Catching Up - Part I, Hang Zhou

We went to Hang Zhou, a city a little more than 2 hours southwest of Shanghai, on Sunday. It was a beautiful day. We really lucked out!


We went to the temple for Yue Fei, a general in ancient China who allegedly had never lost a single battle in the 300+ battle he led. He was a national hero of the Southern Song Dynasty. You can read about his full story here. The four cast iron kneeling figures are still there, but you can no longer spit on them. In fact, there's a sign on top of the figures saying "please do not spit". ha!



Across from the temple is the famous West Lake of Hang Zhou. It's gorgeous! Even in the fog. It was green all along the riverbank, and there were even flowers and flowered trees in the dead of winter.

Although upon seeing small restaurants near the lake cleaning their tables with water from the lake, we decided to not venture into those restaurants and stay safe with KFC across the road. *SIGH* How boring! :)

We spent the afternoon climbing a hill and seeing a Buddhist temple, Lin Yin Shi. We saw a fascinating small hill that had all sorts of Buddhist gods carved on it. The story behind it was that there was an asteroid that apparently landed in the area,and it was said that it might fly off again, since it flew in from space. In order to prevent this, the people decided to build a hill on top of the asteroid and carve the Buddhist gods on the hill. I guess they thought the gods would have power enough to do so. Guess they were right, since I'm presuming the asteroid didn't fly away again. :D

Upon climbing the thousands of stone steps on the hill and back down, the kids claim there were exhausted! Well, Alex and Ricky did. Jared wanted to "do it again" since Eric had to carry him up and down the hill, he didn't mind it at all.


Lin Yin Shi was quite an experience for the kids. There were some awesome statues here. And believers were able to burn incense and make wishes. Alex claimed he believed too! :D We didn't stay long at the temple. The kids were "toooooo tired" as they told me, to go any further (insert whiny tone). So we headed home.

All in all, it was a fun day and I took way way way too many pictures!