Putuoshan trip

Last weekend, we went on a little trip outside Shanghai, looking for some fresh air and to see more of China than just Shanghai. We started with an overnight boat trip from Wusong Port to arrive in the early morning in Putuoshan. It was a bit difficult to get the boat tickets since it was "Buddha's birthday" weekend, but we managed to get 4th class boat tickets. Fourth class! Didn't even know that this existed:-) We went on the boat, and we just kept on going down on levels, until we finally reached our destination - right next to the loud roaring engine and a place with no proper ventilation and windows. It brought up memories of Titanic where Jack was stuck down in the bottom with the rest of the laymen, while the ship was sinking. Our level actually had gates to close off our level off as well....I just comforted myself knowing that there will not be any ice caps around this region.

After we arrived at 7 am in the morning at Putuoshan and fixed our hotel room, we started to look for some food in the 'village'. The first impression of this island was that it was overloaded with Chinese tourists with red caps and the groups were escorted with a tour guide with a flag and microfoon. At one point I overheard a guide yelling out numbers (from 1 to 20) to check if everybody was still with the group. I guess he gave every family a number, so he could easily check who was there or not.

While looking for a restaurant, we stumbled upon certain areas full of local life, they still had a few traditional courthouses. I really love this about China, just walking around different areas, and then just stumble upon these kind of surprises...

The island has a mountain that is one of the four sacred Buddhist mountains of China, so it's full with temples, monks and nuns. On our visit I have spotted several nuns doing a pilgrimage, you can recognize this by seeing them walking three steps, kneel down, bowing with their heads on the floor, and then back up again. This is how they have traveled all the way.

When we went to one particular temple, build around an impressive cave, I was struck with a BIG mountain of money that was out there on the table in the temple, for everybody to see. I don't think I have ever seen so much money in my whole life...The monks were counting the money they got from donations. It was just so weird to me that they we so out in the open about it. (although they didn't let us take any pictures) I guess it's a big industry here with all the pilgrims and tourists coming here every year.

Hiking was great, it's so good not to be in the city but out in nature, albeit in Chinese style: together with thousands of yelling Chinese tourist, a paved path (complete with stairs and railing), fake wooden lamp posts, and even speakers playing soothing songs along the route:-)

Check out some of my pictures here.
I bet there will be more to come considering that 4 out of 6 people of our trip had a big D-SLR camera. (3 out of 4 were Nikon :-D)