pavilion. Right in front of me was a crowd of people pressed against the barriers at the head of the pavilion. I slowly squished my way through and joined the marveling. I marveled all nice! It was pretty incredible. I was a little speechless upon my first gaze. The reason they were built seems a little ridiculous, but they are cool.

I walked slowly to the left and just enjoy it. The the area within the barriers were divided into many areas. You can really see how the excavating happened. They left the warriors exactly where they found them and built the building around them.

I continued down the left and out the back door and onto the next pavilion. This one was similar but with much less but had some horses with chariots in the center, and had some warriors that were removed and placed into large glass or plastic display cases, or maybe they were just replicas, and placed off to side of the pavilion.

Following that, I went to the next building which was an historical museum. It was alright.

On the way out, there was a small walking street lined with vendors selling all sorts of local tasty looking food which I presumed to be more pricey due to its local. The one that looked the tastiest was a middle eastern looking guy selling beef kababs.. I didn't experience one, but they did look great. Further down the way were the big U.S. chains: Starbucks, KFC, Dairy Queen and another, I forgot, fully touristy.



The whole experience there was about an hour and half but completely worth it!