Gold Leaf and Bitter Stem

Hey holiday! A couple of days out of the hospital to explore Hangzhou. This weekend has been a frenzy of activity and laowei sightseeing. We have been to temples gallery they are all temple like. TCM museum was ace lots of interesting herbs in bottle, well say herbs but there was cordus umbilicous hominis which is strictly not a plant but belongs in the materia medica. They have sea sponges and tiger teeth and fossilized remains. Anything goes in Chinese medicine. Went to a Chinese herb market too which was very interesting saw how they make up pills - quality control is of a somewhat different standard to UK. Another lady was sat drying whatever plant or animal part with a hairdryer. Very conscientious I thought. Apparently there were lots of donkey penis and a few inside out hedgehogs but I have to admit I failed to recognize them. We visited the LongJing Tea village and a lake on an island on a lake but sadly most was shut for August renovation.

Today we got up early early and headed out to Lingyin temple apparently one of the biggest Buddhist temples around. Got there early to beat the crowds. Even at 7.30 I could see what they meant. There were multiple large gold buddhas in various incarnations and with friends and relatives and descendants and well who knows who else because it was all in Chinese. Like everything else pretty much - China what can you expect! One of the temples right at the top was incredible I loved it, very calm and three big non gold buddhas looking very serene. A lot of the lower temples seemed to be be filled with menacing and disturbing images. According to my learned friend Sylvie it represents the demons that the buddha fought on his path to enlightenment and the top temple is where it had all come good. Makes sense. Still liked the top one best. Very amused to see a monk getting agro on his mobile in front of one of the lower temples. He too I think had demons left to fight. There were however many caves and within the caves walls were many carvings, row and rows of buddhas worked right there up on walls and poked in crevices. Those were incredible. Such intricate work in place within the natural environment and not a gold leaf in sight.

Starving, as we were an unable to find the vegetarain restaurant (which we later discovered is closed for renovation being August - ferme le Aut!), we struggled to communicate to the taxi driver we wished to proceed in a straight line (looked up in the dictionary) along Lingyin road (pronounced well) to the gardens (looked up in the dictionary) however he remained unhappy and keept on looking at us and the map with some doubt. We did get to the gardens and a joy it was. Away from at least a million of the Chinese we were able to explore the bamboo groves, exercise tables (their name), chrysanthemum gardens and a herb garden before seeking lunch. We found what ought to have been a restaurant on the map and asked if it was. The danger I have found with being able to say a few words in Chinese is that people talk back and that is much harder. We walked into the supposed resteraunt to be confrounted with golf clubs so we walked out, the chap then mimed eating and led us in and through to a table where we collapsed. We realised we had got ourselves into some swanky resteraunt. The menu was produced all in Chinese and so out came the phrase book. What do you have in vegetable, answer something spoken in Chinese. Ok so how about something aubergine, no aubergine, beansprout? no bean srout, mushroom? no mushroom. Ok so on which page are the veg dishes? lucky dip and give us those. It turned out to be very nice apart from one dish of bitter stalk with rubbery bits added in. Argh China.