Taoist Temples

Today started out as one of the most frustrating days that we experienced in China. We wanted to go to Woolong, a famous panda park. We were at the bus station trying to figure out when the bus came back from the park. What happened was that basically everyone surrounded us, trying to help us out but no one spoke more than 3 English words. So as we tried to point in our mandarin phrase book to the person at the information desk, everyone else peered over our shoulder, closing in on our space with each second and then they started writing things down on newspaper that did not make any sense at all. They all wanted us to pay to take a taxi to Woolong so they were trying to be helpful but it was very frustrating to me. We finally managed to bust through the circle surrounding us and try to make some sense of it all.

We opted to go visit a Taoist temple instead. The bus leaves as soon as it fills up. In Chinese fashion, the temple was very developed. Soothing music played as we embraced zillions of stairs on our quest to the top. We paid 90Y to get into the temple, actually quite a bit of money. It was nice to walk around, even if it was with lots of people, some of which who were being carried to the top on a bamboo seat. One could get carried to the top and back for around 30 US dollars. Along the way there were tea houses and restaurants to stop at. All the views were shrouded in an occult fog giving the scenery a mysterious tone. Of course there were also lots of trinkets for sale. Knowing little about Taoism, I didn't really understand the temples, mostly they were huge huge sculptures of a Taoist leader encased in glass with flowers around the edges. Nothing that I could imagine making a pilgrimage to. The Taoist figures encased in glass all seemed surreal (OK, actually I thought they were funny looking, bordering on scary and I couldn't take them seriously) with their long long beards and hair and very white rolly polly faces. I guess it was probably considered handsome at the time but I sure didn't see it. At the end of the day, we got back on our bus and the end of the line for the bus was somewhere other than where the bus station was. However, it was closer for us to take a taxi from to our hotel and with Emily's expert navigating skills, we knew this (actually Emily knew this, I had an inkling). Did I mention that Taxis were very easy and cheap to get in Duijiangyan? They are, it's great.

We had a few funny things happen with hotels. I thought I was being time efficient and when we got back, I was going to email while Emily went to the hotel to take a shower and then we would be ready for dinner. Well when I got to the hotel, Emily was in the Lobby. It turns out that even though it was around 5PM they had decided to move us from the 3rd floor to the 6th floor. Suddenly our room was in need of repairs and our old room was under construction--Emily had had to move all of our stuff to the 6th floor. There also was no hot water due to some problem that was being repaired. The hot water would return at 8PM. We went and got dinner.